cigarette daydream ━━ the raven cycle

4; lessons on envy

AGNETHA PREP, sister school to the all-boys Aglionby Prep, groomed it's students to conquer. The school motto, Veni, Vidi, Vici is literally latin for I came, I saw, I conquered.

    The pressure was a bitch. Or so my friends tell me.

    Personally, I didn't feel an ounce of that coercion. I use to, back when I was a freshman and new to the grade point system. But now, being a junior going on senior in autumn, I eased into it. I understood school. I recognised it's purpose, the teacher's ambitions, all the things I had to cross off to get through it and all the things that are simply appreciated but not necessary. I stopped attending with the mindset that I have to learn the material, but with the prospect that I wanted to.

    I learned how to be flexible with the schedule and the studying without rebelling— or at least, without rebelling and getting caught.

Take this, for example. Smoking was prohibited on school grounds, which is why I went straight to Aglionby's parking lot officially off my school's grounds. Technically, the two prep schools have the same owner, it was simply segregated. But they were both separate grounds, although back-to-back, they didn't so much as share parking lots. Semantics.

    Most girls I know would come here often to seek out the Aglionby boys. I'm not judging, that's how I met Kavinsky. I never quite met another Aglionby boy on the parking lot after that, since I'd go when they had an on-campus break, not on their dismissal. All the other ones, I met through Kavinsky's rage parties.

    "How was the test?" Penelope Rex walked up to me, grabbing the cigarette pack that hung loosely on my pockets. Judging by the way she desperately lit the cigarette, I assumed she didn't do so well.

    "It was fine." I said, huffing out the smoke.

    "It was horrible."

    "Nonne discit?" I asked in latin, which roughly translated into; did you study? She looked at me, puzzled. "I'm guessing that's a no. P, your last name is literally latin."

"You have got to stop doing that."

I didn't ask her to elaborate. "I'm not doing anything."

    She rolled her eyes at me. "You know, I hated you when I first met you. I loathed how you were effortlessly perfect at everything you did." She was talking shit about me right in front of me, and I kind of liked her more because of it. "I decided to befriend you because I figured you'd open up to me, and I'd see your flaws. See how you make everything look so... easy." 

    "Not because of my bubbly, open energy?" I asked sarcastically.

    "Not because I wanted to use it against you, just because I could feel better about myself." She admitted, and I smiled at the confession. "And now I find out that you don't make everything look like it comes easy to you, it just does come easy to you."

    I scoffed. "Oh, shut the fuck up."

    "I'm serious!" She groaned. "Last week, you told me you've never drawn before in your life. Then, two days later, I get sent a very expensive looking painting of a forest. It looked so good that I gave it to my mom because I thought she brought it off some auction, or something. Then, or course, I find out it was sent by you and you painted it."

     That was when the buzzing noise was keeping me awake. I believe I painted twenty other duplicate copies, and sent them all to random friends. The first one I sent it to was, of course, Blue; but because I didn't know her address, it delivered to Nino's. I think they still have it up, although it contradicted their hip theme entirely.