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9
When I wake at five minutes past six, my very bones are aching. My fingers are sore from scrubbing for hours, and they seem frozen into a curled position, like they’re missing the feel of the bouncy damp sponge I’d held all night.
All I want to do is go back to sleep, and for a moment I think about it.
But then I realize the time.
Five minutespastsix.
I was supposed to be outside atsix.
I bolt awake, adrenaline rushing through me like a bucket of ice-cold water. Oh, God. I’m in for it now. What’s Baxter going to do to me? Punish me withmoredetentions? What if I nevernothave detention? At least with this one, I can see how I might actually deserve it. There’s no one but myself to blame for being late.
Not counting the part where I trip over my tights, it takes me an impressively short amount of time to get dressed into the full Lochkelvin uniform.
I’m running down the main staircase, breathless and desperately trying to ignore my limp. The statue gleams brightly, as though the person in charge of cleaning it was up all night and well into the morning doing so.
Spoiler alert: she was.
I didn’t crawl into bed until long after midnight. I’m absolutely shattered. But hey, at least the creepy ancient statue looks good and that’s all that matters, right?
As I dash out the main entrance, I manage to barrel into something — someone — solid.
Baxter. Oh God.
She reaches out to grasp the door knocker, steadying herself, and of course I’m on the receiving end of my first glare today.
“Sorry, Headmistress.” I stretch out my hand for her to hold, but she looks down at it with disdain, as though it were covered in dirt.
It’s not. Before bed, I valiantly scrubbed my hands so thoroughly in the tiny sink that my skin had turned bright pink and I’d thought they might bleed. I don’t think my hands have ever been cleaner.
Her black beady eyes settle on me like my presence is ridiculous. “What time do you call this?”
A crazy time. An ungodly hour. Detention at six in the morning is just plainwrong.
Instead, I smile up at her, pretending to be as fresh as a freaking daisy.They can’t sense weakness if you smile. It’s something my old dance teacher taught me back in Greenvale when I was learning barre. That was years and years ago now, but it’s always stuck with me.
Baxter peers down at me. “Why are you grinning like a fool?”
My grin lessens somewhat. I gaze out at the scenery, trying to ignore the chatter of my teeth. It’sfreezing. There are cold, crystallized dew drops on the grass, and a low haze of fog. I know there are large, impressive hills in the distance, and yet the silvery-gray fog masks them as if they’ve been erased from the skyline. It makes Lochkelvin look that little bit more isolated.
“What will I be doing for detention?” I’m bracing myself. If it involves the outdoors, then that’s already a bad start.
Baxter raises her head proudly while looking at the view, as though there were nothing grander or better in this world than what we’re currently facing. She might be right. I’m too cold, too sleep-deprived, and too irritated with Lochkelvin to care about theview.
“This morning, you will be taking part in the preliminary preparations for next week’s Highland Games.”
“Highland Games?”
Baxter’s beady eye falls on me again. “The annual event in which students participate in various traditional Highland sports.”
Swallowing, I try to imagine what I’ll be doing. Assembling bleachers? Organizing sports equipment? What exactlyaretraditional Highland sports?Bait the new girlseems to be top of the list so far.
“It’ll be held on the banks of the loch below, and already the trees have been shedding their leaves like nobody’s business. I want you to remove the fallen leaves.”
Remove leaves. From a forest.
“Any equipment you’ll need will be found in the cleaning cupboard.”
