chapter five

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a/n 'PR' is a collective term which refers to the head girl, head boy, deputy head girl and deputy head girl of the school

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a/n 'PR' is a collective term which refers to the head girl, head boy, deputy head girl and deputy head girl of the school

This morning I was pretty convinced that I would be the first person to arrive at the PR meeting, in fact, I'd done more than enough to ensure that this would happen: I'd ironed and laid out my suit the night before, lint-rolled my blazer, woken up fifteen minutes earlier than usual and taken the 7:25 bus so I would arrive a good twenty minutes before the meeting was due to begin. So when I walk into the Richardson Room and find Rani Patel appearing perfectly poised on a chair next to the velvet upholstered dining chair intended for the headmaster, I'm more than mildly irritated.

She glances up as I walk in and sit on the chair opposite hers, lips curling into a tight-lipped smile. "Look who finally decided to show up," she says flipping her long, wavy black hair to the side. "When I got here, I seriously expected you to be here already, I mean, you're supposed to be like," she uses her fingers as quotation marks, "'the world's most organised person' aren't you?"

Rani has hated my guts since the day I set foot onto the school and I've never really understood why. She constantly goes out of her way to prove to the world that she's better than me like it's a mission that she's set herself. And it doesn't make much sense at all, because it's so blatantly obvious that she is, in fact, exactly that: she looks like Princess Jasmine and I look like Candy Chiu from Gravity Falls (which is definitely an insult to Candy), she's the captain of the netball team and in case you haven't deduced this, I'm less athletic than a sack of potatoes. The only marginal edge I have over her is academia, and even so it's not like I'm miles ahead. It wasn't really a surprise to anyone that Rani was picked to be Head Girl over me; she's a more well-rounded individual so on-paper she was the stronger candidate out of the two of us. But for Rani, it was like she'd won the lottery, or actually, won at life. She hasn't stopped gloating about it since the roles were announced at the end of Year 12.

"But like, I'm Head Girl so I've got to set the bar high and all."

I imagine grabbing hold of her thick hair and using it to hurl her around the room like a cowboy's lasso only to launch her straight out of the arched window, Miss Trunch-bull style. At least that way I won't have to see her smug smile anymore. Just as I open my mouth to retort, Fraser Harris and Peter Lee, the head boy and deputy head boy respectively, stroll into the room.

"Are we late?" Fraser tilts his head as he glances at his watch.

"No, you're early. We're just super early," I quickly respond, beating Rani to it.

"R-right, I see." Fraser hesitates as he decides where to sit. After a few seconds of contemplation, he takes a seat next to Rani. He laces his hands together and places them on the table, eyes fixated on them like they're the most fascinating things in the world.

Peter pulls out the chair next to mine and gives me a small smile. He takes out his laptop from his side bag and starts typing away. Meanwhile, Rani has pulled out a compact mirror and is applying what appears to be her fifteenth coat of lipgloss. No one says anything for a solid two minutes. I decide to cut through the stifling silence. "So," I clear my throat, "how was everyone's summer?"

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