My Darling Arrow (St. Mary’s Rebels #1) - Saffron A. Kent Page 0,1

all slumped over the hard, wooden desks, with our chins in our hands.

We all have tight braids either flowing down our backs or draped over our shoulders, tied at the end with a mustard-colored ribbon. We all wear a starched white blouse and a mustard-yellow skirt that touches the tops of our knees. Except I have a black chunky sweater on because I’m a sunshine girl and the inside of St. Mary’s feels like winter.

We pair our uniforms with knee-length white socks and polished black Mary Janes.

Our notebooks are lying open in front of us and our butts are planted in chairs as hard and wooden as the desks.

From time to time, we squirm and adjust ourselves in our seats because I’m guessing the wood is digging into our asses.

At least, it’s digging into mine.

So it should be really hard to fall asleep, right? Or daydream.

But I’m doing both until I hear a sound.

Psst…

It’s coming from my right. Slowly I turn to find my neighbor, over in the adjacent row, trying to get my attention.

It’s a girl I’ve seen before.

Around campus, in the cafeteria and in the dorm building where every student who goes to St. Mary’s stays, but I’ve never talked to her.

Because no one talks to me here.

I’ve actually tried very hard to get them to talk to me or even smile at me or just wave their hand at me by waving mine but I haven’t been successful. I can’t even get my roommate, Elanor, to say hi to me.

So I don’t know what this girl, my neighbor with blonde hair, wants from me. But as soon as our eyes meet, she motions her head toward something.

Biting my lip, I look at what she’s pointing at.

It’s a piece of paper.

It’s sitting at the edge of my desk, folded over twice to make a little square.

For a second, I can’t comprehend what a piece of paper is doing on my desk. Confused, I look up from it and focus back on the girl. She widens her eyes at me and gestures at it with her chin again.

What the…

Oh.

Oh!

I finally get it. It’s a note.

She’s passing me a note and she wants me to open it.

Got it.

Immediately, I go to grab it but stop, my hand suspended in midair. I look up and see that the teacher, Mrs. Miller, is busy solving a weird-looking equation on the board. So I’m safe there.

But why is this girl writing me a note?

Doesn’t she know that I’m the most hated girl at St. Mary’s right now?

I’m the principal’s ward.

Yeah, the principal of St. Mary’s School for Troubled Teenagers, Leah Carlisle, is my guardian. She’s been my guardian for eight years now, ever since I was ten.

And somehow because of that I’m enemy number one around campus.

So far in the week that I’ve been here, people have glared at me, tried to trip me in the cafeteria, accidentally-on-purpose bumped into me in the dorm hallways and locked me in the bathroom.

From what I can gather, the students think I’m a spy, and if they talk to me and reveal their secrets, I might go to Leah and rat them out. And teachers think that since I’m her ward, I’ll be given special treatment.

So it’s natural for me to debate whether or not I should open the note.

But then I hear my neighbor’s whispered words. “Open it.”

I swivel my gaze at her and she says those words again, or rather mouths them, open it, before giving me a big smile.

A big and brilliant smile.

It’s the smile that does it.

Someone is smiling at me.

A girl at St. Mary’s – my new reform/therapeutic school – is smiling at me and I didn’t even have to do anything to get that smile.

So fuck it.

My hand resumes its journey and practically snatches the note off the desk. I bring it down to my lap and open it.

It’s boring, huh? I get it. Miller is a snooze-fest. But don’t let her catch you falling asleep. She loves to take away student privileges.

Ah, the infamous privileges.

This whole reform/therapeutic school system runs on a little thing called student privileges, which you earn by following the rules.

So here’s the whole concept: when we’re sent to St. Mary’s, they take away everything that we’ve so far taken for granted in our old, corrupt and rebellious lives.

First of all, there is no personal technology allowed. Meaning no cell phones or laptops or iPads or whatever. Everything that we use has to be school-issued