Pray for the Preacher's Daughter

Chapter 3

Monday 27th January 2014

For a town so tiny, the school sure was loud. Kids were throwing streamers, and balls and books in some cases across heads. They jostled in the cramped halls, spilled out into the quad, screaming at each other, asking how holidays had been. Hey, heard you went away for a week, how was the coast? Did you see that movie, go to that concert? What about the party two weeks ago, how epic was that? Things Bonnie tuned out on.

Then the bell chimed and just like that the halls were deserted. Students slammed their lockers shut and vanished into rooms with practiced haste. Bonnie maintained distance from everyone else, content to go unseen.

The class was quiet, but then she was sure most students would rather not sit through history first thing on a Monday morning. Bonnibel had arrived early to class in the hopes she’d go mostly unnoticed. She really didn’t want to be introduced to the class as ‘that new girl’ and she really didn’t want everyone asking why she’d moved here. Things would be simpler if she just cruised under the high-school-social-hierarchy-of-doom radar this year. And next year.

To that end, she sat silently in the back corner by the window, studiously taking notes, answering questions and paying all the attention she could. Flying under the radar did not mean she wouldn’t get good grades. It just meant she wouldn’t be a recurring source of gossip. Bonnibel knew perfectly well how cruel and destructive gossip could be. No, she’d keep to herself.

And she managed to do that just fine until she found herself in the library for her third class; a spare, in which she was allowed to do whichever subject pleased her. Naturally, on the very first day of the semester, she didn’t have too many subjects with work, so she meandered through the tiny library perusing the books. Somewhere between ancient Greek history and WWII texts, Bonnie bumped into a young man (not a student here no matter which way she squinted at him) and a female student having a particularly venomous whispering row.

He caught her with a startled expression on her face and glared. With a vicious prod into the girl’s shoulder and a hushed string of words Bonnie was positive she didn’t want to know, he stalked off. Now, the girl turned around, bristling, her incredible length of black hair unkempt and unruly resembling the tail of an angry cat. Her eyes were a piercing electric blue as they stabbed into Bonnie’s soul, possibly attempting to flay her or something, maybe just noting her down for entry into the ‘skip the queue’ column of Hell’s finest.

The girl continued to glower, before brushing roughly past Bonnibel and storming off. So much for going unnoticed.

“Wow,” a breathy voice said behind her.

Bonnie turned (she’d been watching the dark-haired girl on her whirlwind path out of the library) and beheld a blonde girl not much older than herself, but at least an inch taller. Her shirt and ruffled skirt made her fondness for rainbows abundantly clear. Her hazel eyes were wide open, the kind of expression one wears to a magic show and has their breath stolen when they discover the assistant perfectly hale after being stabbed with swords.

“Wow, what?” Bonnie asked softly.

“She didn’t kill you,” the girl explained. “Marceline isn’t known for her merciful nature.” The girl now stuck out one hand, her wrist adorned with a bracelet sporting little decorations. Her nails coated in all different colours of paint. “I’m Penelope, by the way,” she went on. “Penelope Phillips. But everyone just calls me Pippa.”