Page 204 of Tis the Season to be Bullied

Guess whoever set the schedule must have thought it would be easier to tackle these classes when the brain’s still fresh.

My first class is on the third floor, but first I make a stop at the restroom in a pathetic attempt to get a fucking grip.

As soon as I step inside, my legs lock in astonishment.

Holycrap.

Despite Lavish Prep looking like a prison, everything I’ve seen up to this point has been sheer luxury. Padded school seats, perfectly varnished wooden desks with electrical outlets for laptops or cellphones. I overheard one of my classmates asking for the school’s wi-fi password.

The bathrooms? They look like something out of a five-star hotel. Orchids in planters decorate end tables. The fixtures are all black marble and gold, as if to match the school uniform. Spotlights line the outside of the vanity mirrors, as if to fool the girls standing there that they are in fact supermodels, not kids.

The face above those Hollywood starlet mirrors must belong to someone else though, because I’ve never looked this wretched in my life.

I splash water on my face, and blot it dry with a fluffy hand towel that smells of fabric softener. But even then, the face in the mirror still looks like shit.

So I slap it.

Hard.

The world goes white. I rock on my heels as I wait for my eyes to start focusing again. There’s a big red handprint on my cheek, and as I wait for it to fade, I summon up every shred of dignity I still have and force my spine straight.

Fuck you, Lavish Prep.

Fuckyou, Prince Briar.

I survived the death of my mother.

This?

This is a fucking cakewalk.

Bring it on, bitch.

Chapter Seven

Indi

My Computer Science class goes off without a hitch. Lavish is on the same timetable as my old school, so I’m only a week behind. But even so, after the teacher introduces me to the class, I barely register that I’m learning concepts a week into the future.

Igetcomputers. I understand those basic programs everyone else swears at on a daily basis. Back before everything went to shit, I was the resident IT Girl on the block. Fellow students—even their damn parents—would send me sheepish text messages at all hours of the day asking for help with their issues.

Emails.

Internet browsers.

Blue screens.

I had no training beyond the basics that my school’s computer programming classes gave, but it would never take me longer than a few minutes to figure out what the issue was.

Usually, it was the user.

At first, I was all nice about it. I’d suggest they tried things differently. Perhaps looked up new shit in Google before attempting anything.

But after a few years of being everyone’s favorite IT Girl, that shit got me real jaded.

I went from being ‘Indi the Genius’ to ‘That girl that fixes computers.’

The texts for me to help put a stop to email spam stopped. I was no longer the go-to person for clearing suspicious browser histories.

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