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“So I’m the cloud to her silver lining.”
“Very poetic. And accurate.”
Storm looks back down at her book, but she can’t focus on the words. She knows she should stay quiet, avoid trouble, keep herself safe, but words are bubbling up inside her. Words that demand to be said. Though she fights them back, once, twice, nearly three times, they’re still somehow on her tongue and out of her mouth before she can stop them.
“Well, you don’t have to be a dick about it.”
Frau Lotte makes a disgruntled sound.
“Go and stand in the corner, girl.”
Storm gets up, taking her book with her. She can read in the corner, she guesses, seeing as this is still allegedly a study session and not yet another torture Storm session.
“Leave your book behind.”
Storm throws the book down behind her and goes and stands in the corner, arms folded across her chest. She has a grudging respect for Frau Lotte’s Germanic honesty. But it does not feel good to be an unwanted problem.
She’s felt like that her entire life. Part of her wonders why they didn’t just let her run away. That would have solved everybody’s issues in one go. Instead, they, like previous people, seem to keep her around just to tell her they wish she wasn’t around.
It’s close to impossible to have a good attitude under those circumstances, even if she wanted to have one, which she doesn’t.
“You have been given an opportunity…” Frau Lotte begins.
Oh god, she’s going to give a fucking lecture, Storm realizes. It’s not bad enough to be forced into this stupid, childish punishment. She has to listen to someone who barely knows her tell her all the many things that are wrong with her thoughts, feelings, and actions. What a fucking brilliant evening this is turning into.
“Just let me go back to my room,” Storm interrupts. “You don’t want me here, so why have me here, in your face? Just dismiss me to my room already.”
“I’m not going to dismiss you. You are here, and you are my student.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Yes, you are. Whether you like it or not, I am your headmistress.”
Storm narrows her eyes, but she can’t really deny that. Frau Lotte is the headmistress. That’s a simple statement of fact. She is in her care, and technically, Frau Lotte is probably the person most responsible for her.
Still, fuck all of that.
“That’s your own fault then,” Storm snaps back. She turns around, technically still in the corner, but facing out of it, her arms folded over her chest and an expression of pure rebellion on her face. “I don’t have to listen to you.”
“Of course you do, girl.” Frau Lotte has risen from behind her desk and looks very displeased.
“Why? Jane’s not here, Laura’s with her at dinner, and Hannes is having a mental breakdown in Zurich.” Storm did listen into Jane and Laura’s conversation, just a little. She likes to stay informed. It comes in handy at times like these.
“Of all the…”
“You’re an old lady, and I don’t have to do a thing you say,” Storm interrupts. “Because you can’t make me.”
It is then that Storm learns, as many teenagers have learned before her, that just because someone is older, they are not necessarily entirely decrepit.
Frau Lotte crosses the room at quite a pace, takes hold of the smirking, smug student by the ear, and marches her across the room to her desk.
“I know you have been paddled, birched, and caned,” the headmistress says. “But punishment is not about implements. It is about making an impression.”
Storm struggles, considering leaving her ear behind in order to escape this grip. “Let me go, you mad old witch!”
“You are disrespectful,” Lotte observes. “And you are willful, and you have been spoiled by Miss Strict, who clearly has a soft spot for you. I am not burdened by such emotions. I will give you what you have coming tonight. Get into position, girl.”
Bent over the desk by merit of the torque on her ear, Storm squirms and struggles for freedom. This is not the same as being punished by Jane. She likes Jane. She does not like Frau Lotte. The woman has antagonized her and not earned even a fraction of her respect, though she seems to command it from others merely by swanning around looking severe.
