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I see her fucking body.
That has grown and filled out, somehow becoming both slim and curvy at the same time.
But most of all, I see her crisp blue eyes and those black-rimmed glasses. Glasses so thick that they should hide the shine of those eyes, but they don’t.
I realize that I shouldn’t be thinking about her in these terms.
She’s the girl I’m responsible for. She’s my troublemaker of a ward.
The harpy.
Who, when I came back from Italy and took over this school, also became my student.
Whose graduation I stopped.
To be fair, I stopped her graduation because her grades weren’t there and I came here to fix things. To make students take the rules seriously. Hence, I stopped a couple of other graduations too.
But.
She was right when she said that I’m not willing to let her out early. I’m not willing to listen to her plans and propositions. That’s why I’ve been jerking her around this past week.
And that’s because all I can think about is how I can barely recognize her, let alone see Charlie in her.
So she was right when she said that I’m not willing to let her go. But she was wrong about the why.
She was wrong when she said that things haven’t changed.
They have.
Because when I look at her, I don’t see Charlie.
When I look at her, I see her.
I see someone who went from being a fourteen-year-old burden that I couldn’t look at to an eighteen-year-old girl that I can’t look away from.
Friday nights are sacred at St. Mary’s.
Or at least, they used to be. When my friends were around.
Almost every Friday at midnight, we would all get dressed up and sneak off campus to go to this dance bar called Ballad of the Bards in Bardstown. Even though it’s a dance bar, their music is super unusual. They’re known for their sad songs and songs about tragic, unrequited love.
Callie’s brother Conrad used to work there once upon a time, and so she knew the bartender, who allowed us entry even though we were — are — underage. As long as we promised not to drink. Which was fine. Because it wasn’t so much about the drinking as it was a way for us to be free and act as if we were normal high school students rather than students of a strict reform school.
And so as much as I was looking forward to seeing them tonight, I was also dreading it.
Because I was going to do it alone.
And that’s because for me, Friday nights are about more than being carefree and normal. It’s about being with my friends and getting dressed up together. Or rather, dressing them up.
It’s not a secret that I’m into clothes and shoes and makeup.
Dress me up in anything purple and suede and I’m a happy kitty.
I’m an even happier kitty if I get to dress someone else up.
I love, love, love to dress other people up. I love to mix and match their outfits, share my own outfits with them, do their makeup and hair, and find pretty shoes for them to wear.
It’s an obsession, dressing other people up, and I’ve had it ever since I could remember.
So when all my friends went away, I thought I wouldn’t get to do it anymore. But guess what, I have new friends.
Two new friends.
My partners in crime.
I dress Echo up in shades of pink. Because of her rosy skin and honey blonde hair. A rose pink satin dress with a draped, one-shoulder bodice, and a simple slim fit skirt with a small slit in the back. I had a killer pair of Gucci silver sandals to go with it, so I used those to complete the look.
Which turned out to be very good girl-ish but sexy.
Echo reminds me so much of Callie, actually. Not only because of her good girl persona but also because the reason she’s here is a boy. A boy she, like Callie, absolutely hates.
I haven’t been able to gather much information because she’s reluctant to talk about it. But from what I know, there’s two boys: one she loves and is pining over. He’s a soccer player and her ex-boyfriend. And the other whom she loathes. Who also happens to be a soccer player and best friends with her ex-boyfriend.
And somehow her ex-boyfriend’s best friend is responsible for her being here.
And then there’s Jupiter, who is more or less like me. A troublemaker.
Meaning people around her have always seen her with wary eyes, specifically the neighbor whose pool she’d sneak into. In fact, it was that very neighbor who got fed up with her antics and threatened to press charges against her, making her family choose between juvie and a reform school; her parents picked the lesser of the two evils. So she came here in her junior year, same as Echo.
