St. Mary’s Rebels Box Set Volume 1

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Some girls are born perfect.

They have perfect hair, perfect eyes, perfect skin.

They have perfect grades and high ambitions. They’re popular and admired. They’re adored and revered. And loved.

I’m not one of them.

That’s the first thing to know about me: I’m not perfect.

I have flaws. Many, many flaws.

I don’t have perfect grades. I don’t have high ambitions.

I don’t get why the sum of all the angles of a triangle has to be one hundred and eighty or the world will collapse. Or why when we talk about the heart, we reduce it to a muscular organ with four chambers that’s sole purpose is to pump blood through the body.

I’m far from being popular and I’ve got something called witchy eyes.

Or at least, I call them that.

They’re golden in color and they arch up at the corners, making them look sort of catty, witchy. Which is super poetic because I’ve got a witchy name too.

Salem.

Salem Salinger, and the second thing to know about me is that along with witchy eyes and a witchy name, I’ve got a witchy heart as well.

Meaning, my heart has secrets.

In fact, my heart is swollen with secrets. Many, many secrets like my many, many flaws. And that is why I did what I did.

The thing that landed me here.

The little, inconsequential crime that got me sent to St. Mary’s School for Troubled Teenagers – an all-girls reform school.

Only they don’t call it a reform school anymore.

It’s not the 50s or the 60s. These days, schools like this are called therapeutic school. Because they believe in therapy. And restoration and reformation. They believe in teaching us to be productive members of society.

Who’s us?

We’re the bad and hopeless girls.

We’re the girls who break rules and love rebellion. We don’t like school or classes. So we keep getting into trouble with our classmates and teachers. Sometimes we get expelled multiple times from multiple schools until our parents or guardians are forced to take drastic actions.

Some of us break the law too, which technically I did.

I mean, there were a couple of cops involved. They didn’t handcuff me or anything but I had to ride in their squad car and go to the police station. But there were no charges pressed. Instead, I was sent to St. Mary’s.

I’ve been here almost a week and I’m already behind. In assignments, I mean.

God, the assignments and homework.

They’re very strict about that here.

So I really shouldn’t be falling asleep in class if I want to catch up.

But it’s Friday afternoon and it’s trigonometry and it’s not as if I’m magically going to understand everything to do with triangles and tangents by paying attention in the last fifteen minutes of the class anyway.

Honestly, I don’t think anyone is paying attention even though everyone is quiet and facing the blackboard.

There are probably fifteen other girls besides me in this small beige-painted concrete and cement classroom where I sit in the back.

We’re 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 and it is heavily monitored.

If you want to use the internet, you go to the computer lab and use the computer there, for an allotted number of hours.

If you want to talk to someone on the phone, you do it using the school phone, again only during an allotted time period.

Second, if you want to go off campus, you need a permission slip from a teacher and you can only go out during an allotted time.

Now if you’re good – your grades are okay and you’ve been doing your homework and participating in activities – you get the privilege of using the computer longer than everyone else or you can go out twice a week and stay out longer and so on.

And who keeps track of things like this? The guidance counselor assigned to you that you meet with every week.

But all of this is useless to me.

Because I just started here and so I have a four-week ban on any privileges. Meaning I can’t go out no matter what. My computer usage is one hour per day and I can’t make any outgoing calls; I can only receive calls on Saturdays.

If at the end of the four-week period, my guidance counselor, who just happens to be Mrs. Miller, thinks I’m fit to be rewarded for my rule-following and hard-working ways, I might get to go out or use the computer for more than an hour.

So I write a little note of my own:

Thanks for the heads up. But since I’m on the four-week grace period, I basically have no privileges.

I hand over the note to the girl and she grabs it like I’m handing her a lifeline. I guess she’s as bored as me.

Quickly, she opens it and dives into writing a reply on a freshly torn piece of paper, which she hands me back a few minutes later:

Oh right! Sorry! I completely forgot that you’re a newb. But Miller has been known to deduct privileges in advance. She’s a biatch. Pardon my language.

I’m Calliope, by the way. But everyone calls me Callie. I’m sorry about all the stuff some of the girls are putting you through. I do gotta ask though: Is Principal Carlisle really your guardian? And are you really not a spy?

I have to smile at her note.

There’s no malice there. Not after the way I feel her looking at me with so much eagerness.

So I reply, Gotcha. No sleeping in Miller’s class. She’s actually my assigned guidance counselor too. So not looking forward to that meeting next week.

Yes, Principal Carlisle is really my guardian. My mom and her were childhood friends. She died when I was ten so me and my older sister were sent to live with her. And no, I’m really not a spy. I’m just like the rest of you guys.

Also, you’re the first person to smile at me in this place. So thanks again.

I pass the note back to her and like before, she jumps at it and devours it quickly. As soon as she’s done, she writes back.