"Flick! Wait a second!" Katie called after me.

I could hear her jogging down the hardwood floor behind me, but I ignored her. My bag slapped against my hip and I ran my hand along the bannister as I ran down the stairs into the main entrance. Not really knowing where I was going, but not wanting to be around another person, I pushed open the main door and stepped out into the sunlight. A bitter chill nipped at my fingers in the February air. I jogged down the front steps and rounded the side of the building.

Behind me, I heard the front door swing open and I pressed my back against the stone wall of the school. Katie's footsteps echoed on the stone and came to a stop on the grass, I could hear her breathing. I pressed my back a little closer to the wall, hoping she wouldn't see me, but I heard her slip on the grass near me and I knew that my hiding place wasn't all that secret.

"There you are. If you didn't want to be found, you should have kept going. There are some hedges you could have jumped into," she said.

"Why did you follow me?" I asked.

"Because you ran out of there quicker than Jo did when she found out we had liver and onions for supper." She smiled slightly. "Look, regardless of whether the assembly today was about you or not, Jo and I defended your accusations because we knew you were right. I saw the bruises myself so if we get into trouble, it'll be on our own head. Not yours."

"I still shouldn't have told her. Victoria was always going to twist the truth to fit her view of things and she has the rest of my year wrapped tightly around her finger that I'm surprised she still has circulation. We should have just left it."

"And what if we had? Next time she takes you up to the roof and tries to push you off? If Mrs Maddox was talking about you, she'll be watching you and Victoria for the foreseeable future which means Victoria won't be able to do anything. She'll be at risk of being discovered."

Katie put it so simply, so easily and yet I didn't think it would ever be that easy. Victoria didn't seem to care if she was being watched, something she had made abundantly clear when she pushed me into the pool in front of Mrs Leverton. There were no lengths she wouldn't go to to get me kicked out of the school. Whether Mrs Maddox was watching or not, she would never stop.

I dropped my chin onto my chest and looked at the ground, watching how the water droplets on the grass seemed to sparkle in the sunlight and how they moved in a gust of wind. Katie approached me and I could feel her lean against the wall next to me. She didn't say anything, she just stood beside me quietly whistling to herself and kicking her foot across the grass.

A thousand different thoughts zipped through my head at once, none of them making any sense and all seeming more confusing than the last. I tapped my fingers against the wall. Small stones trickled down from the wall and hit the grass, one getting caught under my nail, but I kept drumming them on the wall.

"Stop that," Katie said. She grabbed my wrist and pressed the palm of my hand lightly against the wall. "What have you got going through that mad little head of yours?"

"About a thousand different historical facts and the word goat," I said.

"Hm, funny. Stop deflecting, you do that to avoid telling someone the truth. Come on, out with it."

"Mrs Maddox said that anyone who makes a baseless accusation of bullying without the means of backing themselves up would be in serious trouble. We accused her without proof. I promised Dad I would stay out of trouble and he will be disappointed in me if Mrs Maddox tells him. I've never had a black mark against my name before."

Katie released my wrist and I felt her move away from the wall to stand in front of me, but I refused to look up. She placed a finger under my chin and lifted my head up. I looked into her eyes, watching the way they seemed to dance in the sunlight and noticing for the first time the small gold flecks. The sun reflected off her skin. There was something almost mesmerising about seeing her in that light.

"Mrs Maddox won't tell your dad about any of this. It barely means anything, and it'll be forgotten about before you know it. Whether she'll admit it or not, but Mrs Maddox needs you at this school. You're the first scholarship winner we've had in ten years and you being here makes this place look better. You'll boost all the examination results. At this moment it's our word against theirs. No side has any evidence of any wrong-doing."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I'm head girl. I've sat in on two expulsion meetings and both of those were for something far worse than making a bullying accusation. One was stealing and the other cheating. No one has ever been bought up, in front of me anyway, for making a false bullying accusation. They have nothing to suggest that we did anything wrong or they did anything wrong."

"Victoria probably faked something," I mumbled.

"She might have, but we don't know that. Telling Mrs Maddox was the right thing to do regardless of how Victoria might spin it. You did the right thing and you shouldn't beat yourself up over it."

I looked down at my hands and flicked the small stone out from under my nail, looking at the small dent it made in my skin. Although I wanted to believe her, to accept that maybe things won't be as bad as I thought they would be, I had my doubts. Mrs Maddox had been clear that any false accusations would lead to some form of punishment and getting out of it unscathed would have been a miracle.

A sharp win darted past us, whipping up the loose strands of hair that hung down the side of my face. Goosebumps formed along my arms and part of me wished I had bought my blazer with me. I looked up at the sky and watched the dark clouds roll in. Katie looked at me and placed a hand on my shoulder, nudging her head back towards the main entrance of the school. Neither of us wanted to get caught in the rain, especially if the previous rainstorms were anything to go by.

After readjusting my bag strap on my shoulder, the two of us walked down the side of the building and through the front door just as small droplets of rain started to fall on the top step. Despite Katie's attempt at being reassuring and help calm the thoughts that were out of control, it hadn't had the desired effect. I itched to start tapping my fingers against something to try and calm them down and resorted to tapping them as lightly as I could on my bag strap; I didn't want Katie to see.

We returned to the common room for the last twenty minutes or so of the lesson. The other fifth years had moved on from talking about the assembly and were all staring intently at the work in front of them. Only Jo noticed our appearance and shuffled over to one side of the sofa so we could sit beside her. Katie muttered a word of thanks and I swung my bag onto my lap and took a seat, resisting the temptation to start drumming my fingers on top of it.

"Mrs Maddox was looking for the three of us earlier, I said I didn't know where you both were," Jo muttered.

"Why?" Katie glanced at me out of the corner of her eye.

"She wants to talk to us. She said to go to her office when the break bell rings."

"Did she say why she wants to talk to us?"

Jo shook her head. "I think we can probably work that one out for ourselves."

"How did she seem?"

"She wasn't angry, or at least she didn't appear that way. Mrs Maddox is one of those 'I'm not angry, I'm disappointed' types which is always worse."

"I'd rather get yelled at then be forced to sit through a stern talking to.

Almost instinctively, I started to tap my fingers on the front of my bag, the light sound breaking the silence. Countless thoughts raced through my mind, none of them coherent but everyone worse than the last. Katie reached across and grabbed my hand, lacing her fingers with mine to stop them from tapping. My stomach fluttered. My mind went black and all the thoughts just disappeared from my mind. For a moment, everything was still.

Jo looked at her and raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

My dad was also the type of person who never got angry. He spoke in a soft voice and just expressed disappointment in either me or Michael. I used to hate it when I got in trouble for getting into a fight at school or for not doing my chores around the house. He would sit me down and tell me just how disappointed he was with me and how he thought I was better than the behaviour I showed. After a while. I stopped getting into trouble. I didn't want to see the way he looked at me when I did something wrong.

The end of lesson bell rang and the three of us exchanged looks. Jo stuffed her work into her bag, Katie kept hold of my hand as we left the common room and moved down the hall to Mrs Maddox's office. My heart beat a little faster in my chest and I didn't know if that was due to nerves or because Katie was holding my hand. It had happened several times since that night in the infirmary and I couldn't figure out why.

Jo took a breath and knocked on Mrs Maddox door.

"Come in!" Mrs Maddox said from inside.

Jo twisted the door handle and we walked in. Mrs Maddox gestured us in front of her desk, but there were no chairs. We stood in front of the desk, Katie still holding my hand behind my back. I watched as Mrs Maddox took her glasses from the desk and put them on the edge of her nose, peering over the top of them as though she didn't need them to see us. It made the whole thing feel a little more intense.

"I don't feel as though I need to tell you why I have asked to see you this morning. My assembly was clear enough regarding the treatment of false bullying accusations by anyone in this school, head girl included. Needless to say, you are not here for a sit-down luncheon and a mug of tea.

"For the past few weeks, I have been corresponding with the girls in both fourth and fifth year to get to the bottom of the accusations you bought forward the evening of the pool incident. The fifth years support your side of events and the fourth years, Miss Havisham's. The fourth years have confessed to threatening an initiation, but not going through with it. Their story is that they woke you up in the middle of the night to scare, but that it went no further.

"As none of the fifth years were in attendance during this event, I am inclined to believe that this is nothing more than a misunderstanding. Mrs Leverton has agreed to keep the pool locked at night on your suggestions, as a precautionary measure. I believe the events in the swimming pool were also a misunderstanding. However, they have made their own accusations against the three of you, specifically, Felicity."

My breath caught and my mind went blank, the entire room seeming to move. Katie's grip kept me steady.

"She hasn't done anything. She's about as threatening as a feather," Katie blurted out. I glared at her.

"Katie, shh," Jo hissed.

"They have put forward a very compelling case. Almost every fourth-year student has backed up an original statement which claims that you have been verbally terrorising Victoria for weeks. Miss Jones even recalled the tail end of a conversation she overheard between Felicity and Miss Havisham whereby you stated that Miss Havisham is nothing without money which does not seem like an overly friendly statement. I know being one of the less fortunate students may be hard on you, Felicity, but that does not give you the right to say such things to your fellow students.

"There had also been a far serious accusation. One of physical violence. Miss Havisham showed me a set of bruises on her arm, bruises made by someone gripping her arm. Several students in your year stated that you made them."

Mrs Maddox looked at me, still peering over the top of her glasses, but I refused to look at her. Instead, I focused my attention on a small knot in the wood of her desk. It was one of the few spaces that weren't hidden by paper of the typewriter that took up most of the desk. Everything about the school had seemed perfect. From the laying of the brick to the paint and the wood that made up the flooring. This was the first piece of imperfection I had seen.

Katie gripped my hand a little tighter after Mrs Maddox looked at me. Whatever thoughts may have been circling through my head couldn't break through the block that came with her tough. I was grateful for it. It allowed for a little breathing room and a chance to catch my breath and deal with what was in front of me without resorting to the dark recesses of my mind. I could think clearly.

"Do you have anything to say in your own defence?"

I cleared my throat, my voice sounding shaky when I spoke. "Other than I didn't do it? No."

"That's all you have to say?"

"Would you believe me if I said anything else? Yes, I said a few choice things to her the other week, but that was after she pushed me in the pool trying to get rid of me. I didn't touch her."

My heart hammered away in my chest, but it wasn't because of Katie. I could feel anger boiling up inside of me and I struggled to keep it back.

"As this is a first-time offence, you will not be pulled up for expulsion. Consider this a warning, Felicity. One more infraction and you will be at risk of expulsion. Katie, Josephine, I expect better of you both in the future."

"Yes, Mrs Maddox," they muttered.

"Good. You are dismissed."

~~~

First Published - July 7th, 2020