Under the Microscope

Chapter 7

Kimberly POV

"Psst", Kimberly heard a whispering voice from the bed above hers, "Kim!"

It was Gail. The two of them shared a triple-decker bunk bed in a room which housed three others in each corner all contained with girls from around the world. Kimberly was on the bottom mattress in her corner and Gail was in the middle.

"What?" Kimberly whispered back, "I almost managed to fall asleep."

"No you weren't," said Gail, "now lets get out of here, we need to talk."

"Fine." conceded Kimberly.

Gail was right. Ever since they'd come to Meadowlark a week and a half prior, it had been hard for them to get a decent nights rest. Ever since they shared in the trauma of Zach's tragedy, back in the St. Peter hospital waiting room where the Monroe's were taken, Kimberly and Gail had become the best of friends.

"So have you figured out how to put the breaks on Amber?" asked Gail once they were outside on the campus lawn in the middle of the night.

The Meadowlark campus was built like a private college campus, with a separate building for every one of the hundreds of different departments of the school. Separate boys and girls dormitories on opposite ends of the campus. Fields and courts for the many sports programs Meadowlark had to offer. The buildings were built like castles of the middle ages, especially the gigantic and towering front office, which was now under construction, so the administrative and executive personnel worked out of very state of the art trailers.

"Not yet." said Kimberly, "I don't know how she's become Headmistress Carole's puppet so fast, but I'm telling you, that bitch is going down."

Amber Tonic was a classmate of Gail and Kimberly's and was the biggest suck up in the history of suck ups. She's actually one of the few black students from the States at Meadowlark, but the only thing black about her was her skin. Otherwise, she reeked of stuck up, Beverly Hills WASP through and through. Also, Amber was the chief rival with Kimberly in gymnastics. And every time Kimberly was about to achieve success in her sport, Amber came along and tried to sabotage everything and Kimberly couldn't do anything about it because she's had the nasty girls headmistress wrapped around her finger.

And these factors were compounded by the fact that the school's extremely rigorous curriculum put a gigantic amount of pressure on all the students to strive for perfection in academics and extra curricular activities. This and Zach were the reasons Gail and Kimberly had trouble falling asleep at night.

"So what about you, Gail?" asked Kimberly, "Ho w are thing going with Sebastian?"

"He's so great!" said Gail, jumping gleefully, "He's romantic, charming and so down to earth. He truly lives up to the reputation about guys from France." Sebastian was one of the four students from the guys division, other than Jonathan, that Kimberly's gotten to know. Sebastian was French, of course, and then the Italian, Magnus, native Newfie, Darius and Johnathan's new best friend, Cornelius from the U.K. Apparently, there's a family connection with Gail and Johnathan's father. Gail had taken a liking to Sebastian almost immediately. "He's never going to replace Zach Monroe but he sure makes a girl's heart melt."

This was one of the things that annoyed Kimberly about Gail. She may not realize it, but Kimberly felt like Gail was throwing the fact that she's Zach's ex right in Kimberly's face. Not only that, they both made a pact on the first day they were in Newfoundland, that they wouldn't romantically pursue Zach. This was after Gail revealed to still have strong feeling's for Zach after they kissed the night before his parents were murdered and Kimberly's feelings were already apparent.