c h a p t e r 3
g a m e  o f  h o u s e s
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NATASHA'S POV

“St. Mary was one of the most prestigious Catholic schools where…blah blah blah...”

Pause.

Rewind.

Catholic school? I’d been enrolled in a Catholic school? Where there were nuns doing nunnery?

Hey, I got no intention of praying or converting. I would literally put myself on the cross before giving up drooling over Channing Tatum's abs for prayer hours.

They were like solid, pure muscle bricks. Channing Tatum was like the finest architectural building—he was the Burj Khalifa of Dubai, The Empire State of New York, and the Eiffel Tower of Paris...

"Miss Glazer, are you with me?" An old lady wearing pencil skirt with a scarf that looked older than her face drew me back from my internal ramblings.

I nodded my head absentmindedly as my eyes lingered on the poster hung up on the bulletin board with the word 'Catholic' written on it in italics.

The school looked like anything but a school; it was more of a castle that had been renovated to look like a school. It was definitely beyond my expectations.

Four old gray-stoned buildings linked into one another through an array of hallways and pathways. The division only served the purpose of creating different spaces for an art theater, housing quarters, a dining area, and a prep area. The biggest building out of the four, which was also the main part of the castle, was used for classrooms.

All of which was excitedly explained to me by the old woman as she quickly ushered me towards an empty office.

The spacious wood-themed office had one-third of its wall covered with books, while the other section was adorned with photographs and a rack full of trophies. An old statue stood by the far end of the right corner, with oddly an empty photo frame placed near it. Why it was there, I had no idea.

As minutes ticked by, I got bored and let my eyes swoop over to check the clock on the wall. I screamed internally when I realized I had been waiting in this office for more than five minutes.

What was taking this principal so long? Was she curing world famine?

Unable to take the silence any longer, I started fidgeting with the stuff lying around on the table. Finally, after every piece of furniture had grown gray hairs, a sophisticated and well-dressed mid-30-ish lady with delicate features walked through the door. She took the seat in front of me.

After making me wait around for hours she simply chose to give me a smile. No apology—just a smile. Like that would bring back 50 long years of my life that I’d spent here waiting for her to get her ass over to show me an f-ing smile.

I still looked back into her green eyes and smiled back, but my intentions behind the smile was equivalent to that of Daenerys Targaryen's right before she said “Dracarys.”

Why bother beating around the bush? I didn't want to be here. I saw no point in acting humble. "You know, for someone who runs a school that boasts about being disciplined, you really need to learn to be punctual," I sassed with a straight face, giving her a third-degree burn, which was clearly evident when her smile dropped.

I got up and walked out the door, not bothering to close it behind me, or waiting on her to say something. Then I headed back to the old lady that escorted me here.

She might be the principal of this school, but she was not and never will be  the boss of me.

“Could you point out my room?” I asked the old lady, and all she did was call up yet another person. My eyes almost rolled to the back of my head. This place was turning out to be less like a school and more like a pain in my ass.

A brunette girl with big blue eyes then walked up to me. She had on what appeared to be the school uniform, with its mixed colors of dark, gray, maroon and white.

"Hi. I am Ester, the school's momentary prefect. I’ll be taking you through the school tour and helping you out with any other requirements. And you are…" she drawled off, waiting for me to introduce myself.

"Right. I’m Natasha but I prefer N, and by ‘prefer’ I mean you will only call me N. Now, do you also have some flags for me to wave as I take this grand tour, or can we just cut to the part where you take me to my room?" I shook her hand briefly, then raised my brow while waiting on her to guide the way.

"You’re funny. I like you, N." The brunette girl chuckled.

"Yeah; I like me, too. So what’s it going to be?" I stressed the question with a hand propped on my hip.

"Well, in order to show you your abode, you first need to get sorted into a house," she explained, gesturing with her hand for me to follow her.

After few too many turns, we arrived at yet another office-looking room. This one seemed twice as big as the principal's and had more tables and books carefully placed around.

"This is the staff room. Oh, look. You’re lucky Mr. George is here. I thought you would have to wait for him," the girl yapped as she knocked on the door to get his attention.

The tall guy in the room looked quite fit for his age. That was guessing he was in his late 40s. He started looking for something in the pile of papers and folders lying on the desk. Meanwhile, yet another old lady came towards me with a measuring tape—no doubt to take measurements for my stupid uniform.

I stopped her, though, and picked up the pen near the page where she was to write down my waist measurement, breast, length, and all. I scribbled down my correct measurements for her.

Having sat through enough dress trials more times than the queen of England, I knew them by heart.

I turned my attention back to Ester, who then gave me an amused look. We both looked towards Mr. George; he was still looking for something on the desk. Learning from the experience with the principal, I knew it would take another while, and so I hopped onto one of the teacher's desk, ignoring Ester's silly complaints.

After another bloody century or something, the guy called Mr. George found the old folder he was looking for. He glanced from Ester to me, and then back again. "This is the second time this week that I’m adding someone into an already full house," he mused as he wrote down my name in what looked to be a register.

"Sir, speaking on behalf of my teammates, House Ruby could really use a new member," Ester reasoned with him, while I played with a paperweight without a care in the world.

"I know that, but she clearly looks like she belongs in House Emerald," he affirmed, closing the folder. Apparently, he dismissed judging more of me by the way Ester quickly pulled me off the desk to drag me out.

"So I’m staying in Emerald House? Yeah; I could get used to that." I beamed.

Now here's another lesson I learned on my very first day at St. Mary’s:

When they say “House Emerald”, they do not mean a house or a room decorated with emeralds. They mean a giant dorm room decorated with deep green-colored furniture and bed sheets…with twenty-five people living in it.

Time to kiss privacy goodbye, N.

I mean, couldn't they be more like Harry Potter and had smaller dorm rooms? With, say, a maximum of three or five people rather than so many? Sharing a room was already such a big deal, but to share it with twenty-five  other girls was damning.

Even prison cells had only two inmates!

Although given the horrific situation I’m currently in, I’d still bear it all with sheer determination and optimism, knowing that any place was still better than home.

I spent rest of the day gathering information from Ester, who turned out be in House Ruby, and the first thing she educated me on was the hierarchy of St. Mary’s.

For now, all I got was that the school had four houses, namely: Ruby, Emerald, Sapphire, and Topaz. Basically the same as HP, if one saw the color representation. But when Ester told me that house Emerald had been the ruling house for over six years now, I kid you not, even though I’d been here less than a day, I still felt proud to be sorted into an already kickass house.

“Ruby house has been in second position for the past two years. We’re always internally competing against Sapphire for second, while Topaz is known as the forever loser house around here, consistently coming up last in the last couple of years,” Ester added, her voice turning animated in some parts.

After the lecture on the houses, Ester moved on to tell me about the other level of hierarchy that ran in this godforsaken school. As it turned out, even all the houses were further divided into three more categories: the boarders, the hostelers, and the day scholars.

The borders were all those that stayed in the boarding area—they were on top of the food chain, followed by hostelers, who stayed in private hostels. Lastly, at the bottom of this three-tiered system were the day scholars, the local kids who called Honey Top their home.

By the time Ester was done ranting, I felt like I had been dumped into some reality drama show and was waiting for cameras to pop up on my face at any given moment.

It all felt silly, but for some reason, it was the sole structure of this school, the pillars on which St. Mary rested, and these people were very serious about them.

Since I was on top of this so-called structures list, I didn't bother arguing it. I did, however, put a full stop on the history lecture for the day, afraid it would blow my mind up. “Hey. Could we save the rest for later?” I then asked Ester.

After dinner, my luggage finally arrived from the hotel that I had stayed in last night. I couldn't bring it along with me as it wouldn't fit in the cab. Now, I simply watched all girls eye my luggage with utter shock and amusement stuck on their faces.

So what  if I packed up five giant trunks? They didn't give me a memo on how much I could or could not bring.

Once the luggage was transferred in my dorm, our house warden Sister Meredith with her permanent sour face and the giant mole below her chin, strolled into the room and immediately silenced the chatter. 

She made her way towards my trunks with the intention of opening them. To prevent that from happening, I gave a battle cry and jumped on her, tackling her down and away from my stuff. The entire room broke down into the noise of shock and laughter.

Sister Meredith looked at me with utter mortification as I got off of her and keeled besides my trunks.

"I have Mexegosillypoopidia—it’s like OCD but different. Umm...basically it’s fear of letting other people touch my stuff, so...sorry," I quickly lied and gave an apologetic smile to look convincing.

Still baffled, our house warden slowly got to her feet and adjusted her tunic, giving me a weird eye, like I had sprouted a third nipple on my head. Then she went off to do her business.

I sighed and turned to the closest girl near me. "You help me take them over there to my bed and you grab that one," I barked and ordered to some of them. I was amazed to see them comply without arguing.

Most definitely, they were practicing nunnery-converting here.

"I thought you were afraid of letting others touch your stuff." A girl that clearly looked like she was a year older than me, crossed her arms and quirked an eyebrow.

"It’s my fear, so I guess I know what triggers it and what doesn’t. Besides, I asked to help move them, not open them. It’s kind of a ‘different rules apply to different purposes’ scenario, really," I retorted as I dumped my last trunk full of clothes on the covers, while the rest were carefully placed near the bed.

The girl gave me a suspicious look but went back to hop on her own bed. She continued chatting with her friends.

Ester had warned me about the Queen Bee—one of the seniors who was also the head girl of Emerald house last year. Ester had mentioned that the Queen Bee controlled the whole school, not in a bully way, but just in an 'everybody takes her perdition for things' way. And if I was not wrong, which I rarely am, I just met her.

Shrugging her off, I turned to my luggage and carefully started depositing my clothes and other stuff inside my personal wardrobe—one was provided to each girl. Once done, I carefully locked up my wardrobe and also put a lock on my last two trunks, pushing them under my bed.

These two trunks were special, after all; they were filled with my treasures, my prank stuff, like fart spray, black-hole bomb, stick pops and other devilish goods, along with some booze that I had stolen from my uncle’s cellar. I couldn't have let that dwarf warden get her hands on it. She would have thrown it all out, and I would have been forced to murder her on my very first day. At least this way both of us would get to keep each other’s life.

After the lights died down, I kept tossing around and making weird positions in my bed, in vain hope of getting sleep. But my body was uncomfortable on the stone-hard bed. I missed my bed with the cloud-like foam. While my mind was too alert thinking about fucking big bang theory of how this fucking world came into existence.

Contemplating whether or not I should strangle that obnoxious girl in her sleep using my pillow, I ignored her as she loudly kept snoring two beds away from me.

Placing the pillow over my head, I closed my eyes another time, internally yelling at my stupid mind to shut it. After what felt like hours of tossing and turning, I finally found myself falling asleep.

However, it came and it went. Just when I was finally able to sleep, someone turned the lights on. Then the warden let out an ear-splitting scream.

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Alrighty I supose this is the time to ask the question..have you ever lived in an bording school?

Peace Out Bitches💋