Perfect. I twirled the last bit of hair around the curling wand, before flipping my head upside down and shaking all the curls loose. Standing back up, I examined my reflection. Jess sat on the other side of our room, perched on the bench we'd set in front of our window. She'd been ready for some time now, her flawless hair shortening her prep-time significantly.

"Nic, you're fine!" She laughed as she got up..

"No," I corrected her, swiping a coat of lip gloss over my lips. "I'm perfect."

"I don't know about perfect..." Mark teased, holding the door open for me to exit after him.

"So funny, Mark." I drawled and glared at Jess, daring her to join his teasing. But she hadn't heard him at all, already preoccupied with gushing over the hair and outfit of the mousy blonde she'd been flirting with the morning before. Mark and I watched the exchange with grins; Ashley was about to exit our larger group of friends and enter the inner circle.

"Let's go!" I pulled Mark into the mob of Thunderbirds heading down to the quad to be photographed for hijINKs. Unlike the faculty chaperoned newspaper, students actually read the blog and app that chronicled all activity from our battle. I'd wasted time fixing my hair and making sure my makeup was perfect today for the most important yearbook club photo of the year; the Thunderbirds family.

In the quad, curious freshmen watched; I could see the boys Mark and I recruited, explaining what was going on to a small group of girls. Few Hellhounds still lingered, having finished with their picture already. The hired photographer demanded that all Thunderbirds file onto the residence stairs. He prodded and directed us into places he was satisfied with and then snapped a picture. Examining the display on his camera, he frowned, made a couple more adjustments, and snapped another.

"I'll do a couple more for posterity," he said.

As if his words were a trigger, suddenly all the Thunderbirds were screaming and throwing our arms up into the air as the skies opened up with an unexpected torrential downpour. At least that's what we'd all thought when the water had come down, until it was immediately followed by an impressively large cloud of glitter coming down from the balconies above us. With the sound of the Hellhounds laughter ringing in our ears, every last one of the Thunderbirds had run, shrieking in random directions.

-.-

"I. Hate. Glitter!"

I agreed with Kellen wholeheartedly, silently fuming at the fact that I too, was covered in layers of glitter. Jackson sat beside him on their lounge floor, looking like a miserable, drowned rat. Only he wasn't wet. None of us were anymore. Not all the liquid that had come splashing down onto us was water. Some of us had unfortunately been hit with adhesive, likely regular white glue given it's consistency.

When it happened, I was yanked from the melee and only caught my bearings as I was being pulled up the stairs, realizing it was Jackson who had a firm grip on my hand and Jess's. It surprised me that he'd bothered with us at all, and that he dragged us all the way to his room in the boy's wing. Despite the possible trouble we faced for being there, we collapsed onto their floor, as Kellen ground out a warning to not get glitter on his things. Good luck with that, Bucko! 

"I. Ate. Gitter." Jackson moaned, echoing Kellen's earlier words. Jess and I made the mistake of catching each other's eyes and broke into peals of laughter as the boys pouted.

Rolling up off the floor, I headed for their bathroom, complaining as I went. "Yeah, I think I'll be blowing glitter out my nose for days."

"I think I'll be shitting glitter for days!" Kellen said, surprising me by breaking from the Kellen I normally got to see.

I had gone to get myself a towel, but after glancing at the boys, brooding miserably like five-year-olds rained out of their own birthday party, I grabbed a few more supplies instead. The idiots would probably take the towel from me anyway.

Kellen's unsuccessful attempt to swipe off some unmoving glitter and his resulting defeat over it, made me feel bad for him. What the heck was wrong with me? I examined the hardened glue & glitter helmet that hid his thick dark mop of hair—even his eyebrows were sparkly. As bad as it was, mine was worse. "I don't know what you're so miserable about, you don't have all this to deal with."

He glanced at me sulkily as I flicked at a glued together section of my long hair. Boys! Before I had a chance to question my own sanity, I set to work brushing the glitter out of his hair, peeling chunks of dried glue out carefully. I could imagine the disgusting sticky mess it would turn into if he tried to wash it like that, as most boys would. Jess scrunched her face at me, obviously wondering—as was I —what had possessed me to do it. Taking the brush I tossed her, she combed out her brother's hair, though she yanked the brush through it with a sadistic glee that only a sibling could muster. 

When I combed out the last bit of glued-in glitter, Kellen, with eyes closed, let out a tiny satisfied grunt. I froze and looked at Jess wide eyed, "What the heck?" I mouthed at her as I set down the brush.

She wiggled her eyebrows and flashed me a devilish grin. Ew! Scowling at her, I hoped neither boy noticed her charade—I was already trying to get over being the fangirl he'd caught holding his underwear. I quickly moved on to picking the glitter out of his eyebrows.

That's how Leon—and thankfully not a teacher—found us when he barged into the room, me leaning over Kellen with my fingers on his forehead. Leon appeared startled, almost trying to figure out who I was and why I was holding his friend's face. Before he could say anything, I gently picked a corner of the glue up and pulled it back carefully, I really didn't want to take his eyebrow off. Kellen twitched and lightly swatted my hand away, clearly in some in between awake and sleeping state.

"If I'd known you guys had personal groomers, I might have come here first," Leon said as he eyed us with a. Typical. That's all we were to them. Personal groomers. Personal slaves. No difference really. With an annoyed glance at Leon and then a smirk at Jess, I yanked the rest of Kellen's glittery skin off in one quick motion.

Jess and Jackson, having the same sense of humour, cackled as Kellen slapped at air out of reflex. I was already out of his reach, laughing as he quickly jumped up.

"What the..?" He glared around the room at us, glowering at our laughter. Eyeing the piles of glitter on the floor, he shuddered. "Glitter!"

When he was behind the bathroom door, we all chuckled at the way he said it, through clenched teeth, like it was the sole bane of his existence. It might well have been, how did I know?

"Dammit!" Jackson jumped to his feet and did a strange sort of dance, wiggling his hips, "Even my balls are itchy from the flipping glitter!"

-.-

"Stupid Hellhounds," Jess muttered, as we hurried across the quad toward the dining hall. "They did this on purpose."

Of course they'd do this on the night we had our official first dinner. The one in which Headmaster Sorenson officially welcomed the new students, and everyone tried to look dinner-date nice. Besides us, there were several other Thunderbirds running across the quad, looking nowhere near as amazing as Jess did in her fitting blue dress.

I eyed them wistfully, after hours of scrubbing my skin raw and painfully brushing glitter out of my still sparkly hair, I wished I was wearing something I was comfortable in. Like my favorite pair of tights and the tank Jess had made me ditch in favor of a dress.

"I can't believe you forced me into this thing!" I grumbled as I tugged at the mid-thigh hem of the loose fitting grey dress.

"It's barely a dress, Nic, it's more of a sweater really. And you look amazing! Besides, aren't you glad you get to sit with me now?" She teased and then mumbled something about impressing guys with it.

I rolled my eyes. "Who the hell am I trying to impress?"

"I don't know, perhaps a certain General?"

We neared the hall and I looked around to make sure no one else had heard her. "What? The General? Right! You know how I feel about them all, they're nice to look at and that's about it."

"I'm just kidding Nic!" She waved me into the dining hall laughingly. "Because he called you a fangirl yesterday, and you made him moan today—What was that about anyways? Geez, would you stop pulling at that thing?" She slapped my hand away from my dress as I passed her.

To her dismay, I didn't wear dresses too often. I was a little above the average height for a girl, and lacking the curves and delicacy most girls, including Jess, had. As a trained martial artist, I had more muscle than most girls in my world so I was super conscious of the fact that I looked exaggeratedly masculine and slightly intimidating in dresses.

I turned to snipe an answer back at her, but instead, as the door opened again behind us, I snorted out a laugh at the walking disco balls that followed us.

The Trifecta had gone full out Zoolander, with sparkly lips and eyebrows and metallic jumpsuits, and I wondered how they'd managed the outfits on such short notice.

I tried to ignore them cat-walking down the center of Katia's table, despite Jess calling my attention to it repeatedly.

Headmaster Sorenson put a stop to it as he took the podium to begin his welcome speech. The hijINKS update came mere seconds after his speech ended, and I frowned at it; the rest of the night would be only about the sparkling Trifecta.  

-.-

Conversations all around us were about how epic their flip was and throughout dinner, people approached them for selfies, like seeing it wasn't enough and they needed to be in a picture with the glittery boys to prove it had happened. Even Headmaster Sorenson, first stern and then with a tiny smile, posed for a picture with them. 

I was unimpressed by the Trifecta's hijacking of the dinner, but at least they were sitting behind me. I didn't have to look at them. And I definitely wouldn't be one of those students that begged my way into a picture with them.

At least I thought I wouldn't be. But, Jess dragged me over there, and as I leaned into the picture with the best fake smile I could manage, I lamented another year going to the birds and dogs.