Of String Theory, Bad Poetry, and Head Girl Badges

by language_escapes

Summary:

In her first week at St. Trinian’s, Kelly wears the Head Girl badge and hates fellow First Year Polly Hopkins. In her last year at St. Trinian’s, only one of these things is still true. How Kelly came to wear the Head Girl’s badge for all seven years at St. Trinian’s (if only for a few hours at a time) and become best friends with Polly.

Notes:

For Scintilla10.

Warning: Underage kissing, panty raid, really awful poetry. There's nothing else that I think should really be warned for, but if you think differently, let me know and I will change it immediately.

All science is courtesy of the television show The Big Bang Theory, Wikipedia, and some frantic Googling. I skipped most of my physics classes, got set on fire in my chemistry classes, and was the experiment in my anatomy/physiology classes, so it doesn't come from me. The (good) poems quoted are, in order, “The Implications of One Plus One,” by Marge Piercy; “Full Moon,” by Vita Sackville-West; “XIX from Twenty-One Love Poems,” by Adrienne Rich; “Variations on the Word Sleep,” by Margaret Atwood; “Remember,” by Christina Rosetti; “Equinox,” by Joy Harjo; and “Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing,” by Margaret Atwood.

Beta'd but not Britpicked. If anyone would like to be my Britpicker, please let me know!

When Kelly Jones was ten-years-old, her best friend, Jennie Josephs, called her an ugly lesbo slag after she winked at their other best friend, Eileen Cregg. Kelly’s father had taught her that young ladies are polite; that sticks and stones may break ones bones but words would never hurt you; and that she was rubber but Jennie was glue, and therefore, whatever Jennie said would bounce off of Kelly and stick to Jennie. Finally, she was taught to turn the other cheek. And so she did. She turned the other cheek to watch for cars while she broke into Jennie’s room that night in order to steal Jennie’s favorite Barbie doll.

They never caught her with Jennie’s Barbie. Nor did they catch her with Eileen’s pony collection (well, Eileen didn’t defend her), or Jessica’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figures, or Matt’s bicycle, or Jeremy’s antique dolls. They did catch her with Ainsley’s mother’s jewelry, though, and Kimberly’s father’s watch, which was apparently enough to get a girl in trouble and threatened with arrest.

Kelly chose St. Trinian’s. At least there they appreciated her ability to burgle.

******
The first thing she stole at St. Trinian’s was the Head Girl’s badge. Alicia McAllister, an Emo, fell asleep at her desk, and Kelly was light of finger and slight of touch, and she wanted that badge, so she lifted it right off of her. She took it, put it on her own sloppy uniform, and went and showed the rest of the First Years what she had done.

In retrospect, showing off ones ability to steal the Head Girl badge in the first week of school is perhaps not the wisest thing to do, but Alicia was more amused than annoyed, and the other First Years were thrilled.

******
The other thing she stole in her first week at St. Trinian’s was a calculator off this self-righteous First Year named Polly.

Polly didn’t take it as well as Kelly would have hoped.

When Kelly woke up the next morning, not only did Polly have her calculator back, but Kelly was summoned to the Headmistress’s office to discuss her school record, which showed a long history of failure, according to the computer.

(Before Kelly stole Polly’s calculator, she’d been a model student.)

(Miss Fritton was quite amused.)

(Kelly was not.)

******
She wrote a poem about how she felt. It went like this:

The void that is my soul
Feels an endless pain
That cannot be
Equaled by another
A darkness
Consumes me
And
Swallows me
From within
Polly Hopkins sucks

She spray-painted it on the wall next to their science classroom.

******
She quite likes St. Trinian’s, which she didn’t really expect. Kelly went to St. Trinian’s because her parents made it quite clear that she needed to go to some sort of corrective institution, and they would die of shame if prison ended up being that institution. She doesn’t want to be corrected- it isn’t like she stole nice things- and Miss Fritton made it clear in her speech to the school that there is nothing wrong with any of them. She likes that.

And the classes are useful, practical. Kelly’s learning which mushrooms are poisonous and which are psychedelic in her biology class; she’s learning about women in her history course, women that she could grow up to be like (she likes Trieu Thi Trinh best so far); in her English courses, they’re reading a ton of banned literature, just because it’s banned. They’re learning how to doctor books in maths. It’s fascinating.

Why aren’t other schools like St. Trinian’s? she thinks. School would be fun if it were. She’s always been a good student, because her family was very insistent upon it, but she’s never wanted to learn for her own sake.

She sneaks through the halls, carefully avoiding whatever teachers are still sober enough to be walking around. She’s on a mission. She has her backpack, crammed full of goodies, and she needs to get to one of the classrooms. Any classroom will do, so long as it’s not one of hers.

Kelly grins. At any other school, what she’s doing would get her expelled. At St. Trinian’s, she’ll probably get a party.

******
“And then, after the trap had already poured honey all over Miss Grunton, it released some seriously pissed off wasps! You should have heard her scream!” one of the older Emo girls says excitedly.

Yes, Kelly thinks happily, accepting another drink from an admiring Upper Sixth Former. A party.

******
Summer hols are boring. Kelly misses all her friends at St. Trinian’s. She misses being able to pinch things without people fretting that she’s going to wind up in prison. She misses being able to blow things up and laugh about it instead of people calling 999. She misses being covered in dirt and no one telling her to take a shower right away. She misses putting on white face powder and writing sad poetry and that being perfectly acceptable.

“Can’t you write about flowers?” her mother says wearily, reading another poem about death with a sad smile on her face.

“But that’s not how I feel, Mum,” Kelly says. “I don’t feel flowers.”

“But the flowers are so pretty, just like you!” she replies, and Kelly just shakes her head.

“Anne Sexton didn’t write about flowers,” she mumbles, taking her poem back.

“Emily Dickinson did,” her mum says hopefully.

Kelly stares at her. “Emily Dickinson killed herself.”

Her mum looks back just as stonily. “So did Anne Sexton, Kelly.”

“I see we’ve reached an impasse.”

Lily Jones rubs her temples. “I think sending you to that school was a mistake.”

******
Her second year begins much the same way. Ellen Stoner, Head Girl and Posh-Totty, is making out with her boyfriend, and her blouse is carelessly discarded by the school gates, so Kelly just plucks the Head Girl badge off on her way in while her parents stare in scandalized horror at the way Ellen is groping her boyfriend. Kelly pins it on her own uniform and grins at Andrea, who is rolling her eyes. Polly is standing by the front doors with her grandmother, frowning tightly, and Kelly waves cheekily.

Sourpuss.

“Is that Judith Hopkins?” her father asks, and Kelly looks up at him.

“Polly’s grandmother? Polly’s last name is Hopkins, so I guess. Why?”

“I know her son. Must be that girl’s father,” Kelly’s father says. “Horrible man. Stay away from that girl, Kelly. Shouldn’t be associating with that sort.”

Ellen Stoner demands her badge back, her parents take her suitcases in, Miss Fritton shoos the families away, and Kelly’s second year at St. Trinian’s begins.

******
“My parents don’t want me associating with you,” Kelly says to Polly, and Polly looks at her over the rim of her glasses, raising an eyebrow.

“And yet you’re talking to me,” she observes, and Kelly grins.

“I think a child’s purpose in life is to do exactly what their parents don’t want them to do. Want to help me switch out all the alcoholic beverages in the teacher’s lounge for nonalcoholic alternatives?”

Polly considers her for a long moment.

“Sure.”

******
Kelly writes a new poem on the wall outside their science classroom:

Black is my soul
But now there is some light
A spark
With red-hair
Is it possible
That Polly Hopkins
Does not suck?

Polly buys her a book on how to write poetry for her birthday.

Kelly is not amused.

******
“I think I’ll go Emo,” Kelly announces, climbing onto Polly’s bed and snuggling under her quilt, burying her feet into Polly’s side. Polly hisses but doesn’t move away. She puts down her book on string theory and looks at Kelly flatly.

“Really. I never would have guessed. The thick black eyeliner wasn’t a dead giveaway or anything,” she says, rolling her eyes. Kelly punches her lightly in the arm.

“Look, some of us weren’t permitted to choose our Clique early. You got lucky. I could have picked Posh-Totty. There was a chance,” Kelly protests.

Polly snorts. “They never would have taken you. You’d try to compose odes to the callers on the hotline.”

Kelly tries to punch her again, but Polly anticipates her this time and moves out of the way, nearly falling out of the bed in the process. She scowls. “My poetry is not that bad.”

“It’s disturbed, Kel. It’s why you’re going to be an Emo.”

“Andrea thinks it’s pretty good.”

“Andrea’s poetry is worse.”

“Well, that’s true.”

“To be fair, you’re young. And you’re both going to be Emo. It’s basically a staple of Emo youth to write bad poetry.”

Kelly sighs and buries her head in Polly’s shoulder. “I’m never going to be the next Anne Sexton.”

Polly pats her ear awkwardly. “Not at thirteen, no.”

******
Kelly wakes up because someone is sobbing on her. It’s an awkward feeling, the feeling of someone sobbing on you. She opens her eyes slowly, because if it’s Andrea again, she’s going to have to smack her. She loves Andrea to death, she does, but it will be the seventh time this week, and it’s only Tuesday.

But it’s Polly.

She sits up quickly and wraps her arms around Polly, who is shaking too hard to form words. She pulls her close, and is startled to realize that there are real tears coming out of Polly’s eyes. One of the things she loves about Polly, really loves (after she got over hating it about Polly, really hating) is that she is so self-controlled. She’s never seen her cry before. She’s rarely seen her laugh before, for heaven’s sake.

“Polly, is your grandmother all right?” she asks urgently, because that’s the only thing she can think of that would make someone cry this much. She knows that Polly lives with her grandmother and her four siblings. She feels Polly nod, so she moves on. “Your brothers and sisters?”

Polly nods again, and Kelly feels absolutely helpless. Around the dorm, girls are stirring in their sleep, and Kelly looks around, trying to see a source of disturbance. Najwa, the Geek who sponsored Polly’s early entrance to the Clique, is still asleep, so she can’t be why Polly is crying. And Polly doesn’t really have any other friends.

“Polly, what’s wrong?” she asks desperately.

“My-my project!” she wails. “My project on the ocean currents!”

Kelly blinks, and frowns down at the top of Polly’s head. “What?”

“I- I was tracking the ocean currents, for a project. And my data! It’s all c-corrupted! I’ve been working it for s-six m-months!”

Kelly counts it as a minor miracle that she doesn’t burst into laughter. Instead, she coos reassuringly and pats Polly’s head with as much comfort as she can muster. She imagines that, for a Geek, this is a disaster. That this is like losing your grandmum. Or something. She has no idea. She’s very, very thankful, in this moment, that she is going to be joining the Emos. At least then everything is a catastrophe of some small order, rather than one large one every now and then.

“Oh, darling,” she says, pouring sympathy into her voice, conjuring images of honey and molasses and thinking them into her voice. “That’s awful.”

Polly sniffles and looks up at her. Her eyes are bloodshot. “I knew you’d get it, Kelly. The other girls just laughed at me.”

Kelly doesn’t know what other girls- there are no other girls awake at this hour- but she shakes her head and hugs Polly tighter. Because no, she really doesn’t get it, but she wants to punch those girls for laughing at Polly.

“I have just the remedy.”

******
The next day, there is another poem outside the science classroom:

My soul is metaphorically Black
Except that Black is not a color
It is the absence of color.
In order to convey my unhappiness,
I would presume my soul
Should have some sort of color
As I told Kelly
But she insists that Black will make me feel better
Because I lost six months worth of ocean currents data
Kelly, I really don’t feel comfortable defacing school property
I think I should have written a haiku.

******
The summer holidays between her second and third year at St. Trinian’s are less awful, because she spends half of it at Polly’s house, and the other half, Polly spends at hers.

The part of the summer she spends at Polly’s is amazingly chaotic. She knew, theoretically, about Polly’s four younger siblings, but actually living with Emily, Edward, Tim, and Susan is a lot harder than it seems. Judith, Polly’s grandmother, is a lot like Polly in some ways, except she smiles more and can actually cook. She dotes on her grandchildren but, seeing how disciplined Polly is, Kelly doesn’t doubt her ability to crack down on them if needed.

The part of the summer at Kelly’s house is a riot, if only because her father stares at Polly the entire time in unbridled horror. Her mother is much better, resigned to the fact that Kelly is going to say black if her parents say white. Alfred, Kelly’s older brother, sneers at Polly, but her younger brother, Tom, follows Polly in undisguised fascination.

“I think Tom likes you,” Kelly teases one afternoon, lying under the tree in her backyard, eating grapes. Polly looks up from her book and smiles.

“Really? I think Tom likes my clothes.”

(Ten years later, Polly’s prediction will turn out to be the correct one.)

******
Stealing the Head Girl badge off Billie Fahl (Chav) takes two tries. The first time, Billie is waiting for her and catches her in the act. She is slipping it off the nightstand next to Billie’s bed, and suddenly her wrist is caught.

“Ellen told me about you,” Billie says, flicking the light on. “You’re the one who thinks she can be Head Girl if she steals the badge enough.”

That is not what she is doing, Kelly thinks indignantly, letting go of the badge and glaring at Billie. “That is not what I’m doing,” she says out loud before she can stop herself.

“Really?” Billie says dubiously. “Prove it. Do something to earn that badge.”

Kelly stands up, straightens her newly Emo clothing, and walks out, dignity bent but intact. No one has ever dared her to earn something before.

She sort of wants to try.

(Nevertheless, she bumps against Billie later the next day, pickpockets the Head Girl badge, and wears it in front of her with a proud grin. She earns a black eye for it, but at least she earned it.)

******
“How do people become Head Girls?” she asks Polly in Chemistry, ignoring their experiment. Polly frowns at her and gestures to their Bunsen burner.

“Is this really the time?”

“Is this not the time?” Kelly counters, and hands Polly the sulphuric acid. She doesn’t know what the experiment is, but she figures any experiment can be improved with sulphuric acid.

“It really isn’t,” Polly says, and glares at the test tube, setting it aside. “Could you please hand me the sodium chloride?”

Kelly glances at the various test tubes, grabs one, and hands it to Polly. Polly pours it into the mixture, and then screams as the Bunsen burner begins to boil over. She looks at the label, and then looks at Kelly. “I said sodium chloride! Salt! This is hydrochloric acid!”

******
A new poem appears next to the science classroom that night:

Wow, Kelly Jones sucks
She blew up chemistry class
Polly is awesome

Kelly stares at it for hours. Polly seems to have grown comfortable with defacement of school property.

******
Since Polly isn’t speaking to her, Kelly turns to Andrea for answers. She doesn’t know why she doesn’t just ask the older girls, since they would probably actually know, but she’s more comfortable with girls her own age, and besides, she likes Andrea.

“I think you first have to become leader of your Clique,” Andrea says, eyeing her canvas critically. She’s working on a new painting of Death and herself doing the tango. It seems to be a series. She’s pretty good, actually. Better at painting than poetry, anyway. She’s got one of she and Death doing a waltz, she and Death doing the foxtrot, and then she and Death krumping, which is, ok, a little odd.

“How do you do that, do you think?” she asks. Andrea shrugs, adding a little red to the rose in Death’s teeth. That’s the other thing in all of Andrea’s paintings. Death is always the woman.

“Kill the previous leader?”

“I doubt that,” Kelly says dubiously.

“Polly might know,” Andrea says, looking up. “Did you ask her?”

Kelly looks at her. “Did you see the chemistry classroom?”

Andrea nods slowly. “Ah, yes. That.”

“Yes. That.”

******
She asks the leader of her Clique, AJ, but AJ just smiles mysteriously and explains that if she wants to be the leader of the Clique, she has to work for it, and if she wants to be Head Girl, she’s insane, so she’s halfway there.

Fat lot of help that is.

******
She can’t sleep.

Kelly doesn’t know if she wants to be Head Girl, necessarily, but Billie dared her. Dared her to earn it. Earn the badge, rather than just steal it every year. She can’t resist a dare. And now she just wants to know, what exactly do you have to do to earn it? Do you have to save Miss Fritton’s life? Do you have to eat worms? Do fifty jumping jacks? Hold your breath for thirty seconds? What?

And Polly still isn’t speaking to her.

It’s been four days.

She should be over it by now. It was one tiny classroom that she blew up. They’ve blown up bigger on purpose. For fun! They’re St. Trinian’s girls!

Kelly rolls over with a huff. Whatever. She doesn’t need a Geek for a friend anyway. She has the Emos. And she’s going to be Head Girl someday. Maybe. If she can figure out what one needs to do to earn it.

She sits up with a groan and pulls on her shoes. She needs to go see Miss Fritton right now or she’ll never sleep again. If AJ can’t tell her, maybe Miss Fritton can give her some ideas.

She walks by Polly’s bed on her way out of the dorm. It’s empty. She almost starts to wonder where Polly is, but ignores the thought. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t. She’s just a Geek, and Kelly is an Emo, and Emos don’t care about Geeks.

(She ignores the fact that it’s Emos and Chavs that don’t get along.)

Kelly is standing right outside of Miss Fritton’s office when she hears the explosion inside. She stares in shock for just a moment, and then throws open the door, hoping to find a concussed Miss Fritton to save so she can earn her way to Head Girl-dom. Instead, Polly is on the floor, her face covered in black scorch marks, a camera on the floor and clearly in bits.

“Polly!” she shrieks. “What in bloody hell!”

Polly looks up at her in horror. “Kelly!” she whispers. “Oh, God…”

Before either can say anything else, the sound of a door opening at the end of the hall distracts both of them. Polly slams a hand to her mouth and starts gathering up the broken camera bits, but Kelly can already see that she’s never going to make it in time. She bites her lip and makes a quick decision.

“Go out the window,” she says. “I’ll stall her.”

Then she slips back out the door and greets a slightly tipsy Miss Fritton with, “Why hello, you, uh, sodding cow!”

As insults go, it’s not her most original, and she kisses her hopes of Head Girl good-bye. To her shock, Miss Fritton doesn’t throw the book at her, but instead says, “Miss Jones. That was not the most original insult. I’ve heard you use several cleverer with people far less prestigious than myself. Do I not warrant your best insults? Come now, let’s hear another.”

This is how Kelly winds up spending nearly an hour insulting Miss Fritton, with Miss Fritton gently correcting and offering suggestions, providing new vocabulary and slang as needed. It’s vaguely surreal, and when Miss Fritton sends her off, applauding her, she’s somehow sure that she hasn’t killed her future chances of Head Girl after all. In fact, she’s certain that if she went to Miss Fritton tomorrow to ask about how one went about becoming Head Girl, Miss Fritton would be thrilled to give advice to one so advanced in insults.

Polly is waiting for her when she returns to the dorm, clutching her broken camera. Kelly smiles faintly at her.

“Why did you save me?” Polly blurts. “We’re fighting!”

Kelly gives her a strange look. She would think the answer obvious. “You never bring down a St. Trinian’s girl,” she says simply. She gestures to the camera bits. “What were you doing?”

Polly shrugs shyly. “I’m working on installing a CCTV. The Fritton-Cam blew up in my face. The next one won’t.”

Kelly grins at her and sits down on her bed. “I know it won’t. I’ll be with you.”

Polly grins back at her.

******
“Is it bad that I don’t like Sylvia Plath?” Kelly asks Polly. Polly sighs in exasperation and sets aside her textbook (this one on general relativity- Kelly doesn’t know why she’s reading it, she mastered general relativity when she was a First Year) and looks at Kelly with exaggerated patience.

“No?”

“It’s just that AJ likes Sylvia Plath.”

“You like Anne Sexton,” Polly says, and Kelly nods, looking at her book of poetry by Sylvia Plath, frowning and turning another page.

“I find Sylvia Plath very depressing.”

“Yes, well, she was depressed.”

“So was Anne.”

“Yes.”

“But I don’t like Sylvia.”

“Ok.”

“Is that bad?”

“You don’t have to like Sylvia Plath just because AJ does, Kelly,” Polly says, picking up her book again. Kelly sighs loudly, and Polly thumps her book back down and looks at Kelly. “Is this an Emo thing that I’m missing? Like you not understanding why I angst about the contention between string theory and loop quantum gravity?”

“I’m just wondering if I’m missing an essential element of her poetry,” Kelly says, turning another page in the book.

Polly rubs her eyes underneath her glasses. “Maybe you just like Anne Sexton more.”

Kelly closes the book and stares at the cover for a long while. Polly watches her for a moment and then picks up her book tentatively, starting to read again. Kelly blinks, and then looks at Polly. “I don’t like Emily Dickinson either. I think there is something wrong with me.”

“I’m going to bloody kill you, Kelly.”

******
It starts pretty simply, actually.

Every single bathroom backs up at the same time, and the school is overrun with sewage. No plumber will come within twenty miles of St. Trinian’s (with good reason, given what happened to the last one), and they can’t go without toilets, and so Kelly looks at the sludge, looks at her friends, dons a pair of sturdy boots, tells everyone else to do the same, and organizes a cleaning crew.

After that, she figures out how to unclog the toilets. She organizes teams so that no one has to do it for very long, because the bathrooms are disgusting. The Ecos have some good ideas about how to make the entire thing environmentally friendly, and they completely redesign the St. Trinian’s water and sewage system. Kelly heads up the whole thing, directing and organizing girls as needed. Someone has to.

She never notices Miss Fritton eyeing her speculatively.

******
In the holiday between her third and fourth year, her parents try to send her away to her grandparents. It is a cruel trick, but her father doesn’t want her to spend time with “that Hopkins girl,” as he calls her.

Kelly has only met her grandparents twice in her entire life. They’re her mother’s parents, and her father doesn’t like them, so she imagines her father is desperate. They’re nice, and she likes them well enough, but she’d been planning on spending time with Polly and writing her poetry. Instead, her grandfather is intent on teaching her to swing dance, and her grandmother tells stories about her time in the Wars.

It’s all right, but it gets even better when Polly shows up on her grandparents door step, hair soaked with rain, suitcases clutched in her hands.

“Hello,” she says to Kelly’s Grandfather Edward. “I’m sorry to intrude, but my grandmother has taken ill, and she was hoping I could stay with Kelly while she recovered. Is that all right?”

Grandfather Edward doesn’t have a malicious bone in his body, and Grandmother Lana is practical and firm, so she bustles Polly inside and insists on carrying her suitcases (full of books and two changes of clothes) upstairs. Kelly turns to Polly and raises an eyebrow. Polly grins.

“Grandmum thought it was a load of bollocks that your family sent you away. She says cough, hack, wheeze, and tells us to have fun.”

So Kelly and Polly learn how to swing dance together from Grandfather Edward, and Polly takes copious notes at Grandmother Lana’s knee, asking for tips on how to nurse people in poor conditions in case she ever needs to, and how to ration wisely. They run bombing drills around the house (which might come in handy at St. Trinian’s, actually), and learn how to knit. Her grandfather teaches Polly how to avoid burning everything she cooks- Kelly has never figured out how Polly can be so good at chemistry and yet fail at basic cooking- and Kelly and her grandmother go fishing. Polly and Kelly both spend time in the woods with her grandmother learning basic survival skills, though they come back covered in mud, bruised, and sore, which makes her grandfather roar with laughter.

By the end of the summer, Grandfather Edward is actually willing to talk to Polly about the war, which is unusual, since he usually never mentions that he was a Major in World War II. But her grandparents find Polly charming and delightful, and Kelly cannot figure out why her parents dislike Polly so much.

******
She almost forgets to steal the badge off of Teresa Reid, Eco, Head Girl, but she remembers right before the end of the first day. Ecos are ridiculously easy, no joy at all. Heads in the cloud. So Teresa is looking right at her while Kelly takes it off her and pins it on her own uniform.

She still remembers Billie’s challenge.

Kelly sees Polly, catches her attention, and points to the badge on her uniform. Polly rolls her eyes affectionately and returns her attention to her computer. Kelly grins and takes off the badge, putting it back on Teresa’s uniform.

She’s going to earn that damn badge.

******
When she wakes up, someone is manhandling her. And it’s a man, so the expression is especially apt. Kelly immediately screams, but the man clamps his hand over her mouth to muffle it.

“No, no, don’t!” the man says. “You’re ok, we’re not going to hurt you!”

Kelly bites down on the hand that is keeping her silent, and he yelps and pull back. She starts screaming again, and the lights turn on.

Her attacker is a boy, not a man, she can see immediately. Probably her age, maybe even a little younger. He looks scared, and his hand is bleeding- good, she thinks viciously. The other girls in her dorm are either tied down in their beds by other boys, or, like her, have boys standing over them, trying to hold them silent. Like the boy who tried to hold her down, they’re not having much success.

A boy across the room is grinning and holding up- is that a bra? “Panty raid!” he screams with glee, and she realizes with disgust that he’s wearing the uniform of the all-boys school down the road, and this is a prank, and this is so not on.

No one touches her underthings and lives to tell about it.

She punches the boy in charge of keeping her silent in the head and he goes down in a heap. She doesn’t spare a moment to feel bad about it and instead grabs her hockey stick. She’s been thinking of going for the hockey team recently and had been practicing earlier this evening. She smacks a few other boys in the dorm with it, and they crumble as well. Some of the other girls are fighting back hard, getting their energy back now that the lights are on and they can see that their attackers are just children. The First Years in her dorm look rabid, frothing at the mouth as they surge upwards at their attackers. Kelly is furious, but she wants to get to the other dorms, and more specifically, the one where Polly sleeps. She needs to see that Polly is all right.

She flies out the door, hitting two boys on the way out, clothes-lining them. All the dorms are right next to each other, so she slides through the door, seeking out Polly’s form.

She grins when she sees her. She needn’t have worried. Polly is standing above seven felled boys, her laptop in hand as she beats an eighth with it.

“Don’t-touch-my-panties-you-sicko!” she shrieks. The boy collapses on the ground, and Polly kicks him twice in the side before grabbing a handful of blank discs and throwing them, Frisbee-style, at a few fleeing boys. They hit the boys in the end. The boys get away, climbing through a window, but Kelly imagines they’ll be bleeding a bit in the head. She looks at Polly in admiration.

The rest of the dorm is looking at her as well. Kelly begins applauding slowly, and Polly glances up, pushing hair out of her eyes. She sniffs disdainfully.

“I’m going to need a new laptop,” she says. “I think I broke mine beating in the skull of that miscreant.”

“I’ll buy you one,” Kelly says. “That was impressive.”

“Hell, I’ll buy you one,” says Taylor, a Chav. “Cor, who knew you had that in you?”

Polly smiles tightly at Taylor, and then looks at Kelly. “What are we going to do with them?”

Kelly looks at all the boys. There were about thirteen in her dorm, and there are maybe twelve in here. Adding in the other two dorms, she figures there has to be about fifty boys in all. “Oh, I have some ideas. Go find a bunch of shovels.”

The next morning, fifty-two boys wake up in the lawn of St. Trinian’s, buried up to their neck. On their foreheads, written in lipstick, is written “Wankers.”

When their schoolmates arrive to dig them out, they discover that they’re wearing only ladies undergarments.

Kelly still gets another lecture from Miss Fritton on creative insults.

******
“So, Dorothy Parker, yes or no?” Kelly says, throwing herself down Polly’s bed. Polly sighs and looks up from her new laptop.

“So, Linux, yes or no?” she counters. Kelly ignores her.

“I can’t decide.”

“Do I care?”

“Because she’s really brilliant on one hand, but then some of her stuff I could take or leave.”

“Then don’t read that stuff,” Polly says, clicking something with her mouse.

“She also didn’t kill herself, unlike every other poet ever,” Kelly muses.

“Tried to,” Polly points out. Kelly scowls.

“Yes, thank you for that.”

“Sorry.”

******
The panty raid on St. Trinian’s leaves a lingering impression on the girls. They know they can defend themselves, that’s not the problem. It’s just that it should never get that far. They should never have to wake up with people at their throats.

“I felt so violated,” Chloe tells Kelly over breakfast. “I don’t mind men in my bed, but only when I ask them there.”

Kelly pats her hand sympathetically, and wonders when she became the person that people come to with their problems.

“When did I become the person that people come to with their problems?” she asks Polly that afternoon, after Chloe talked to her over breakfast, Chelsea in religious education, Andrea in art class, and Taylor in P.E. Polly shrugs, eyes focused on her computer. Kelly figures she must have done well picking out a new laptop if Polly is this devoted to it.

“When you put on sewage mucking boots and dived in. Also, when you started making a fuss about being Head Girl one day.”

“I wasn’t making a fuss,” Kelly pouts.

Polly looks up and stares at her flatly. “You were bothering everyone about how to become Head Girl. Except me, because we weren’t speaking.”

It’s a good point, but that was almost a year ago, and she’s over that now. She’s an Emo, everyone knows that Emos are emotionally unstable. She sighs dramatically and throws herself sideways, narrowly missing Polly’s three external harddrives (who needs three? three!).

“Well, what am I supposed to do about it?” she asks Polly, scowling at the ceiling. There’s a crack in it that looks vaguely like a rabbit.

“Something. Anything. So long as it keeps you away from my very delicate computer equipment,” Polly says, and shoves a foot in her side.

******
An hour later, there is a new poem outside of the science classroom:

Turbulent like an aeroplane
The ups and downs of life
Do I do what the others say?
Or follow the-
Oh, this is bleeding rubbish and I know it
I am not Anne Sexton
Or Dorothy Parker
Or even Sylvia Plath
That’s right, I said it
I don’t like Sylvia Plath!
I need to find a new medium
Also
For old times sake
Polly Hopkins sucks

******
“Take a look at this,” Kelly says, setting a blueprint in front of Polly.

Polly looks up from her porridge, taking in what Kelly knows must be a very bedraggled appearance. She was up all night working on a First Alert system, working with what St. Trinian’s has and what they could have, and creating this out of her own very limited architectural skills. It’s not brilliant, but that’s what she has Polly for.

Polly nudges her breakfast aside and unfurls the plans. Kelly stares down at her, wiping the griminess out of her eyes, trying to see the drawings and words with new eyes, trying to see if she missed anything. Polly stares at the plans for a long moment, her fingers skittering across the maps, her mouth forming words silently.

Slowly, she nods. “Your math is wrong in some places-” Kelly curses herself, because of course it is, she hates math- “But otherwise, with a few tweaks, this is viable. Other than a First Alert system, however, do you have plans for defenses?”

Kelly stares at her, and then sits. “Oh, bloody hell.”

Polly smiles tightly. “Now, now. Go get some sleep while I tighten up the math, and then we’ll talk about defenses.”

******
When she wakes up, the entire school is talking about the Kelly Jones Intruder Alert System.

She feels like a fucking heroine.

Polly just smiles at her.

******
They build the defenses slowly. Polly insists on it.

“Weapons against each other are one thing,” she says, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “Weapons designed to take out an enemy are another.”

She sounds deadly serious, and Kelly doesn’t push the issue. Polly starts spending hours in the chemistry labs, so Kelly joins the hockey team in self-defense. Polly will not be in the chemistry lab if Kelly is with her. It’s a sore point between them, one with which Kelly has filled an entire poetry journal.

Kelly finds that she likes hockey. There’s a certain joy to be found in playing a sport. She likes running around a field. She likes trying to get a small ball into a net. She likes finding new, creative ways to cheat. She likes getting into fist fights. It’s good, clean fun.

The practices are nice, though they don’t have them as often as Kelly had hoped, so her plan of joining the hockey team to fill up her Polly-free time is sort of a bust. Miss Cleaver tries to get them organized, but it’s a bit like herding cats. Feral ones. She convinced Andrea to join, but Andrea isn’t as into it as her. Taylor is just as competitive as herself, almost scarily so. Jamie looks ready to eat people, which amuses Kelly. Celia lies in the corner of the field and reads. Miss Cleaver gives her pep-talk about Basra, which… isn’t very peppy, really, and then they half-heartedly hit the ball around until someone ends up bleeding.

The games, though… Kelly loves the games. She puts up with the incredibly boring practices just for the games. They lose half of them because of horrendous discipline, and Miss Cleaver sobs, but Kelly just gets to run and run and run, and hit things, and at the end of each of them, Polly is there, handing her a water bottle and shaking her head, saying, “I just do not understand.”

And then Kelly hugs her, covered in sweat, and Polly shrieks, and it’s worth it every time.

Her parents never come to the games, though. That stings, a little, because Kelly scores at least one goal every game.

******
“Please, Kelly, be at least a little happy for me?” Polly begs, and Kelly can’t be, she really can’t, because her best friend is going away to Germany for the summer, and she’s going to be stuck with her parents.

“You’re going to Germany,” she says snidely. “Which is, you’ll notice, where I am not.”

“I know, but there are some great research opportunities, and Grandmum has been saving for two years to send me to the Max Planck Institute of Physics in Munich, and I can study string theory with Dieter Lüst…”

“You’re such a selfish cunt, Polly,” Kelly snaps, and she doesn’t even finish the sentence before she knows she’s said a really awful thing. Polly is always pale, but she goes paler, folds her hands in front of her, purses her lips, and just looks at Kelly.

“I think you already know what a horrendous thing that was to say, Kelly,” she says neatly, turns, and walks out of the room.

“Wow, Kelly,” says Harriet, one of Polly’s other friends and fellow Geek. “You’re a pillock.”

******
So maybe running away from home is not the brightest thing she has ever done, but Kelly is desperate. Polly hasn’t returned a single phone call, and Kelly knows every single reason why what she said was inexcusable, but she needs Polly to talk to her in order to apologize, grovel, beg, and plead.

Now she’s on a train to Germany, courtesy of her grandparents, hoping that Polly will open to the door to hotel room and not immediately slam it in her face.

She’s also hoping that her mother will get the note she left on her bed, and not her father.

******
Polly opens the door to her hotel room and immediately bursts into laughter.

All right, maybe the four dozen roses and three boxes of chocolates are a bit much, but Kelly is desperate.

******
“Again, please,” Polly says, biting into a chocolate and wrinkling her nose at the coconut inside. Kelly sighs and clears her throat.

“Kelly Jones is dumb/She should think before she speaks/Polly is awesome,” she recites dutifully. Polly nods.

“And?”

“And just because someone isn’t answering their phone doesn’t mean that they’re still angry. It could mean that their phone is off. Or they’re busy. Or, like you, they dropped it in the Channel.”

“Correct. You may eat a chocolate.”

Kelly eats a chocolate, and grimaces when she tastes the cherry underneath. She hates cherry. She and Polly should have switched. She loves coconut. “We need to get you away from haikus,” she says instead. Polly shrugs.

“They’re functionally useful. And there are several different forms. That’s just the basic one they teach schoolchildren. I could teach you harder ones.”

Kelly shrugs. “I think I’m giving up poetry.”

“Only after you put that one on the wall next to the science classroom.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“What will you do if you give up poetry?” Polly asks, eating another chocolate. Kelly shrugs again, sighing. She hasn’t given it much thought. She just knows she isn’t cut out to write poetry. It’s a shame, really. Emos write poetry. It’s what they do.

“I don’t know,” she says honestly. “Music, maybe?”

“I play violin,” Polly says, surprising her. “I could teach you.”

“I didn’t know you played.”

Polly laughs. “You don’t know a lot about me.”

“Tell me something about you that I don’t know,” Kelly challenges, rolling up on her side to look at Polly. Polly smiles at her, a wide one, daring and beautiful. She doesn’t smile that smile very often. Kelly likes that one.

“I have a tattoo,” Polly says, and Kelly sits straight up, gobsmacked.

“No, you don’t,” she says, and Polly laughs.

“I do.”

“You’re lying! Jews can’t have tattoos!”

Polly snorts. “Yes, because there is someone in a tattoo parlor who checks if you’re Jewish and kicks you out if you want a tattoo.”

“But-”

“You can’t get buried in a Jewish cemetery if you have a tattoo. But that was never the goal anyway. I got a tattoo when I was twelve, courtesy of Grandmum,” Polly says. Kelly stares at her.

“Your grandmum is wicked,” Kelly says. “My parents would kill me if I got a tattoo.”

“Yes, they would.”

“What is it? Where is it?”

Polly lifts herself up and hitches down her trousers a bit, just showing off her hipbone, where a small Hebrew symbol sits. Kelly doesn’t know a lick of Hebrew, so she looks at Polly in askance.

“Shalom,” she says simply. “A straightforward tattoo, but- it means something to me.”

Kelly touches it, feeling the heat of Polly’s skin, wondering at it. She can feel Polly breathing underneath her hand, and she presses her hand down flat against Polly’s hip, covering not just her tattoo but the entire bone. She slides her hand upwards, marveling at how soft Polly’s skin is, and drifts her hand across Polly’s stomach and over to her belly button, waiting for Polly to yell at her, to scold her.

Polly lets her.

Kelly stops.

******
She gets an angry phone call from her father and a sad one from her mother, but her grandparents call to tell her they’re funding a summer abroad, and that she should study up on German culture. Kelly and Polly rattle around Germany, spend a week in France and test their French lessons together (Polly’s French is much smoother, but Kelly soon overtakes her), and when Polly goes back to whatever her Grandmum Judith was actually shelling out money for, Kelly just takes trains all over Europe. She visits the Netherlands, Italy, Austria, Poland, Croatia, Denmark, Romania, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Spain, Portugal, wherever else strikes her fancy at a moments notice. She picks up pieces of languages, meets hundreds of people, visits monuments and memorials, and takes thousands upon thousands of pictures. She lives out of one suitcase, bathes in rivers and fountains, and at the end of every week comes home to Polly, who looks up from her computer and smiles.

Best. Summer. Ever.

******

(When she gets home to her parents, she proudly sports her new tattoo. Her father has an apoplectic fit. Her mother just sighs.)

******
Cassidy Bishop, Geek, new Head Girl, is shockingly hard to steal from. Kelly supposes she shouldn’t be surprised- Polly, after all, has the security protocols of a bank- but a Head Girl is supposed to wear the badge, and she doesn’t see it anywhere on Cassidy.

She asks Polly, and Polly just smiles. “Yes, Cassidy is a clever one.”

Kelly frowns. “What do you mean?”

“She’s wearing it.”

“I don’t see it.”

“No.”

“Polly.”

“Kelly.”

“You put her up to this.”

“Perhaps.”

“How am I supposed to steal something I can’t see?”

Polly tsks and returns to her book on Dungeons and Dragons- apparently, she’s the new Dungeon Master for the St. Trinian’s chapter, and Andrea has been putting the pressure on for a really good campaign.

Kelly huffs in frustration and takes to observing Cassidy. The entire school is watching her, she knows. It’s become tradition for her to steal the Head Girl badge within the first twenty-four hours, except for her first year, because she was a First Year and she hadn’t gotten the idea yet. If she doesn’t succeed, the tradition will be broken, her reputation will be ruined, and it will be like breaking a mirror.

Or something.

Cassidy is a small, brown-haired girl that makes petite seem like an American footballer. Her glasses are oversized, her teeth hang over her bottom lip, her feet turn in towards themselves, and she generally looks like if you said “boo,” she would wet herself. Yet from what Polly has told her, the exact opposite is true. Cassidy makes other girls cry just by looking at them. She’s apparently slated to be the VP of a Fortune 500 company once she graduates. Kelly can’t help but be impressed with her.

She’ll be more impressed with her after she’s stolen the Head Girl badge.

Kelly follows her for half of the day, sneaking through the halls, hiding in the shadows when Cassidy starts to turn around. Other St. Trinian’s girls see her and giggle, but Kelly gestures them into silence, and they maintain straight faces whenever Cassidy turns. She spends a great deal of time walking in the corridor full of windows, which Kelly can’t figure out, until suddenly she does when the sunlight glints off her hair.

There it is.

Polly, you git, she thinks. How am I supposed to get that?

Kelly sets up a few girls as look-outs and runs up to her room for the experimental harness that she and Polly had been working on last year and glares at Polly, who is lounging on her bed.

“Thank you,” she snaps, and Polly smiles serenely.

“I thought you might like a chance to try it out,” she says.

“Yes, asking Cassidy to hide the Head Girl badge in the underside of her ponytail, I appreciate that,” Kelly sneers, carefully strapping on the harness. “And if I fall on top of her because the experimental harness is still, you know, experimental?”

“Enjoy it?” Polly says innocently, picking up a book at random from her pile.

Kelly ignores the pang of hurt that statement brings and instead runs out of the dorm, hoping that Cassidy is somewhere she can use the harness.

The girls she stationed as look-outs inform her that Cassidy has gone to lunch, which is absolutely perfect. She can hook up the harness to the ceiling and rappel down. Then she just has to pick out the badge from underneath her hair, which will be difficult, but not impossible. She’s done harder in the past. The hard part will be hooking up the harness without Cassidy seeing her.

Apparently Cassidy is as oblivious as Polly when reading, because she doesn’t look up from her work while Kelly carefully scales up the walls using her climbing spikes (a gift from Andrea for her birthday) and then, equally carefully, secures her harness to the ceiling above Cassidy. Everyone else notices, including all the teachers and Miss Fritton, but not Cassidy. Then Kelly carefully rappels down, upside down, and sets to work, sliding her hand underneath Cassidy’s ponytail, feeling for the clasp, closing her eyes so she can wait for the familiar weight of the badge falling into her hand.

It falls.

Unfortunately, so does she. Kelly feels the harness begin to give just in time, and swings to the side, landing next to Cassidy with a thud, the rappelling wire and harness falling from the ceiling and onto the ground and bench, just missing Cassidy. She looks at Cassidy in horror, expecting to see an irate Head Girl. Instead, Cassidy just turns a page on her eBook, expertly guiding a fork into her mouth. Kelly stands shakily, gathering her broken harness, and pins the badge to her clothes. She turns to the stunned dining hall, bows, salutes Miss Fritton, and then runs out of there as fast as she can on wobbly knees.

She returns the badge to a laughing Cassidy later, who has heard the story from fifty or so stunned St. Trinian’s girls.

“Must say, Jones. I thought my security measures were up to snuff. Never thought to protect myself from people stupid enough to rappel from experimental harnesses. That was a good one!” she laughs, punching Kelly, hard, on the arm.

Miss Fritton returns her climbing spikes and offers personal suggestions on how to improve the experimental harness.

******
“Maybe dancing,” Kelly says, flipping through her poetry journals. Polly considers.

“I thought you didn’t like swing dancing.”

“I’m thinking ballet.”

“Well, maybe tap.”

“Jazz?”

"Clog dancing."

“Maybe not.”

******
The defense system is still being considered. Polly has a number of chemical weapons that are ready, but no way to implement them. Kelly considers the different vials and test tubes.

“Maybe- maybe we could just pour them on intruders?” she suggests. Polly shrugs.

“Inelegant, but a possibility, yes. I also have a few suggestions on how to build grenades with them.”

“Oh, fancy.”

“Quite.”

******
Things get a little weird in the world of Emos.

Namely, things get a little weird when Andrea kisses her.

“Wait, what?” Kelly says, drawing back, staring at her, trying to wipe away Andrea’s lipstick without smudging her own.

“I like girls!” Andrea blurts, and then bursts into tears. “I’m sorry!”

“Wait, what?” Kelly repeats, feeling like a damned idiot. “No, wait. What?”

Yes, she thinks. Damned idiot. Kelly Jones, exhibit A.

“I’m sorry, it won’t happen again,” Andrea says, wiping her eyes and getting mascara everywhere. Kelly presses a hand to her eyes. She didn’t wake up with a migraine, she’s sure of it.

“No, Andrea. I’m not angry, I’m just surprised. Do you actually like me, or are you just kissing me because you’re certain I won’t punch you?”

“Are you going to punch me?” Andrea asks, eyes going wide, further smudging her mascara and eyeliner. Kelly shakes her head quickly.

“No!”

“Do you like girls?” Andrea asks, eyes suddenly going narrow.

This is all too much, Kelly decides. This is all too much, and she’s going to wake up, and it’s all going to be a dream.

“No! Yes! I don’t know!” she shouts.

Which is how she finds herself crying on Andrea’s shoulder about how she might- might- have a crush on Polly, maybe, and might have had a crush on Polly since they were, like, thirteen, maybe twelve, but how do you figure out if you like boys if it’s all girls, all the time, anyway?

Which is how she finds herself making out with Andrea, who is her other best friend.

This is not how this day was supposed to happen.

******
“So you’re dating Andrea,” Polly says, and Kelly chokes on her pear.

“Who said I’m dating Andrea?” Kelly says, after a helpful First Year performs the Heimlich and she ruins her eggs. Polly stares at her, unimpressed.

“Only half of the school. The other half says Andrea is dating you. I don’t see the distinction, myself, but people are telling me there is one, and I’ll trust people who understand these things,” Polly says. Kelly stares at her.

“Is this a problem?” she asks.

“Well, there will be one if you keep saying that you’re not dating Andrea. I’m told that if one half of the lesbian couple insists on remaining closeted, the other half will become dissatisfied. Unless Andrea is closeted as well. Then no, there isn’t a problem,” Polly says, taking a sip of orange juice.

Kelly stares at her. How is it that Polly can make everything sound so clinical?

******
She and Andrea don’t really date in a normal way. For one, there’s the whole, I-sort-of-maybe-love-Polly thing hanging over their head. Two, they don’t really kiss. Or hug. Or hold hands. Probably because of one. But they do go on dates. Kelly sneaks them out of the school to go to the cinema, and to supper, and she gets them awesome fake IDs so they can go to clubs and stare moodily at everyone else.

Andrea teaches her how to paint.

Since Kelly has given up on ever being Anne Sexton, and she’s always admired Andrea’s artistic ability, Andrea offers one night to take her into the studio and show her a few tricks, and a few tricks turns into night after night of painting lessons, and soon, Kelly finds that the what she’s painting resembles things. She beams at Andrea, and Andrea beams back, and she finds herself kissing Andrea without thinking about Polly at all.

It’s kind of amazing.

******
“So, Harriet asked me out,” Polly says conversationally, contemplating something on her computer screen. Kelly glances up from her book in surprise.

“Really?”

“Yes. Bosonic string theory or heteronic string theory, what do you think?”

Only Polly, Kelly thinks, could get asked out and be more concerned with science. “Polly,” she says. “Focus.”

“I am focused. It’s quite the decision to make.”

“Fine, the bee one, can we get back to the girl who asked you out?” Kelly says impatiently, dropping her book on the ground. Polly glares at her and picks it up, setting it on her bedside table.

“Bosonic is outdated, but I guess it will make a fine screensaver,” Polly mumbles, and taps in a few keystrokes. Kelly groans and throws herself backwards on the bed.

“All this over a screensaver?”

“They’re important.”

“So is dating.”

“Not to me,” Polly says demurely.

“So what did you say to her?” Kelly asks, sitting upright again. Polly ignores her, watching her computer. Kelly doesn’t know what it’s doing, but she imagines it’s something to do with string. Polly once tried to explain string theory to her, but Kelly wound up pulling out her shoelaces and teaching her cat’s cradle instead. Apparently, no one had taught her when she was young. Tragic, really. “Polly!” she says, snapping her fingers under Polly’s nose.

Polly looks up with bland interest. “Oh, I agreed. Harriet is my friend.”

Kelly stares at her. “Well then. We both have girlfriends. Isn’t that quaint.”

Polly hums and turns her attention back to her computer. “Indeed.”

******
(Watching Polly and Harriet together makes her want to cry a little.)

(She fills an entire poetry journal in a week.)

(Andrea’s a bit impressed, actually.)

******
“Harriet and I broke up,” Polly says, carefully painting the storm on Jupiter. Kelly smudges one of Saturn’s rings and then puts the tiny planet down before she can do further damage. Polly will murder her if she destroys their science project.

“I’m sorry?” she asks.

“Harriet and I broke up,” Polly repeats, eyeing the storm critically before adding some more orange to the tip of her paintbrush. The room is plastered in photos of the planets from telescopes and drones and probes and other things that Kelly wasn’t paying attention to- science and maths, not her subjects- and Polly has insisted on utter accuracy for their project. Each paint is labeled with their corresponding hex numbers, and Polly had gone through and figured out the hex numbers of the planets. It’s a little frightening, sometimes, how Polly’s mind works.

“You’ve only been dating for two weeks!” Kelly exclaims. “Why did you break up?”

Polly shrugs before dipping her brush in a02000. “A variety of reasons. We’re better friends than girlfriends. I didn’t like kissing. She’s pining after Bianca and just doesn’t realize it. We’re both too busy with our work. Two Geeks dating is always very difficult, Kelly,” she says, looking serious. “The work must come first.”

Kelly picks up Saturn again, dips her brush in 4020a0, and resumes painting. “I’m so sorry,” she says, trying to actually sound it.

“It’s fine,” Polly says, smiling. “And no, you’re not.”

She wonders, sometimes, what it would be like to have a friend she could actually keep secrets from.

******
“Do you ever get tired of yearning?” Andrea asks wistfully, staring up at the stars. They’re walking back from the restaurant, hand in hand, after a very successful date, and now Kelly wants to cringe.

She indulges in the desire. She cringes. “I don’t yearn, Andrea.”

Andrea looks up at her. “Kelly, you yearn. You pine. You, dare I say, hanker.”

“Oh, I don’t do anything so pedestrian as hanker.”

“I’ve read your poetry journals. You hanker.”

Kelly sighs. “I do care about you, Andrea.”

Andrea smiles. “I know, Kelly. I don’t doubt that. But if Polly woke up one day and realized she loved you, I also know that you would dump me and marry her.”

Kelly scowls. “I would not.”

Andrea considers for a moment, stepping over the cracks in the sidewalk. She’s odd like that. She can’t step on any cracks in the pavement. Kelly has never asked why. “No,” Andrea finally says. “You wouldn’t. You’d wait a week, break it to me slowly.”

Kelly stops walking and lets go of Andrea’s hand so she can put both hands on her own hips. “Then why are you dating me?”

“Because I think you’re sweet. And I know that while you like Polly, you like me too.” Andrea smiles at her, then stands up on tiptoes and kisses her. Kelly likes kissing Andrea. She always puts some teeth into it. When she pulls back, she smiles again. “You can like more than one person at the same time.”

“I do get tired of yearning,” Kelly confesses.

“Hankering,” Andrea teases.

“Languishing,” Kelly decides.

“You aren’t languishing,” Andrea corrects. “You have me.”

******
Andrea’s the type of Emo who sleeps in a coffin.

Yeah, she’d forgotten that complication.

She’s going to have bruises in the morning.

******
Polly keeps staring at her.

“What?” Kelly asks.

“You have a bruise beneath your tattoo,” Polly says. “It wasn’t there yesterday.”

Kelly grins.

******
She starts considering things with Andrea to be serious. They already had Clique time together, those little moments when Emos automatically come together, but now Kelly starts carving out parts of her day that used to go to other things and seeking out Andrea instead. She starts doing her homework with Andrea, which is different. Andrea isn’t as strong a student, less focused and prone to rushing through her assignments in order to do things she enjoys, which ends up bothering Kelly more than she thought. Kelly winds up tutoring Andrea in a few subjects, just the ones that she genuinely seems to struggle with.

In the evenings, when she would usually sit with Polly and read or talk, she goes on dates with Andrea instead, either going out or staying in, depending on who picks. Sometimes they try to be clever and come up with things that only they would like (Andrea once surprised her by taking her to a slam poetry reading in a smoky coffeehouse), while other times they just watch films on their laptops (they may be fifteen, but they always cry at the end of Old Yeller).

She starts eating breakfast with Andrea, feeding her strawberries and grapes, giggling the entire time. Various St. Trinian’s girls make gagging noises from around the hall.

(If she sees the looks of hurt that Polly keeps shooting her way, she ignores them. She’s tired of yearning.)

******
“I want to break-up,” Andrea says, nearly five months into their relationship.

“Wait, what?” Kelly says, realizing after she says it that it’s the first thing she said to Andrea when they began their relationship. She tries again. “This is out of nowhere!”

Andrea gives her a strange look. “Kelly, we never really talk. We just snog.”

Kelly smiles as lasciviously as she can. “Is that a problem?”

“Yes.”

Kelly deflates. “Oh.”

“Besides, I’m interested in Zoe now.”

“Zoe’s straight.”

Andrea shrugs. “I can pine from afar. It’s worked for you.”

Kelly deflates further.

******
Kelly walks over to where Polly is sitting, in front of her chemistry bench, and smiles tentatively. “Hey,” she says. Polly looks up and smiles back.

“Hello.”

“What are you doing?”

“Science,” she says shortly. Kelly waits for her to say more, but nothing else comes, and she ends up dragging her spike heel along the ground, watching as a black scuff mark appears on the tile. Polly doesn’t watch. Polly doesn’t say anything at all.

“Andrea and I broke up,” Kelly finally blurts. Polly nods.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry for being a horrible friend,” Kelly continues, and Polly puts down her tongs, looking at her over her glasses.

“Yes, well, I’ve heard sex can do that to a person.”

“It was just snogging,” she mumbles awkwardly, and Polly smirks.

“Five months of it. Five months of you ignoring me. I perfected your defense system, by the way. You can implement it any time you’re ready,” Polly says, and she returns to her science. Kelly wonders if it’s chemistry or physics or astronomy or biology. She can’t tell from this angle.

She shifts from one foot to the other. “I’m waiting for the fury.”

“Oh?”

“Yes, where’s the rage?”

Polly smiles up at her, perfectly innocent.

In retrospect, she really should have seen it coming. When Polly tips the Erlenmeyer flask on her, the liquid eats through all her clothes, and she has to walk back to her dorm naked.

******
Since she’s already done the roses and chocolates apology, the new apology has to be perfect.

She doesn’t know if it’s perfect, but she names the new defense system the Hopkins Defense System, and then she digs through all of the poetry books she owns until she finds the perfect poem.

She goes to sleep knowing that Polly will find this on her bed:

Sometimes we collide, tectonic plates merging,
continents shoving, crumpling down into the molten
veins of fire deep in the earth and raising
tons of rock into jagged crests of Sierra.

Sometimes your hands drift on me, milkweed's
airy silk, wingtip's feathery caresses,
our lips grazing, a drift of desires gathering
like fog over warm water, thickening to rain.

Sometimes we go to it heartily, digging,
burrowing, grunting, tossing up covers
like loose earth, nosing into the other's
flesh with hot nozzles and wallowing there.

Sometimes we are kids making out, silly
in the quilt, tickling the xylophone spine,
blowing wet jokes, loud as a whole
slumber party bouncing till the bed breaks.

I go round and round you sometimes, scouting,
blundering, seeking a way in, the high boxwood
maze I penetrate running lungs bursting
toward the fountain of green fire at the heart.

Sometimes you open wide as cathedral doors
and yank me inside. Sometimes you slither
into me like a snake into its burrow.
Sometimes you march in with a brass band.

Ten years of fitting our bodies together
and still they sing wild songs in new keys.
It is more and less than love: timing,
chemistry, magic and will and luck.

One plus one equal one, unknowable except
in the moment, not convertible into words,
not explicable or philosophically interesting.
But it is. And it is. And it is. Amen.

******
“You left me a poem,” Polly says, waking her.

Kelly groans, glances at the time, and then groans again. “Polly, do you know what time it is?”

“You left me ‘The Implications of One Plus One’,” Polly says. “By Marge Piercy.”

“It’s four a.m., Polly. Four in the morning.”

“You left me a poem that has math in it. By my favorite poet.”

“Four- oh.” Kelly sits up a little, squinting at Polly. “I didn’t realize she was your favorite poet. I didn’t realize you liked poetry.”

Polly frowns at her. “I’m not a complete computer nerd, Kelly. Geeks can like the arts, too.”

“Well, obviously,” Kelly snorts. “Look at Harriet. And you play violin, apparently.”

Polly smiles, tightly, and then hugs her. “You’re forgiven. I’ll let you go back to sleep. Thank you for the poem. It’s one of my favorites.”

Polly disappears into the darkness, presumably back to her bed, and Kelly shakes her head, throwing herself backwards into her pillow.

It is too late to deal with this sort of thing.

******
They run tests against the Hopkins Defense System. Bianca looks about ready to kill her when she nearly gets impaled in the pit of bamboo spikes, and Chelsea sobs hysterically for three hours when her hair gets burned off after the flamethrowers go a little haywire, but Anoushka fixes it by trimming her hair into a neat bob. Polly notes everyone’s reactions with a pleased smile.

“If this is how our volunteers react, imagine how intruders will,” she says, nodding as Celia yells about animal rights even as she runs from the crocodiles they imported from Egypt. That was all Kelly’s idea. Every moat needs crocodiles.

“Girls, how are the tests going?” Miss Fritton asks, coming up behind them. Kelly turns to look at her, but Polly doesn’t take her eyes off of the girls running and screaming.

“Quite well, Miss,” she says. “Maximum potential casualties, though we’ve eliminated them from our girls, of course.”

Miss Fritton claps her hands in delight as she watches the archers (Volunteer Group A) take aim at the intruders (Volunteer Group B). “Delightful! That’s what I like to hear. Are you using longbows or crossbows?”

“Fire!” Polly shouts, ignoring Miss Fritton. Kelly watches with pleasure as the arrows fly and the intruders scream and duck.

“We’re using both, actually, and testing the air resistance,” Kelly explains.

Miss Fritton nods. “Bolts and arrows each have their own merits, I feel.”

“Medic!” one of the girls on the field screams.

Polly makes a note in her notebook.

“Climbing over the barbed wire next, I think,” Kelly says.

******
Keesa is smiling at her, and Kelly can’t stop grinning.

“You’re joking, aren’t you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“No, you have to be.”

“Emos don’t joke. Or at least I don’t. I’m naming you the new Emo leader.”

Kelly grins wider, and then covers her mouth, and then grabs her necklace, which hurts. Polly made her necklace out of the leftover barbed wire, which was a sweet gesture, but she has to be careful not to grip it too hard. “But why?” she asks. She’s never been able to figure out the mystical formula.

Keesa snorts. “Because you singlehandedly created the school’s defense system?”

“But I didn’t,” she protests. “Polly helped me.”

“And if Polly were Emo, I might have a problem choosing,” Keesa says, standing and adjusting her skirt. It’s covered in hand-stitched skulls. Kelly has always admired Keesa’s ability to sew. Maybe that’s the art she should have pursued, sewing. She can knit. She should knit something. “Congratulations, Kelly. You earned it.”

Keesa wanders away, hips and locks swaying. Kelly watches her go, staring in shock.

She earned it.

Well, fancy that.

******
In the morning, there is a new poem by the science classroom:

My soul
Is bright like the day
And cheerful
Like a rose
I still can’t write a poem
But by God
I can try

******
Polly is sitting on the foot of her bed when she wakes up.

“For an agnostic, you’re rather obsessed with the state of your soul,” Polly says calmly.

“Christ, Polly, can’t you just shake me awake like a normal person?” Kelly asks, nearly falling out of bed in her shock. Polly tilts her head to the side, watching her.

“I could, but what would be the fun. I assume, from your poem, that you’ve been named Emo leader?”

Kelly drags herself further onto her bed, tugging her bedclothes more fully around her and closing her eyes, trying to return to that blessed state of sleep she was in before. One of the things she had before she knew Polly was more sleep. “Yes. I earned it,” she coos, smiling to herself. She can practically feel Polly nod.

“Excellent. I was named the Geek leader. Next year is going to be fun.”

Kelly feels her heart skip a beat. In horror or in excitement she can’t tell.

******
Her parents basically give up on the Polly issue.

“Whatever,” her father says.

“She seems… nice,” her mother allows.

“She got hot,” Alfred grunts.

“What is with her skirt?” Tom says.

Polly laughs and laughs and laughs.

They drift between Kelly’s house, Polly’s house, and Kelly’s grandparent’s house, not doing much of anything just relaxing, and then it’s time to go back to school- early, as the leaders of their Cliques, to set up for the school year.

******
Kelly thinks she probably could steal the Head Girl badge off JJ French before the school year even begins, but that would be no fun, because no one other than Polly and the other Clique leaders would get to see it.

She can see JJ French watching her, though.

It’s a bit funny, that.

******
“Edna St. Vincent Millay,” she says to Polly as she puts name tags on different beds. Polly looks up, blinks, and then looks back down at her label maker.

“We haven’t played this game since we were fourth formers,” she comments, printing out SARAH MORGAN, sticking it on an index card, and handing it to Kelly. Kelly shrugs.

“I read some of her work yesterday.”

Polly sighs and prints off another name. “And is she a yes, a no, or are you waffling?”

Kelly considers, putting SARAH MORGAN on one bed, and taking the next card from Polly. This card is PRUDENCE WHITEFALLS. Kelly can’t imagine a girl named Prudence. She feels sorry for the poor girl already. She vows to take her under her wing. She’ll surely be an Emo, anyway. What girl named Prudence wouldn’t be?

“I like that she’s a feminist,” she says, and Polly hums, printing off yet another name. CALLISTA QING. One of Polly’s friends. “But she’s very formulaic.”

“So you’re waffling.”

“I like her name.”

“Edna?”

“St. Vincent.”

“She was named after the hospital her uncle didn’t die in,” Polly sniffs, rolling her eyes. Kelly looks at her in disbelief.

“Did you swallow Wikipedia or something?”

******
Two days before classes start, the teachers announce that they’re striking.

“Striking?” Kelly asks, and JJ nods in sheer horror.

“Striking. It’s a disaster. Miss Fritton has locked herself in her office. I think she’s trying to drown herself.”

“Is it wages?” Polly asks, stepping forward from where the other Clique leaders are clustered. JJ shakes her head.

“No. The teachers were recently reviewed by a parent’s group, and the parents didn’t like how, well, drunk the teachers were all the time. They threatened to withdraw their girls, and get other parents to do the same. So Miss Fritton took away their alcohol,” JJ explains.

Kelly frowns. Polly frowns. They frown at JJ in unison.

“This,” Kelly says, “is easily fixed. Get me the names of those parents.”

******
It isn’t that Kelly is a bad driver. It’s just that Polly doesn’t feel safe when Kelly drives, which is how Kelly winds up wedged in the back between Peaches, one of the Posh-Totty Triumvirate Leaders, and Violet, the new Chav leader. Eve, the new Eco leader, is reading the map to Polly in the front seat.

“Turn left here,” she says. Polly turns the wheel sharply, and Kelly somehow ends up in Violet’s lap. Violet gives her a dark look.

“Get off me, or you’ll be seeing the inside of Eve’s stomach.” Kelly scrambles to comply.

She does so love St. Trinian’s outings.

******
Getting the first parent to retract their complaint is just a matter of making Violet ring his doorbell. He takes one look at her, wets himself, and is happy to call Miss Fritton and insist that the teachers drink what they want, when they want. He pours himself a drink as Violet climbs back in the car.

It’s handy, Kelly thinks, having a three-hundred pound Chav bruiser as a friend.

“You’re breathing too loud. Stop it, or you’ll end up seeing the inside of Eve’s stomach,” Violet complains.

Well. Not quite friend.

******
The next parent doesn’t retract their complaint as quickly, but it turns out she’s been responsible for her own orgasms for nearly twenty-four years. After Peaches sits down with her and gives her the number for the Posh-Totty hotline, a good escort service, and just listens to her talk for a while, Mrs. Jutson tearfully says that she just didn’t understand what St. Trinian’s was all about, and calls Miss Fritton to take back her complaint.

“Your hair is in my face,” Violet says.

“Sorry,” Kelly says, and moves before she can see the inside of Eve’s stomach.

******
At the next house, Eve assists elderly Mr. Said with his gardenias. Violet helps him arrange them in a vase, and Polly removes all the viruses from his computer. Kelly takes out his trash, and Peaches walks his dog, an obnoxious Chow named Mr. Yum-Yum.

He calls Miss Fritton.

******
They stop at fourteen houses that day, doing what needs to be done. By the time they get back to St. Trinian’s, they’re tired and cranky; they’ve been chased and bitten by pets, children, and, memorably, a spouse. They’ve been laughed at, yelled at, and feared. Kelly has had more holy water thrown on her today than her entire life, and she used to be Catholic. She’s tired of people praying for her soul.

On the upside, as she limps up to the doors, Violet leaning on her, she can hear the drunken revelry already.

JJ greets them at the doors.

“Miss Fritton returned their alcohol thirty minutes ago,” she announces, beaming at them. “You saved the day!”

“Goodie,” Kelly grunts. “Where’s ours?”

JJ laughs and turns away.

In retaliation, Kelly nicks her Head Girl badge and doesn’t return it until after school starts.

******
It’s a bit boring, being leader, actually.

Not much changes from the every day routine. She goes to classes, she sits with Polly, she does her homework (or doesn’t do her homework, depending on her mood), she reads poetry, and occasionally, if things are looking up, an Emo will come to her with a problem, and she’ll act like Queen Solomon and tell them to cut the makeup case in half.

(Polly tells her that she can’t keep using that as her default decision, that it doesn’t always work, but it’s done well for her so far.)

(She ignores the water bottle incident, when they actually cut the water bottle in half, and there was water still in it.)

She takes up smoking for lack of anything better to do, which hacks off Polly to no end. This only makes her want to keep smoking, to watch Polly scrunch up her face in frustration and irritation. Polly spends her nights watching a particular meteor or star or comet (astrophysics, astronomy- not Kelly’s hat), so Kelly spends her nights on the roof, smoking.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Polly says irritably, refocusing her telescope. Kelly takes another puff on her cigarette and smiles.

“Smoke?”

“No, I’ve accepted that you’re going to ignore both doctors and myself in that. I wish you wouldn’t blow the smoke in my face.”

Kelly obediently redirects both her cigarette and herself, blowing her smoke out over the empty fields, watching as Polly stares up at the stars through the tube of lenses. Kelly leans against the stones, looks up at the sky, and sighs.

“She cared not a rap for all the big planets/for Betelgeuse or Aldebaran/and all the big planets cared nothing for her/that small impertinent charlatan/but she climbed on a Kentish stile in the moonlight/and laughed at the sky through the sticks of her fan,” Kelly quotes, smiling to herself. Polly looks up from her telescope.

“Vita Sackville-West. ‘Full Moon,’ correct?”

Kelly grins. “Right.”

“Yes, no, or waffling on Sackville-West?”

“I like her well enough.”

“Despite how formulaic she is?”

“You’re teasing me!”

Polly’s smile is small, but Kelly can just make it out in the dim light of the moon. Despite the poem, it’s waning tonight.

“You have opinions on poetry, Kel.”

“You have opinions on science, Pol.”

Polly’s smile brightens. It’s her wide, daring smile. Kelly’s favorite.

Kelly grins back.

******
She’s painting a landscape- a memory of Romania- when Andrea approaches her, nervous and skittish. She’s been like that ever since they broke up, which is silly. Kelly was never upset. Never heartbroken. She thinks she probably should have acted it, just a bit, but Andrea always knew that she’s been a little in love with Polly from the beginning.

“Andrea?” she asks, putting down her paintbrush and frowning.

“Kelly, there’s a problem. In the courtyard. It’s Polly.”

Kelly doesn’t even think. She just runs.

******
Violet catches her on her way to the courtyard and takes her to the infirmary. Polly is sitting on the end of one bed, Matron gently encasing her arm in plaster. She looks banged up and annoyed. Kelly presses a hand to her mouth and rushes forward.

“What happened? Who did this to you? I’m going to pound them raw,” she says, not caring that Matron is standing right there.

“Then be prepared to give me a black eye,” Polly says dryly. Kelly frowns.

“What?”

“I was sitting on the stone railing, and part of it crumbled. I fell,” Polly explains, rolling her eyes. Kelly looks at Matron.

“What’s wrong with her arm?”

“It’s broken,” Polly says irritably, before Matron can say anything. Kelly spins and looks at Violet, who is frowning at her in worry.

“Violet, gather a team of people to take pictures of the crumbled wall. I want a full report waiting for me when I’m done here. It’s about time we take a look at the masonry around this place, see what needs to be fixed up,” Kelly orders, and Violet grins at her.

“Yes ma’am!” she says, before disappearing through the door silently. Kelly used to wonder how someone so large could be so silent until she found out that Violet is also an acclaimed ballet dancer. A Chav bruiser ballet dancer. Will wonders never cease?

“You’re being ridiculous,” Polly says, hissing a little when Matron settles the cast.

Kelly turns around and crosses her arms. “If it had been a First Year who fell, would you be saying that?”

Polly scowls at her. Kelly smirks.

Matron bustles away, and Polly looks down at her casted arm.

“Oh, bollocks,” she mutters. “How am I going to type with this?”

******
“You spelled Polyakov action wrong,” Polly says, gesturing to the screen with her cast.

“Oh my God,” Kelly says, throwing up her hands. “I’m going to kill you.”

Polly sighs, rubbing her eyes with her good hand. “Not if I kill you first,” she mutters.

“Why should you kill me?” Kelly says, spinning to look at Polly. “I’ve been generously typing your stupid papers, and you keep correcting me!”

Polly looks at her, incredulous. “Yes, because you keep spelling things wrong!”

“They’re stupid words!”

“They’re essential words!”

“Polly, in what world is quantum chromodynamics essential?”

“This world, Kelly! This world! Because it describes this world. This world wouldn’t exist without quantum chromodynamics!”

Kelly stares at Polly, and then looks back at her computer, where the cursor sits, blinking away. “That’s it,” she says. “I am done.”

Polly sits up straighter, which Kelly wouldn’t have thought humanly possible. Polly has the posture of a robot. A Cylon. The fact that Kelly knows that makes her feel a little ill inside. “You can’t be done,” Polly says. “I need to submit that to the journal by midnight tonight.”

“Then find someone else to type it,” Kelly snaps, standing up. Her fingertips are sore, and two of her nails are broken. All of her nail polish is chipped. “I quit. I should have quit when I spelled branes wrong.”

“You spelled it b-r-a-i-n-s, Kel.”

“Like a normal human being.”

“But not like a physicist,” Polly protests. Kelly looks back at her from the doorway and smiles faintly.

“What’s funny to me is that you’re not even a physicist. This is just a hobby to you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some construction to oversee.”

Kelly slides out the door and down the hall, breathing a sigh of relief. She’s an excellent student, despite the mishaps of years gone by (it’s been almost a year since Polly has mentioned the chemistry incident), but she’ll never be able to keep up with Polly. She hasn’t met a Geek yet who can keep up with Polly. Hell, from what she can tell from the published journal articles, most distinguished scientists can’t keep up with Polly, and Polly only publishes when she’s bored.

She steps out into the clean air and looks at the new construction projects. Violet is actually the one leading them. In addition to ballet, it turns out she harbors a fondness for architectural design. The girl has hidden depths. Andrea is working alongside her. She’d redesigned Dorm D a few years back, so she’s ideal for the task.

The girls are hard at work, carefully pouring cement into the artistic moulds that Violet had created especially for the stairs. Kelly walks over and Violet and Andrea look up.

“How’s the Queen of the Geeks?” Andrea asks.

“Bitchy,” Kelly answers honestly. Violet snorts.

“Doesn’t she have an article due soon?” she asks, and Kelly nods, looking at the blueprints they’re holding in their hands.

“Some string theory thing,” she tells them.

“I know cat’s cradle, and that’s about it,” Andrea says, and then points to a spot on the blueprints and looks at Violet. “I’m a bit worried about the structural integrity there. What do you think?”

“If we add a few wooden supports, I think we’ll be fine,” Violet says. “Kelly?”

Kelly adds her notes, comments on the beautiful floral design for the stairs (of course it’s floral, Violet designed it), and then wanders off to take a walk. She’s been cooped up with Polly for two days now, typing away and misspelling nearly everything, it seems.

She hopes Polly’s next article is on something simple, like computers. At least with that stuff she has a passing understanding.

******
When she gets back to her bed, it is late, and there is a scrap of paper on her bed. It reads:

If I could let you know-
two women together is a work
nothing in civilization has made simple,
two people together is a work
heroic in its ordinariness,
the slow-picked, halting traverse of a pitch
where the fiercest attention becomes routine
-look at the faces of those who have chosen it.

Kelly reads it and smiles.

******
“Did you know I love Adrienne Rich, or were you just guessing?” Kelly asks the next morning, sitting down across from Polly at breakfast. Polly awkwardly moves her porridge spoon to her other hand and looks at Kelly over her glasses.

“Of course I knew you liked Adrienne Rich,” Polly sniffs. “I wouldn’t have picked that portion of the poem if I thought you hated her.”

“I might have been waffling.”

“Kelly. It’s Adrienne Rich.”

Kelly smiles and bites into her sausage just to watch Polly grimace. She likes to eat pork in front of Polly. She makes the funniest faces. It’s not the kosher thing- Polly is pretty lax about keeping kosher. She just really hates pork.

“I’m sorry for becoming so cranky,” Polly says stiffly after swallowing some porridge. Kelly raises an eyebrow.

“I would say bitchy, but I’ll take cranky.”

Polly rolls her eyes. “I was tired, and sore, and the article was important,” she continues, as if Kelly hadn’t spoken. Kelly beheads her egg and looks at Polly curiously.

“Were you able to finish it?”

“Yes, Harriet finished typing it for me.”

“Good old Harriet. Did she understand it?”

“Not a word of it,” Polly says ruefully. “But she didn’t misspell anything, at least.”

“Those words,” Kelly says acidly, “do not exist in the regular English language.”

******
The masonry project is finished later that week.

Polly moves on to something called quasicrystals in solid-state physics.

Kelly just wants to cry.

******
“Audre Lorde,” Kelly says, her head on Polly’s thigh while Polly types. Her cast is newly off, and they’re celebrating by Polly typing as many research articles as she wants while Kelly doesn’t type at all. An odd celebration, but they’re enjoying the hell out of it.

“Yes, no, or waffling?”

“Hell yes.”

“I quite like her work as well,” Polly says, hitting the backspace key a few times, a frown crossing her face. She looks down at Kelly. “What do you think, should I annihilate this anthropologist or not?”

Kelly looks up with vague interest. “Oh, are you doing anthropology now?”

“Dabbling.”

“Sure, why not?”

Polly’s fingers fly across the keys, and Kelly smiles to herself, shutting her eyes.

******
No one expects the flood. Kelly tosses down another sandbag and yells for Eve to tell the First Years to buckle down and give up their sandbox to the cause. Below her, Peaches is wadding up a blouse and using it to stem the tide in one of the windows.

The rain has been bad for the time of year, but it’s England- the rain is always bad for the time of year. If it isn’t raining, it’s a drought. That’s life. It’s never flooded at St. Trinian’s before. Somewhere, though, something must have broken, or changed, because the entire ground floor is flooded, and the first floor is beginning to get a bit wet now too. Kelly is already up to her ankles, and that’s with four inch heels on.

Taylor runs up to her. “Kelly, the scuba divers are reporting leakages in ten percent of our sandbags. What do you recommend?”

Kelly curses and looks over at JJ, who is talking to Polly and generally not being all that useful. She sighs and looks back at Taylor. “Tell the scuba divers to take down duct tape and do what they can, all right?”

Taylor nods and runs off, her stockings sodden and slipping down her thighs. Kelly can only imagine she looks the same. It’s not a pretty sight. It doesn’t feel good, either. She longs to take her stockings off, but the water is freezing, and none of them have warm gear to change into. It’s all soaked through. The roof is leaking.

Miss Fritton runs up to her, wearing an umbrella hat. For a moment, Kelly hates her.

“What’s the situation, Miss Jones?” Miss Fritton asks, looking around the hall as an assembly line of girls tosses down sandbags to the scuba divers swimming around the ground floor. Kelly wipes rainwater out of her eyes and waits for the thunder to crack overhead before saying anything.

“Right now we’re just trying to keep the flood from getting worse by sending down sandbags and using them to block windows and doors. That’s all I have right now, Miss Fritton. I’ll send someone to report to you when I have more for you,” she says, aware that she sounds snappish. She’s cold, she’s wet, and she doesn’t have a plan. She isn’t the Headmistress. She’s just the Emo leader. They’re not even official leaders. It isn’t her job to save the bloody school.

“Very well, Miss Jones,” Miss Fritton says, and bounces away. Kelly shakes her head, and sloshes over to where Polly is talking to JJ.

“Any bright ideas?” she asks, listening to yet another crack of thunder. Polly looks at her and scowls. Kelly bites back a smile. Polly looks even more miserable than her. She can’t imagine what this is doing to her computer equipment. Not to mention the fact that Polly’s hair is plastered to her head.

“None. Evacuation,” Polly admits. She wipes her face futilely, and then sighs loudly. JJ pats her shoulder.

“Sorry, love,” she says.

“I don’t think we can evacuate,” Kelly says. “I think our bus is flooded.”

“Then we grow gills,” Polly snaps.

Polly, Kelly decides, really does not like being wet.

“Can we build something?” Kelly asks. “Like a vacuum? That soaks up water?”

Polly stares at her. Kelly stares back, unsure if the stare she’s getting is the stare of ‘you’re such an idiot, I can’t believe I associate with you’ or the stare of ‘you’re such a genius, how did I not think of that before you?’ She supposes she’ll find out when Polly remembers that they don’t actually read minds, and that’s only something they’ve discussed several thousand times.

“That’s brilliant,” Polly breathes, and rushes off.

The second stare, then.

Kelly continues organizing the scuba divers and, when Polly reappears with lots of little parts but no built vacuum, sits down across from her and hands her what she needs. She isn’t very skilled in engineering, but she figures she can learn. After nearly an hour of crouching in steadily rising water (the sandbags don’t appear to be working), Polly says, “I have a working prototype.”

Kelly doesn’t like the sound of “prototype,” but she’ll work with whatever they’ve got. She grabs it from Polly, listens to Polly’s instructions, and jumps into the freezing cold pool of water that has collected in what used to be the ground floor. She finds the on-switch, finds the out board, finds the nearest window, and goes.

It takes almost three hours, and they have to suck the water out, rebuild the sandbags, and have girls digging run-off trenches outside, and by the time the water is gone, Kelly is pretty sure she’s going to have pneumonia, but their jury-rigged solution actually works somewhat. Kelly drops the vacuum to the ground with a water-logged thump and then collapses to the ground herself, sniffling loudly. Polly jogs down the stares and wraps a somewhat dry towel around her shoulders.

“My hero,” Polly says warmly.

“Oh, shut up,” Kelly replies, resting her head on Polly’s shoulder.

******
She does indeed get pneumonia.

Polly spends all her free time in the hospital wing, reading Margaret Atwood (I would like to be the air/that inhabits you for a moment/only. I would like to be that unnoticed/& that necessary) Christina Rosetti (Remember me when I am gone away/Gone far away into the silent land/When you can no more hold me by the hand/Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay) and Joy Harjo (Soon they will come for me and I will make my stand/before the jury of destiny/Yes, I will answer in the clatter/of the new world, I have broken my addiction to war/and desire. Yes, I will reply, I have buried the dead) to her.

(Yes, Waffle, and Yes.)

******
“Remember when you said this year would be fun?” Kelly asks, accepting her rabies shot next to Polly, Violet, JJ, and seventeen other girls. Polly looks over at her.

“I remember saying no such thing,” Polly says, wincing as the shot goes in.

“You deny it now, after the rabid chipmunk,” Kelly grouses. “But you said it last year, when we were named leaders of our respective Cliques.”

Polly sighs. “You were the one who insisted we needed to catch it before it bit anyone.”

“I didn’t think it would bite us!”

Violet snorts from across the infirmary.

******
When it’s all been said and done, Kelly is still nervous when she’s summoned to Miss Fritton’s office. Polly rolls her eyes and focuses on her computer screen. Andrea gives her a thumbs up, Taylor slaps her back on the way out the door, the Posh-Totties all cheer for her, and the Ecos all give her their customary “Strength and Honor” salute.

“It’s not a done deal, you know,” she points out to everyone as she walks out of the dorm.

“Please,” JJ says, lounging in the doorframe. “The only other person who could possibly be Head Girl at this point is Polly, and she doesn’t want it.”

Kelly pauses and looks back at Polly. She’s been thinking about being Head Girl for so long that she never even considered that Polly might want it, too. Polly raises an eyebrow.

“Really?” she asks dryly. “You think I wouldn’t have said something if I wanted to be Head Girl?”

She goes off, reassured.

******
Her confidence vanishes when confronted with the door to the Headmistress’s office.

Kelly has only occasionally seen the inside of Miss Fritton’s office. She doesn’t count watching Polly’s CCTV monitors, because Polly jealously guards those feeds to begin with, and watching grainy, pixilated images is not the same as seeing reality for oneself. She knocks twice and then lets herself in when Beverly tells her to go on in.

Miss Fritton is sitting behind her desk, a glass of whiskey within reach and a stack of folders nearly obscuring her from view. Kelly hovers uncertainly at the edge of the desk, feeling awkward and not at all like the confident and suave young woman that she likes to pretend she is. She feels every inch of her sixteen years. When Miss Fritton looks up, she smiles, and waves at the couch.

“Please, Kelly, do sit. You’re making me nervous.”

Kelly doesn’t know how that’s possible, but she sits down anyway. She crosses her ankles, smiles at Miss Fritton, and does her best to look like Head Girl material.

It suddenly occurs to her that maybe she’s being expelled. Her smile disappears.

Miss Fritton stands up and brings her whiskey with her as she comes around the desk, beaming at Kelly. She wouldn’t be smiling if she were expelling her, Kelly thinks. Unless she really did something horrible.

“I’m sure you know why you’re here, Kelly,” Miss Fritton says, sitting on the arm of the couch and taking a sip of her drink. Kelly smiles uncertainly.

“I think so, Miss.”

“I thought I might be seeing you in my office in your third year, after the sewage incident,” Miss Fritton continues, chuckling and shaking her head. Kelly thinks back, and nods slowly. Yes, she remembers that. She didn’t cause that. She is not, she is sure, getting expelled. “You spearheaded the entire clean-up effort. Not many young girls would have done that, Kelly. You started showing Head Girl material even then. And that’s not including your many efforts over the years.”

Kelly grins in relief. She was fairly certain, but last minute doubts are a bitch.

“Not to mention the fact that you steal the damn badge every year!” Miss Fritton barks out a laugh and slaps her knee. “I should have known that one day I would be giving it to you!”

Kelly doesn’t hear much else of what Miss Fritton has to say, something about responsibility and legacy and how Head Girls go on to become the best and the brightest and the scariest. She just keeps imagining what her parents will say when she shows them the badge.

******
Her father yells a lot about how being Head Girl at a school of juvenile delinquents must mean she’s the worst of them, and how they sent her there to reform her.

Her mother just sighs, congratulates her, and buys her a new outfit.

Polly visits on the weekends, bringing biscuits from Grandmum Judith. One of the canisters includes a note, with a portion of a poem by Margaret Atwood. It says:

You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.

Kelly looks at Polly. “Has anyone ever told you that your grandmother is amazing?”

Polly smiles broadly. “Just about everyone, but I’ll pass the message on.”

******
Kelly goes back to school early, with the rest of the Clique leaders. Polly is by her side, of course, but she selected Andrea to follow her as Emo leader. She knows she made the right choice. Andrea can be a little shaky sometimes, but she’s clever, and she knows how to lead in times of crisis. Taylor is the Chav leader, which means Kelly has to run interference between her and Andrea for the week before school starts, but she likes Taylor well enough. Peaches is still a member of the Posh-Totty Triumvirate, but she’s joined by Chelsea and Chloe, who are both sweet girls. Celia is the new Eco leader.

They spend the week doing the routine things, like putting name cards on all the beds and scrubbing down all the desks, but Kelly wants to fix some of the things they’ve had trouble with in the previous years, which is how they all end up on the roof, patching up leaks, preparing an emergency food cellar (she and Polly may have listened to Grandfather Edward and Grandmother Lana’s stories for too long, she thinks as she stocks up on canned corn), and finally eliminating their roach problem.

She braces herself for the teachers to go out on strike two days before classes start, but miraculously, nothing happens.

“I think,” she says tentatively, looking at Polly, who is setting up her control center, “things are going to be all right.”

******
It is the first day of school, it is breakfast time, and things are not all right.

Kelly soars into the dining hall and locates Polly immediately, who is hunched over her porridge like she does every morning. She flies across the hall, her heels clacking, very aware that everyone is watching her and not caring. She sits down across from Polly, folds her hands, crosses her legs, and tries very hard to pretend nothing is wrong.

“Polly,” she says as serenely as possible. “My Head Girl badge is missing.”

She had worn it all summer. She had worn it the entire week before classes. She isn’t even rotten about it; she doesn’t sit around going, I’m Head Girl, pay attention to me! But she didn’t want to lose it, so she’d pinned it to her clothes so she wouldn’t lose it, and now it’s gone, and this is ruddy awful.

Polly is still hunched over her porridge, and Kelly frowns. There’s something wrong. Polly never hunches. Polly has the posture- the posture- of a Cylon…

“Polly,” she says sharply.

Kelly hears a few snickers around the hall as Polly sits up straight. Pinned to her jumper is Kelly’s Head Girl badge. As Kelly stares at it and Polly grins at her, the entire hall bursts into laughter.

“I have been waiting to do that to you for five years,” Polly says, unpinning the badge from her jumper and handing it back to Kelly. Kelly palms it and just stares at Polly, a little laugh blooming in her chest and rising to the surface.

“You little shit,” she manages to say, and laughs, tossing her head back. Polly smiles, folding her hands on the table, and shrugs.

“You had it coming.”

******
Later that day, a poem appears on the wall outside the science classroom:

Once upon a time
A girl met a girl
Two souls collided
Black is not a color
Poetry was butchered
Yes, no, waffles
Cat’s cradle was redefined
And Polly Hopkins
Does not suck
But she is
A little shit

Polly eyes it and Kelly nods.

“What do you think?” Kelly asks, looking at Polly. Polly hums appreciatively.

“Your best effort yet.”