Goldilocks and the British Accent

09 | Sheep in Wolf's Clothing.

Goldilocks🚺

My hands reach out to the handle of the door and for the seventh time in the span of five minutes, they drop back to my sides.

I sigh. If only I had remembered that she would be here. She being the second person I had literally crossed paths with on my first day at this cursed school. She being Kirrily.

Surprisingly, I haven't thought much about her since our unfortunate meeting. I just summed her up to be the typical queen bee with a bitchy attitude and a flock of followers that everyone in the school revered. Yes, (much to my dismay) even a nerd school has it's own cliches.

I raise my hand in another attempt to open the door. For five minutes, I've been standing in this very spot, staring at the swirly patterns of this wooden door and trying to muster enough courage to turn a simple handle. I can hear the muffled voices on the other side of the door. I can tell that they have started the class.

But before I can conquer my fear and turn the handle, the door opens on it's own. Immediately, I am greeted with the startled face of Mrs Carren as she stares at me and my raised hand.

"Sophia, what took you so long?" she says as she steps back. "I was just going to look for you. Come in."

I mutter a quick 'thank you' and walk past her into the class. I keep my head low as I weave through empty chairs and desks and when I finally look up to the front of the class, I notice two pairs of eyes focused on me.

One is filled with surprise and a little amusement, the other is filled with scorn and disdain with a mass of red hair framing it.

"What's she doing here?" Kirrily asks, not bothering to hide the contempt in her voice.

She sits with her legs crossed and one arm slung over the back of the chair. Her denim jacket clings tightly to her torso and her face is caked in heavy makeup.

Now, any nonobservant person would think she was simply a lover of fashion and glamour, but the amount of makeup on her face is so ridiculous, it's almost suspicious. I can tell that the concealer on her face hides more than just blemishes and when I look right beneath her eyes, I see them.

Bags.

Big round puffy bags, barely visible but there all the same. Of course, the bags can mean that she reads a lot. They can mean that she reads so much that she barely sleeps and her eyes grow bags from being open for too long. But looking at the proud and snobbish expression on her face, Kirrily doesn't strike me as a reader. With her gifted brain and massive IQ, she probably tells herself she's too smart to read.

The bags can mean something else however. They can mean that she cries.

She cries so much that the bags etch themselves permanently beneath her eyes.

"She'll be joining us from now on," Mrs Carren explains as she makes her way to the front of the class. "And you will be nice to her. I'm talking particularly to you, Kirrily."

She raises her hands in mock surrender. "Fine, I'll behave...but it's so funny, I thought... I thought she was dead," she chuckles, the sound magnified by the emptiness of the room. As I study her further, I realize that her bitchiness isn't a facade. Indeed, she may be a troubled girl hiding whatever problems behind the rotten attitude but the rotten attitude itself is as true as the gold hair on my head.

"I'm sorry but really, I thought you had burnt, you know...in the fire at Theodore's party."

Perhaps, that's why it's so easy for her to hide her troubles. She doesn't need to fake it. She just needs to act like the true bitch she is.