I woke up the next morning with a bit of a hangover, but nothing serious. I’ve had worse, like last year’s Halloween bash. That was a bitch of a morning. Kate came over at eight to pick me up. My mum protested, saying that she should take me, but I told her that if she was making me go to the wretched school then Kate was going to be the one to take me. We packed my things into her car and I hugged my mum briefly before we started the two hour drive into the city. We blasted the radio and joked around the whole way. I was really going to miss seeing her every day, and I mean literally mean every day. We had classes together at school, we had sleepovers every other night, weekends were the time to party and go out, or camp out in Sam’s back field; he lives on a property. Those parties were amazing, bonfires and strip poker, skinny-dipping in the dam. Instead of having and amazing last year of high school with my friends I get to spend it listening to a bunch of whining bimbos at the ‘Ladies College’ in the city. I was so bummed.

We pulled up outside the school and sat there staring at the gates.

“It’s the break in a month; you’re coming back then aren’t you?” Kate said.

“Well I’m not going to stick around here.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”

“Even if I did, what would that leave me with?” I turned to look at her and she smiled.

I leant over to hug her before grabbing my bags and getting out of the car.

“Text me every day.” She said.

“I will,” I waved as she drove away.

I sat in the principal’s waiting room while she was seeing another student. A few of the other students walked past and I noticed instant differences, they were all so plain, hardly any make-up, compared to my eyes that were covered with a thick layer of eyeliner and eye-shadow, I had lots of jewellery whilst they had hardly any, yeah, they were all so conventional.

“Kim Rafter?”

I looked up and the receptionist was calling my name. When I sat down in the chair opposite the principal she gave me a look that said ‘that has to go’.

“Good morning Miss Rafter, welcome to North Lake.” She said in a smooth, pristine voice that made me want to vomit.

“Hey, how’s it going?” I made a small waving gesture.

She smiled gently, “So you’ll be starting mid-way through our term and we have a few different dorm options for you, so you can take your pick if you like.”

“Uh, yeah, sure.”

“We have a place in the Swan House; you can share with Emily or Sarah. Or there is one in the Peacock House with Janine.” She looked at me expectantly.

“Okay, no offence, but I don’t know any of these chicks so what does it matter?”

She narrowed her eyes and smiled sweetly, “I’ll put you in Swan House with Emily. Now I have to mention a few of our rules that you don’t seem to have heard of. Firstly, we only allow our girls to wear minimal make-up and jewellery, and no piercings other than one set of ears. I can see you have the top of your ear done, are there any other secret hiding spots?”

I ran the ball on my tongue over the top of my mouth. “No, that’s it.”

“Good, well I’ll have to ask you to take that earring and remove your make-up before you start classes on Monday. We also have rules on leaving campus. Sunday to Thursday nights no one is to leave campus before three, as that is when teaching hours cease, and you must be back by five, and everyone is to be in their dorm rooms by ten sharp. Friday and Saturday nights we permit our students to leave campus but the curfew is raised to eleven and all students must be in their dorm rooms by twelve.”

“Seriously?” I said with a look of disgust on my face.

“Of course, and boys are not permitted within the dorm houses. In the court yard, café’s and parks on campus if you want to fraternise you are free to do so, but all male visitors will leave by eight pm, except of course, when we have our ball with our brother school, the North Lake Boys Academy, or other such functions involving their school. These meetings will not take place on a Sunday night through to Friday afternoon, as they are school hours. If you want to have any visitors you must get permission from your head of house, I will give you all the necessary details later.”

“Great, I look forward to that.”

“We break for mid-semester in just over a month’s time and you are free to leave campus and return home in this time or if you chose to stay on campus we have a much more relaxed set of-”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, I’ll be going back home.”

“Oh lovely.” She went through a hell of a lot more rules and guidelines and policies, most of which I didn’t even listen to.

At the end of it all she called in the head of the Swan House, Mrs Bingham, to take me to my dormitory. She tried telling me about some sort of cultural history of the place and how the school is celebrating its one hundredth year but I put my headphones on and listened to my music. I saw her nostrils flare and I just laughed.

“This will be your room. There is a private bathroom inside, for you and your roommate to share-”

“Whoa, wait, roommate? I have to share a room?”

“Yes, which you would have known if you had taken any notice to what the head mistress was explaining to you. You’re rooming with Emily; she’s on the student council.”

“Whoopee.” I rolled my eyes.

“As I was saying you will share the room, there is a private bathroom for the two of you; there are two desks, one for each of you. The Swan Common Room is down the hall and to your left, there is a television, fridge, small kitchenette; it’s basically a living area. This is where you can prepare all personal foods, snacks and such. We serve breakfast every day at eight in the Hall, lunch is at twelve fifteen and dinner is six thirty. No music is to be played after nine pm. You must be in your room by ten on a school night, eleven thirty on a Friday and Saturday, and there will be one random dorm inspection every week so be sure to keep your room tidy. Any questions and you report to me. I am room one zero four in the teachers quarters across campus and my office is in the same building as the head mistress. Now, is there anything you would like to know?”

I stood there looking at her with my mouth hanging open, “I’ll be fine.”

“Good, I’ll leave you to it. I will let Emily know to give you a guided tour of the facilities. Enjoy the rest of your day.” I rolled my eyes and headed back to my shared room.

The room was pretty decent sized. Emily’s side of the room had neatly arranged pictures of fashion models and the like on the walls, on her desk there was a pink stationary set and a pile of textbooks. There was a jewellery box on her chest of drawers and a mirror with pictures she must have taken with her friends. It was like there was an imaginary line across the middle of the room, Emily’s side, and my side, with nothing but a plain bed spread and a mirror as decoration. I had brought some of my band posters with me, along with photos of my friends. It was the first thing I did; I found the pictures and put them up, similarly to Emily’s layout. Mine were organised much more chaotically though, my little touch of rebellion. I liked to think of myself as somewhat of a brown-coat. I pulled out my laptop and placed it on the desk along with my bag of make-up. I grabbed a couple of my magazines and lay on the bed reading them. It was probably an hour before Emily came back from studying in the library. She was holding a few textbooks and had a satchel bag over her shoulder. She walked halfway across the room before she noticed that I was here. We just sort of looked at one another for a few seconds, taking each other in. Emily had very delicate features; she had long mousey-blonde hair, pale green eyes and pouted lips. She was very slender with small tits and a small ass; great legs though. She was wearing a button-up long-sleeved North Lake shirt and those god-awful jeans-tights which actually didn’t look half bad on her.

“Hello.” She had a British accent which caught me off-guard.

“Hey.”

“I’m sorry to be rude, but who are you?” She said, putting her textbooks on her desk.

“I’m Kim; they shoved me in here with you.”

“Are you new?” She sat down on her bed.

“My mum shipped me up here because she thinks I need to get some class,” I laughed slightly. “Maybe I can learn from you ay Guvnor?” I said with a British accent alike hers.

She smiled lightly but I could see her eyeing my make-up and harsh clothing and judging me. I snorted, “Whatever, you better not snore.” I said.

She rolled her eyes and walked to the bathroom. I can't believe we don’t even get our own rooms, I thought. I put my iPod on speaker and played the music as loud as it would go.

We spent the entire night glaring at each other across the room. When it came to eleven pm I was still texting Kate on my phone and the small light from the phone was illuminating most of the room. I could tell that Emily was getting annoyed at me, especially seeing as I was laughing out loud with every funny thing that Kate wrote. After about ten minutes she rolled over in her bed and sighed.

“Look, can you please turn the brightness down on that thing and keep quiet? I have a student council meeting right after breakfast tomorrow and I need to go over my notes before I eat so I actually need to get some sleep.” She said irritably.

“Why don’t you just roll over and, I don’t know, ignore it?”

“I asked you to turn down the brightness, not turn it off; I’m working for a compromise here.”

“Good on ya love.” I copied her accent again and she scoffed and rolled over.

I finally stopped texting Kate about twelve and fell asleep in the horrible new bed at a horrible new school. I didn’t get as much sleep as I wanted though, Emily’s alarm went off at six thirty. I woke up with a groan and saw her sitting up on the side of the bed.

“What the hell? I have to live in here too; don’t you think you should ask a person before you turn that shit on for like seven in the morning?” I growled.

She smirked, “Why don’t you just roll over and, I don’t know, ignore it?” She said sweetly, copying what I had said to her the night before.

“Oh look at me, I’m British and like to wake up at the crack of dawn like a farm animal.” I mimicked her voice, for the third time in this short period of time that we’ve been roommates.

“I may wake up at the hour of a farm animal, but at least I have better manners than one.” She stormed into the bathroom and I heard her turn on the shower.

I never really fell back to sleep, she came out to get clothes and brought them back to the bathroom to change. At about quarter past seven she sat at her desk and turned on her lamp to read over her notes.

I made as much noise as possible to show her my distaste but she just laughed. I was still lying in bed at seven thirty and she was packing up her things.

“You’ll probably want to get up and shower soon, I’ll be leaving for breakfast and I assume no one has shown you to the hall yet so, I guess I’ll have to escort you.” She said, standing at the end of my bed.

“Listen, Aimee-”

“It’s Emily.”

“I know, I just don’t care, I think I’ll be able to find a hall full of people and food. I probably won’t even show up until like eight thirty, so go and do your thing. Leave me in peace.”

“You’re a nasty person, do you know that?” She grabbed her bag and walked out.

I only slept for another half an hour. I showered and pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt before walking around the campus looking for the damned hall. When I finally found it and walked inside there weren’t that many people there.

“Uh, excuse me; I thought that breakfast was supposed to be going down.” I said to someone walking past.

“You missed the early one; they have another one at ten on weekends.”

I pursed my lips, why don’t the administrators ever tell you the full story. I woke up for no reason. Well, Emily woke me up for no reason. She could have told me. I went back to the dorm room and collapsed on the bed. Emily came back just after nine forty-five. I woke up when she shut the door. I rubbed my eyes a little and glared at her.

“You know, it would have been nice if you told me that they do a later breakfast as well on weekends, and that you can’t show up at eight thirty.”

She looked over at me with disbelief, God I envied her hair; it was fantastic this morning. “Oh so you want me to be nice when you’re clearly not going to be?”

“That’d be good.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“You don’t know the half of it girly.” I said, mocking her accent again.

“I assumed you would have someone come over here to give you a tour of the campus, that’s why I thought you were having the early breakfast. Didn’t they send anyone?”

“No, they left you in charge of that. I guess they didn’t tell you either.”

“Of course they did. Well, I guess you had better clean up before breakfast, I’ll take you down there and then I’ll show you around.” She shrugged.

“What do you mean by ‘clean up’?” I sat up.

“I mean take all of that black stuff off your face, you’ll get in trouble.”

“This ‘black stuff’ is my make-up, and they’re just going to have to deal with it. They can expel me if they like, I would love that.” I smiled in a very fake way.

“Fine, let’s head down there now then.”

We headed out of our dorm and down the corridor. When we got outside we headed across the small strip of parkland that separated the dormitories from the actual school campus. I started to go left and Emily started to go right.

“Where are you going?” She said to me.

“To the hall, for breakfast.” I replied.

“Well unless you’re going to the Robin hall, you’re going the wrong way.”

“Robin hall?”

“Yes, the hall for the students in Robin House.”

“You have more than one hall?”

“We have a lot of students at this school, besides, there are certain things that only apply to particular houses and it would waste a lot of time at morning announcements if they had to tell us everything.”

“Please tell me you were joking about morning announcements?”

“Every day at breakfast.”

I groaned and we walked towards the Swan hall. It was a huge building; it must me quite old because the ceiling was so high on the inside. There were three tables all laid out with a buffet style breakfast spread and another long table at the front of the hall where a few older ladies and a couple of middle aged men sat, they must be teachers, I thought.

“We sit at this table; the other two are for the younger two years.” Emily said.

I sat down without acknowledging her. “Anyway, come and get me when you finish and I will take you on the quickest campus tour you’ve ever been on.” She walked away before I could answer.

As I put food on my plate I watched her walk over to a pair of girls at the other end of our table. One of the girls had a long blonde pony-tail and a blue summer dress on, the other had deep brown hair that sat just above her shoulders and she was wearing an oversized pink shirt with denim skinny-leg jeans. She leant down and kissed the both of them on the cheek before sitting beside the blonde girl. When I first met Emily I didn’t think she would be one of those ‘popular’ girls, maybe it was the student council thing, but everyone seemed to look at the three of them like they were the ‘it’ girls. It wasn’t normal though, they looked at them like they aspired to be like them, not like they hated their guts because they’re just those girls you hate. That’s how everyone looked at those girls at my old school, though you wanted to be just like them at the same time, because they were perfect.

I finished eating and walked down to the end of the table opposite Emily and her friends, “Yo England,” I said. I know that she heard me because I saw her clench her jaw, but she ignored me. I looked to the left and saw a small piece of crust from someone’s leftover toast do I picked it up and flicked it at her; it hit her on the cheek. This time she froze and looked up at me.

“You are so rude. I have a name.” She glared at me and her two friends looked me up and down.

“Who’s this, Em?” the brunette said, not taking her eyes off me.

“This is my new roommate, Kimberly.” She was still glaring at me.

“Yeah, so are we going to go?” I said.

“I’ll see you guys later.” She smiled at her friends and stood up. As she walked around the end of the table I heard her mumble to herself, “I cannot believe that I’m stuck with her all damn year…”

I laughed to myself. We headed out through the doors and she strutted out ahead of me. “Do you need to pick up your uniform?”

“Well, I don’t have a uniform so, yeah, probably. How strict are they with that stuff?”

“Very, hurry up.”

“They aren’t going to like me.”

“Really? I can't imagine why.” That was probably a good call on her count.

We headed down to the office and Emily talked to someone behind a desk, I thought it was strange to have someone in the office on a Sunday, but I guess being a boarding school they needed to hire people to work on the weekend. The woman gave Emily a piece of paper and she walked down the hallway.

“Are you coming or not?” She said.

I followed her to a room out the back filled with boxes of uniforms.

“Lots of shit in here isn’t there?” I said.

She ignored my comment. “Alright so it says here that your mum ordered you two button-up shirts in the long and short sleeves, two skirts, one dress-”

“Excuse me? A dress? No, I don’t think so.”

“You don’t have to wear it but you do have to take it. You also need one pull-over woollen jumper, one blazer five pairs of tan stockings, and five pairs of socks.” She began to pull things out of boxes. “What size are you?”

“Small top, medium bottom.” She started piling up the things that I needed and I pulled a disgusted face. “Is there any particular reason why the uniforms are that ugly?”

“The dresses are actually really nice, the skirts are a little dorky but you get used to them.”

I found an empty box and dumped all of the clothes that Emily gave me into it. I continued to bitch at her as I carried it pack to our dorm. She then took me on another walk around the campus. There are so many buildings, and they’re all so old and, foreboding.

We had been walking for about twenty minutes and Emily was boring me with her historical accounts of the school so I interrupted her. “So when do they integrate the boys’ school?”

Emily looked slightly annoyed but she answered me. “They have a social night every second Wednesday in the Candice Hall, well, we have it in the Candice Hall, the other year levels have it elsewhere.”

“A ‘social night’? What the hell is a social night?”

“They lock us in the hall unsupervised for three hours with snack food and soft drink and a little bit of music. It’s like a very mediocre dance where they just expect us to interact and make small-talk or something like that, most of the time we just talk to who we know.”

“You mean they actually leave you alone for a while? Sweet, sounds like a nice break.”

“It really makes no difference apart from the fact that it feels less like an exam because you don’t have them breathing down your neck, looking over your shoulder like they’re checking to see if you’re doing the right-”

“Yeah, yeah I get the point. Though I do feel good about the fact that you have to suffer through exams; it makes me feel warm and toasty inside.”

She scoffed and laughed to herself. “I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you. What do you think you’re going to have to do at the end of semester?”

“Uh, I’ll go and do a work-placement shift, I don’t do subjects that need me to do exams.” I said.

“Good luck with that, what subjects are you doing?”

“I’m doing the same as I did at the beginning of the year.”

“I can almost guarantee you’ll be sitting exams in your classes. Actually, I can, mathematics and English will not be exam-optional. So don’t laugh at me.”

“I did not sign up for this shit!”

“But your mother did so now you just have to deal with it.” She walked ahead of me and back to our dorm, this was going to be a long year.

I woke up the next morning to Emily’s alarm, this time I had no choice but to wake up and go down to breakfast. Seeing as they didn't believe in pants at this school, or so it seemed, I had to wear the dress and thick stockings. Of course it looked great on me, but I really didn’t like to wear dresses. I tend to go for jeans or shorts, sometimes the occasional skirt but not often. I only ever wore a dress to our dance last year, and even then it didn’t stay on for long at the after party. I put on all of my make-up; Emily started to tell me that I shouldn’t bother but I cut her off and continued. We headed out to the hall together.

“Don’t think you have to play the cutesy ‘nice-girl’ and sit with me, I don’t need you to sit there and patronise me.” I said.

“Who says I was planning to sit with you?” She scoffed and walked away from me and into the hall.

I sat alone for breakfast and announcements and struggled to get to my first class on time. I found a seat that was relatively secluded and sat down. The teacher walked over to me and we went through all the normal crap, what I’ve missed, what they’re doing and what I have to catch up on. Basically all the boring stuff. When the bell rang to signal the end of the period a girl came and sat next to me with a big sugary smile on her face.

“Hey, you must be new, I’m Kelsey.” I just looked up at her and raised an eyebrow.

“I’m Kim.” I said dryly.

“What house have they got you in?”

“Swan, I think.”

“Oh cool! Me too, who’s your roommate?” she was still smiling brightly.

“Emily, the English one.”

“Oh I know Emily; she’s a part of our group. I was just wondering if you wanted to hang out with us in the lunch break and seeing as you’re rooming with Emily it just-”

“Okay, I’m going to stop you there. I really don’t care about your little group or ‘hanging’ with you guys, because I just don’t care about fitting in with a bunch of princesses from some city college. So, uh, thanks but no thanks. You can go now.” I said rudely.

She stood there stunned for a moment before walking away with a wounded look on her face. Word must travel fast with these girls because no one else approached me and I got strange looks all day. During the lunch break one of the administrators escorted me to a bathroom and made me wash off my make-up. I was given a ‘warning’ because it was my first day and my first time with inappropriate make-up. I headed back to the dormitory once my last period was over; I had no idea what to do. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go. I started texting Kate.

Hey, I finally finished the first day, so bored!

Sucks for you, we’re all going over to Mike’s to play poker.

You can’t play poker, I thought you hated it?

Yeah but its strip poker and that I can do.

Oh I see, well, it’s three weeks to the break, we have to go nuts.

Sure, I have to go, we’re heading off now.

I envied her that freedom. I just had to count down to the end of the term when I could finally go home. It was a while before Emily came back to our room. She saw me just lying on the bed and raised an eyebrow at me.

“You know if you’re rude to all of the girls who try to befriend you you’re going to be very lonely for the rest of the year.”

“Like I care if your prissy little friends think I’m a bitch, I don’t actually plan on ‘befriending’ anyone.” I said grumpily.

“Well if you happen to change your mind now you’ll have to go through the whole ‘initiation game’ to get in with the swan girls.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“The swan girls are a group of girls from swan house; it’s just a group of us. We’re actually quite popular. You’d have to go through their little initiation now, because you didn’t accept the invitation form Kelsey.”

“Good thing I don’t want to be initiated. It sounds pretty gay if you ask me.”

“Just you wait, I give you a couple of weeks before you’re asking us to join out of loneliness.