After one of the most embarrassing experiences of her life, Viola Hawkins is left feeling hopeless and demoralised. So when she's told that she's able to work as an undercover agent in a boarding school, she's given a new chance to change her life...
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SOMETIMES, LIFE likes to play games with you. Sometimes it enjoys the teasing, the nipping and the poking. Life thrives by antagonising people in ways even the best of villains can never achieve. A manipulator. A true mastermind.
Of course, certain people – a lucky, select few – get by scathe free, cruising along blissfully. Those people are the talented, the rich, the pretty and the privileged.
The envied.
I, for one, have never been a part of those categories. So naturally, I fall under the line of 'unfortunate'. Perhaps life sees me as an easy target, I don't know. All I can say is that nothing ever seems to go my way. And there's nothing I can do about it.
"Oh come on, it can't have been that bad." Squeezing through the congested corridor, my best friend Kate leads the way toward the lunch hall, her blonde, glossy hair bouncing gloriously with each step she takes.
Behind her, I tuck a sweaty strand of mine behind one ear and glare. "Believe me, it was."
I'm still trying not to let the memories of earlier replay in my head. The stupidity, the fainting, the oh-so-elegant attempt at standing up, only to stumble back down again.
I shudder.
"So what, you fainted?" She grabs an arm of mine to stop me from ploughing into another student. "Everyone faints. It's common."
Sure, fainting is common. That still doesn't excuse the fact that I undoubtedly sabotaged my one chance at talking to Josh Hall by walking headfirst into his locker, and dramatically collapsing onto the floor before his very eyes.
"No, no, you don't understand. He was still there when I tried to get up and fell on my ass again. I'm mortified."
Pretty sure that one is gonna bruise like hell.
We find our unclaimed table and head over to it, Kate plopping down next to me with pursed lips. She scans the room around us with her big, green eyes, unaware of those that stare back. "Relax. You're probably overthinking it. It was just Josh."
Just Josh. She phrases it as if I haven't been obsessively crushing on him for the last painful eight years of my sad life. As if I haven't told her countlessly of when Josh so much as even looks at me. In fact, I can't even remember a time before I liked Josh.
