NEW SCHOOL

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AUTHOR'S POV

Katherine looked over her new school with disdain. Here lay before her, her brand new hell for the rest of the year : Northview High School.

At first it looked harmless enough , but she was experienced enough to know better. Inside there was a giant herd of evil and nasty laughing hyenas just waiting to eat her alive with their cruel, ruthless banter.

In other words: Teenagers.

It was enough to make a lesser being let out a blood curdling scream and run for the hills. But Katherine was not a lesser being, and she walked through those double entrance doors with her head held high. The girl's stopped giggling as she walked by, and the boy's eyes went wide and their mouths fell open.

Katherine could have taken laughs and scathing remarks but the silence was unbearable. They had never been silent before at the other school. They had never just stood there like that. Luckily she found the administrative office before she had to put up with much more. And yet it's only just begun, she thought bitterly. She knew it would probably be a hundred times worse because they had been silent the first time they had seen her.

"I am here for my appointment with Principal Kingsley," Katherine decisively told a middle-aged woman with bleach blonde hair who was reading a copy of Vogue magazine laid out on her desk.

The women's clothes were tight and too revealing for a school administrator, especially one of her age and her skin was of sickly orange colour that was the obvious result of too much tanning.

She looked Katherine up and down in a disdainful manner before turning her attention back to her magazine blowing Katherine off completely.

Katherine sighed in irritation. She really did not have time for this Katherine slipped her backpack off her shoulders and slammed it loudly on top of the women's magazine. The woman jumped back a little and surprised her mouth, opening and closing like a trout.

"Okay," Katherine said curtly. "You obviously didn't hear me the first time so let me repeat: I am here for my appointment with Principal Kingsley. Did that penetrate your severely dyed hair and damaged brain?" Katherine was vaguely aware that people were beginning to stare but she couldn't bring herself to care. She had put up with this enough at home from her family. There was no way in hell that she was going to put up with it from a woman who was paid to be helpful to her.

"Hey, you can't talk to me like that-" the woman began in outrage.

"Katherine Scott. Principal Kingsley. Appointment. Does any of this ring a bell?" Katherine asked scathingly.

"She isn't in yet," the woman said with a glare as she sharply pulled her manicured nails out from under Katherine's backpack.

"She is talking to one of the teachers about the curriculum, you'll have to wait."

Wait? In the administration office? Where everyone could see her and stare at her like she was an animal in the zoo? That office was quickly beginning to look a lot like a pool of hungry piranhas. There was no way she was waiting in it.

"I'll be happy to," Katherine said sweetly, "I'll be in her office when she gets here,"

"You wait, you can't-"

"Seeing as she is the one who is late for our meeting I am sure she won't mind my waiting in her office," Kathryn said with finality removing her backpack from the desk and magazine. Without waiting for the woman's answer she strode into Kingsley's office.

It's beautiful, Kathryn thought as she took in the pale, warm cream color on the walls and the elegant furniture.

She quietly shut the door behind her letting the mood of the room soak in. The whole office was a tribute to the Victorian era with only slight and subtle modern changes. Two cream coloured chairs matched the walls set in front of a large cherry wood desk that looked hand-carved. The main accent colour was a rich, royal burgundy that offset the cream in a way that made Katherine feel luxurious and ladylike in that room. She could have easily imagined herself a duchess that was about to write out invitations to her next ball. It was like being swept away to another century.

She sat in one of the chairs facing the desk and saw an identical chair resting behind the desk where Kingsley no doubt sat during the day. She only managed to sit still for about 5 minutes when she couldn't help exploring a little more. The room may not have been excessively large but it had a great deal in it to examine, though it still managed to feel spacious and open. An antique China cabinet sat to the left of the desk near a corner of the room, the light from the adjacent window making the glass sparkle like crystal. It was filled with pictures and antiques from the Victorian era. There was a hand-painted tea set decorated with fragile pink roses and vines; next to that was a framed piece of embroidery depicting a man proposing to a woman. There were quite a few things that went along the same lines filling the glass-paned cabinet. Katherine spent several minutes looking them over but she quickly grew bored and stepped away from the cabinet, ready to go back to her seat again.

A glimpse of something in the reflection of the class caught her eye causing her to stop. She turned around and saw a curtain over what she had first thought to be another window. However, there was something off about it: all the other curtains were drawn back and the windows open to let in the cool fall air and keep the room from getting stuffy. This one wasn't. She stepped toward it slowly, almost cautiously- life had taught her to be cautious. She reached up and took hold of the curtain, pulling it aside gently so as not to disturb whatever was underneath.

Photographs.

Much to her surprise, there were dozens and dozens of photographs covering the whole wall from one end of the curtain to the other, and the curtain covered almost the whole wall, not including the one window that faced the China cabinet. All of them seemed to be of the same set of people, all in their early twenties and lead teens. They were all very attractive people, the kind you see in magazines and TV advertisements. Even the one gothic girl in the photos seemed model perfect. They were all well dressed in clothes that look expensive and tasteful, and each of them had their own unique style. The Goth girl was one, another was a short young Asian woman dressed in bright yellow and gold and another girl that seemed a little older than the other girls in the pictures was dressed in soft pinks and creams that added a sensual touch to her shapely body. Another girl that caught Katherine's eye was the one that was dressed in an airy white dress trimmed with the flowers and she wore a Crown of daisies on her head.

The three boys in the pictures were all handsome in different ways. The first was strong, tall and had broad shoulders and bulky muscles that showed through the football jersey that he wore. The second was shorter and had dirty blonde hair and he seemed a little thinner than the rest. The third though... The third was something altogether different from the others, Katherine could feel it instinctively. He seemed separate, intentionally divided from the others, though he seemed less so far from the Asian girl. His mouth was quirked up in an air of perpetual sarcasm and arrogance, and his dark eyes seemed both brooding and irritated, as though he was far above and beyond allowing someone to take his photograph. He was undoubtedly the most beautiful person she had ever laid eyes on and she hated him for it because he only reminded her of how utterly plain she was.

It made her chest ache to know that she would never be beautiful or even pretty, and she felt deeply ashamed for caring. She hated him for all the emotions he brought about.

The door opened just then to reveal a beautiful woman who looked about 20 or so with hair the colour of blood, dark and crimson, shining in the light that came in through the open windows. Katherine had never seen that colour except her own but did not comment on it.

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