New Strides || Canterwood Crest || Book 19

10 ↬ twenty. four. hours.

The week breezed by surprisingly fast.

Suspiciously fast.

By Friday, our excitement had disappeared, only to be replaced with dread. That's right. Dread.

Dread, because there were less than twenty-four hours until we would be welcoming eight new students to Canterwood. Eight new students that we knew absolutely nothing about!

"I told you we should have looked them up!" I wailed to Brit from my spinning desk chair. "Then at least we would have some idea of what's coming!"

"Well, it's too late now," Brit replied, but I could tell she wished we'd gone through with it too.

I looked at the clock - just a few minutes after seven in the evening. "Let's go see what Heather and Alison are up to," I suggested. "Maybe take our mind off all of this?"

"Sure," Brit replied. "Let me grab a sweater."

We set off into the halls of Orchard toward Heather and Allison's room. I lightly knocked on the door and almost immediately, a voice called us in. I twisted the unlocked knob, opening the door to their ever-stunning suite - I still couldn't get over how awesome it was.

Heather was draped across the suite's plush sofa, scrolling through her phone. "Did you two come here so I can tell you to stop worrying about tomorrow?"

I glanced at Brit, who chewed on her lip. "Maybe."

"Stop. Worrying. About. Tomorrow." Heather swung her legs off the sofa to make space for Brit and I. "Both of you. Come sit."

"Where's Alison?" Brit asked as we situated ourselves next to Heather.

"With one of her friends from art class. They're finishing a project."

Heather turned off her phone and placed it on the very fancy looking white coffee table.

"So, are we excited to play welcoming committee tomorrow morning?" The smile that spread across Heather's face was very similar to the kind she gave my back in the good old days of Heather-versus-Sasha chaos. Shudder.

"I thought you told us to stop worrying about tomorrow," I rolled my eyes.

"Oh, I'm not worrying," Heather assured me. "And neither are you two. So are you excited?"

If she was referring to our instructions from Mr. Conner's most recent email, and I quote, "report to the main parking lot at 9:00AM sharp" tomorrow morning to "greet our new students and help them settle in", then no.

"Well, I'm not too thrilled about not getting to sleep in..."

"Honestly, same," Brit admitted.

"Agreed," Heather added. "Sounds like Mr. Conner wants us to give these kids a whole grand tour!" She waved her arms dramatically.

"Maybe we can arrange some sort of an, I don't know, convenient accident that involves getting them permanently lost..."

"Sasha!" Brit gasped in response to my genius idea, but neither her nor Heather could contain the eruption of laughter.

"I mean, it's not a bad idea-"

"Oh, Silver," Heather smiled, for real this time. "You have no idea how happy I am to see that there is something going on in that brain of yours."

I stuck out my tongue at her. "Well, I'm soooo glad to see that you finally appreciate my intellect."

"You know what? This calls for a toast." Heather stood up and walked to the minibar then returned to the sofa with three champagne flutes and a bottle of sparkling cider in hand. We each poured ourselves some cider and clinked our flutes together.

"To Sasha's intellect," Heather chirped.

"To new beginnings," Brit added.

I paused for a second. Still totally freaked out about the whole situation. Still totally unsure of what would happen tomorrow. Still totally wishing everything could just, I don't know, be normal. But Heather had a point. Would the exchange students raise the already sky-high level of competition here at canterwood? For sure. But this was our school, our home. We had the upper hand over any newbies, one hundred percent.

And taking that to heart, I said my part of the toast.

"To us. The everlasting queens of Canterwood."