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“Despite,” Echo addresses me, “being told numerous times that she is not allowed to.”
Jupiter rolls her eyes. “Whatever. My neighbors are control freaky psychos. What am I gonna do, not swim?” Then, to me, “I’m a water baby. I have to swim. And it’s not my fault that we don’t have a pool in our backyard. Besides, they have a kickass pool. I’d go swim in it even if I wasn’t a water baby.” She sighs. “I miss it though. God, do I miss it.”
This makes Echo sigh as well. “I know. I miss being outside. I miss ice cream. Like, those softies. You know, the kind you get from an ice cream truck? With pineapples. I want pineapples. Like, just give me pineapple on everything.”
“Yes,” Jupiter agrees. “But mostly with rum and coconut.”
Echo shakes her head. “So basically, a piña colada then?”
“Yup.” Jupiter grins. “And it’s even better when you sip it in my neighbor’s pool.”
They go back and forth some more, listing things that they miss doing over the summer. The only couple of months that we get to escape this hell. But this year, we can’t because we’re going to summer school on account of our low grades.
But it’s more than that.
It’s worse than that.
Because we’re not supposed to be going to school at all, let alone summer school.
We’re supposed to be done with school. We’re supposed to graduate.
Or we were supposed to. A month ago.
Like the rest of our senior class.
“But anyway,” Echo says. “That’s not why we’re here.”
“What?”
After glancing around to make sure we’re alone — we are; those girls dispersed as soon as he went inside the school building — Echo leans forward, setting her arms on the table. “To help you.”
“To help me?” I look at both of them. “Do what?”
Jupiter leans forward as well, popping a tiny Twizzler in her mouth. “To play a prank on him.”
Him.
The fucking devil.
My guardian.
Mr. Marshall.
Or rather Principal Marshall now.
Yeah.
Because it wasn’t enough for him to just be my guardian and keep me under his thumb like he has for four years, he also had to take the job as the temporary principal of this school. And his first act as the principal: hold my graduation and keep me in this prison-like school for the summer.
Yes, I said prison-like because it is a prison-like school.
An all-girls reform school located in the middle of the woods, in the town of St. Mary’s.
Meaning, all the girls who go here are troubled in one form or another.
They’re the rule-breakers. The rebels. The delinquents. The pains in the ass that everyone around them is fed up with.
And of course, I fit right in, don’t I?
Sometimes I think that if my mother had known about this place, she would’ve jumped at the chance to send me here. As it is, she didn’t.
He did though.
My guardian turned principal.
He knew about this place. His family built this place. Decades and decades ago.
So here I am, sent here three years ago to be rehabilitated and restored.
Just one of the many reasons why I hate him still.
Why I hate him more for keeping me here.
I take a moment to absorb their words and their expectant eyes before, still confused, I go, “What? What prank?”
Echo’s the one to explain. “Look, you hate it here as much as we do. In fact, I think you hate it here more than we do. But most of all, you’re sad that you’re here. It shows. You’re always by yourself. You sit in a corner, without talking to anyone. You keep your head down during classes. During lunch even. You hardly interact with the staff when you used to be best friends with so many of them, always asking favors, smuggling stuff in and out of the kitchen. You’re never in the TV room anymore, and you used to be the first one there, begging the wardens to let us watch more than our allotted time.”
Something pricks my eyes, my throat.
I didn’t know my misery was that obvious. That transparent. And I hate that it is.
I don’t want anyone to know that I’m struggling. That something is wrong with me.
Not only because I hate breaking down in front of people. But also because I’m Poe fucking Blyton.
I’m the bane of everyone’s existence. I have a reputation to maintain.
So I push all my emotions down and go to speak, to lie and deny it, but Jupiter speaks first. “So we’re here to offer you our help. I know we aren’t close and we haven’t talked to each other much but you can trust us.” Echo nods to emphasize Jupiter’s words. “We’ll do everything we can to help you. And maybe playing a prank on him might cheer you up a little bit, you know?”
Again I go to speak, but Echo gets there before me. “It might even make you… miss them less. So if you’re up for it, we’d like to help. What do you think?”
