Queen of Spades (House of Cards Series 1) [Student/Teacher Relationship]

Strength

After the little locker incident failed, things seemed to quiet down on the 'let's harass Alice' bandwagon. Alice still heard people whispering about her all freaking class, or whenever she was out in the hallways, but since no one knew where her new locker was yet, there'd been no stationary target to focus on.

Wednesday and Thursday followed the same routine as Alice had established earlier, and she was just patiently ignoring the attacks in dance class that Lexi seemed to perpetrate. She was constantly shoved and tripped, knocked into, jostled and everything on her desk or in her hands was fair game to being knocked to the floor. As mad as she got during school hours, Alice found that it fuelled her drive to dance better than ever, and made the sweet moments with Monster and Salali all the more effective at calming her down. On Thursday she'd not closed his cage right and he got out but the only thing he did was follow her around like, well, a puppy. She knew she couldn't be angry wit him aroundm it would break the fragile trust he was developing, so everytime she was about to go into the shop, she took a deep breath in and shook her body, as if she could discard the anger like drops of water.

Alice had survived Friday through to lunch, and was looking forward to the weekend. She had a gig tomorrow night as DJ Mask, and had plans with Salali to go shopping for trip clothes and a new gig outfit tonight. All week Malcolm hadn't been in the shop, too busy trying to patch things with Shawna to be able to volunteer with the animals, and Salali had stuck him with the shop on his own so she could take Alice out. She even had a movie date planned with her friends for Sunday afternoon, and it made her so happy to realize that she actually had real friends. Even as bad as her week had been, it was still leaps and bounds better than any week she'd spent with the foster family.

"So did you guys want to go check out DJ Mask's show Saturday?" Theresa asked the others and Alice found her attention dragged back to the moment. She bit back a laugh, realizing that her friends were also her fans. When she got a chance to tell them the truth, they'd crack right up about it.

"Oh yeah he's the coolest!" Butch agreed.

"She's the coolest you mean." Sammy refuted.

"He." Butch countered.

"She." Sammy retorted. "Even with the masks and elaborate costumes, you can tell DJ Mask is a chick."

"No way! If DJ Mask was a chick, wouldn't she use sex to sell? I mean come on, unless she's double bag ugly, why would she cover up?" Theresa asked. Because I got enough of that in my day job, Alice thought ruefully.

"You want to go?" Kim asked Alice.

"I'm working, sorry." Alice deflected, trying to stifle her laughter. It must look a little weird, the wide grin on her face, but her friends didn't comment on it.

The others continued to argue over whether or not Alice's alter ego was female or male and she left the lunch room laughing her head off inside. With a lighter step than usual she changed for dance class and made her way inside. Today was the last day of judgement, when the teacher would finally tell them the piece they'd be working on for the Gala. The other girls were too nervous trying to be perfect to bother Alice and even Lexi laid off her usual attitude in an attempt to showcase her talent. Alice noted that even if she didn't say anything, Lexi had begun to push herself harder when she danced, as if she'd taken Ace's criticism of her talent to heart.

And then it was Alice's turn to solo dance. As the last one to go, she had the least amount of time to dance. She took the center stage and go into start pose for the choreography. Too late she realized that Lexi was over by the music player, and instead of the set music everyone else danced too, the strains of Rob Dougan's Clubbed to Death started. The song Alice had used to dance to while she stripped. Seems like someone still held a vendetta against her. The teacher frowned at the music but Alice decided she was sick of playing nice. So she started to dance. It was the choreography the teacher had drilled into her head, but Alice had to modify it on the spot to fit the pacing of this song. Thankfully she knew it inside out and backwards, so she could mentally map out the choreography and stretch out one move here to sequence to this roundele there and make it fit to the beat. The bell to end class rang but she danced on as if it hadn't. And when the song continued on past the steps of choreography, Alice improvised for all she was worth. None of the other dancers had moved at the end of class either, even Lexi and the teacher stared at her in shock as she finished dancing just when the music ended. The anger that had driven her all week twitched and coiled just under the surface and Alice didn't hide it as she made eye contact with Lexi. But unlike the other woman, Ace refused to let it own her, instead she found a way to use it.