PRIDE & PRINCESSES: A Pride and Prejudice (type) of teen story (Sunrise High #1)

PRIDE & PRINCESSES chapter two (Best Friends and Sisters)

Chapter 2

Best Friends and Sisters

     When we arrived at school the next morning, Mark and Jet were nowhere to be seen. The boys were hanging out in packs.  The girls had already formed their own little cliques: the usual stuff - sporty, indie, nerdy, skeezie, emo-wearing black. Study an ancient DVD of an eighties teen film and you’ll get the idea. The Sunrise High general studies stream was a fusion of select public school purgatory. Only the fittest would survive.

    Mouche and I had first walked the halls of Sunrise in sophomore year. We were transfer students and dance majors from the academy we attended in Bel Air: The Los Angeles High School for Young Ladies. Back then, we wore uniforms that made us look like little nuns. Public school was a big contrast. Huge. We barely had a dress code but were well acquainted with the Princesses when they appeared in the hall: a mirage, as if like magic.

     “Magic? They are clearly bad girls in disguise,” Mouche stated.

     “Just bad, bad, bad,” I reiterated. “I think boys like bad girls though, don’t you?”

     “Probably,” Mouche conceded. “But who knows what the boys in this place are looking for?” Mouche said as we observed a Harry Potter obsessive adjusting his fake glasses and etching a lightning scar on his forehead with charcoal in preparation for an acting class. Mouche and I had lain low as transfer students and couldn’t believe how unlucky we were when Teegan, Tory, Brooke and Freya were expelled soon after we were politely shown the door at the Los Angeles High School for Young Ladies. Oh, did I say ladies? It’s not the most appropriate word.  The Princesses were fairly considered to be the most evil teenage girls Sunrise had ever produced; two sets of non-identical twins with plans to take over their new school, safe in the belief that since their fathers owned half of Sunrise, the school was theirs for the taking.

     “This place is wild,” Mouche said as we rounded the corner that led to a row of lockers.

     “At least it’s cheap,” Brooke chimed in with mock consolation.

     “I can’t believe the Princesses have ended up at the same school as us....I heard they were expelled from HSYL....big surprise...”

      Then Teegan morphed into our world, like dry ice, her red hair as shiny as her lip gloss.

     “It’s less shameful than not being able to afford the fees,” Teegan sniggered.

     “Oops,” Mouche said, placing her newly painted fingernails across her mouth as if she  wasn’t sorry she ’d  been overheard. “I’d forgotten her extreme sensitivity during lunar eclipses.”

     Peter Williamson, meandering behind us, laughed out loud. He considered Teegan a hormonal witch on a good day.   

     I ignored the Princesses and began searching my locker for the greatest scene study text ever written, An Actors Guide to Method Acting.

    Then, out of the dank and dull drudgery of morning classes, the boys from the airport appeared.

     They looked stunning.

     Mark had his sunglasses in hand, his dark hair freshly washed d and he smelled like Boycandy aftershave. Endearingly, he also looked lost as he tried to establish class locations. When he paused near my locker, looked up flustered, then looked back down again, I was totally lost for words. Mark managed to find six.

     “Hello,” he said hesitantly, looking at Mouche. “I’m looking for room...three...”

      He was at least a foot taller than me (so was Jet) and I thought I had more right to be shy since they were total man models in disguise. I thought Mark was hotter, though, simply because I had been reading Austen and decided I liked dark haired men. But really, both of the boys were super hot.