Chapter 1.
"Ow. OW!" Andrea Farley snapped as Mrs. Lumley, the school nurse, tried to press an ice pack over the bruise forming on her left cheekbone. "Give that to me!" She impatiently snatched the ice pack from the nurse's hands and placing it gently over the darkening bump, where there was also a small scratch.
Mrs. Lumley tisk-tisked and shook her head, "You should have learnt your lesson by now." She mused as she turned away to close the opened first aid cabinet.
Andrea huffed as she lifted the ice pack slightly off of her numbing cheek and pressed it over the same spot again. "I guess I'm still learning." She muttered as a stinging pain shot through her cheek.
"WILL ANDREA FARLEY PLEASE REPORT TO THE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE?" A gravelly, female voice spoke over the loudspeakers.
'Here we go.' Andrea rolled her eyes and slid off of the plastic-covered recovery bed. The long haired brunette then threw the ice pack on the bed and left the nurse's office, almost crashing into her best friend, Valerie, as she rushed through the doorway.
"Oh shit Andy, your eye!" Valerie practically screamed the moment she saw Andrea, whose hand immediately flung to the bump.
"What?!" Andrea panicked. "Is it bad?!" As they started walking down the hallway she hastily rifled through her beige shoulder bag for a pocket mirror.
"Well," Valerie drawled, "it's worse than the time you got into a fight with Isabelle because she took the last sticky date pudding and slightly better than when Heather started that rumor that you wore a wig." She snorted, unable to contain herself as Andrea checked her reflection.
Upon seeing the slightly purple bruise and drying scratch, Andrea glared at Valerie. "It's not that bad." She remarked. "Don't worry me like that! It's not funny!" She barked as her best friend started to laugh some more.
"Oh, I'm not laughing at that." Valerie wiped a tear from her eye. "I just got a flashback of you smashing that pudding into Izzy's hair." Valerie turned her snicker into a cough as her increasingly irritable friend rolled her eyes and put her mirror back into her bag. "Anyway, who pissed you off this time?"
"Um…" Andrea pursed her lips and looked away slowly as she mumbled something under her breath.
"I'm sorry, what?" Valerie couldn't catch what she had said.
"Kaitlyn." Andrea spoke just loudly enough for her auburn haired friend to hear.
"Huh." Valerie appeared deep in thought. "Your stepsister?"
Andrea furrowed her eyebrows. "How many Kaitlyns do you know?" She asked, seemingly still on edge from the recent clash with her stepsister.
"Well, it was only a matter of time I guess." Said Valerie, trying to hold back a smirk as she spoke.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Andrea practically growled as she narrowed her eyes at Valerie.
"Come on," Valerie scoffed, "this whole 'stepsibling rivalry'," she held her fingers up in air quotes, "it's all a little tired and worn out, don't you think?"
"I didn't fight with Kaitlyn because she's my stepsister." Andrea insisted defensively. "Her busted lip has nothing to do with her mom marrying my dad." She stated quickly, keeping her eyes towards the ground.
"What was it about then?" Valerie asked, genuinely curious as they neared the principal's office.
"Uh…" Andrea hesitated. "Y'know, I really better get going." She let out a short, nervous laugh, avoiding eye contact, and Valerie's question, before pacing towards the office door.
Valerie scrunched her nose in confusion. "Oookay…" She drawled. "Well, good luck." She joked weakly.
Andrea merely waved her best friend goodbye before finally entering the small room to be greeted by the secretary, Ms Wright, as usual.
"Nice to see you again Miss Farley." Ms Wright, a thin, pale woman with long, straight black hair and rectangular rimmed glasses, remarked sarcastically. "This is almost turning into a routine for you, isn't it?"
Andrea smirked. "Nice to see you too." She greeted, just as half-heartedly as she walked towards Ms Wright's desk, situated to the right of the entrance to the principal's office.
"Go straight in." Ms Wright gestured idly to the door behind her desk. "Although you should already know that, shouldn't you?" She peaked condescendingly over the frames of her glasses as she continued to type away.
Andrea let out a dry laugh then scowled at the secretary before opening the door to find Principal Denison, a balding man with a slight moustache, seated and waiting.
"Sit Farley." Denison barked, not bothering to look up from the paperwork scattered on his desk.
"Busy, sir?" Andrea innocently tried to make small talk as she slowly sat down in the leather tub chair.
Denison looked up, evidently not amused, and put his pen down. "Do you want to explain to me why this is your third time in here this month?"
Andrea opened and closed her mouth, looking like a fish, as she tried to come up with a suitable explanation. "I… don't know… sir." She pursed her lips and shrugged.
"You don't know…" The Principal huffed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Well, I don't know what to do with you other then give you detention. Or better yet, how about a lengthy suspension?"
Andrea sighed and struggled not to roll her eyes. "Aren't you gonna talk to Kaitlyn as well? I mean, it usually takes more than one person to fight, doesn't it?"
"I actually spoke to Kaitlyn first." Denison responded. "She conceded that she threw a couple of words out that were uncalled for," Andrea furrowed her eyebrows, taken aback from hearing about her stepsister's confession until the Principal continued, "but she claimed you threw the first punch. That was all I needed to hear."
"Are you kidding?!" Andrea snapped. "So, what? I'm only one who's being punished?"
"I gave you a chance to explain yourself. If you're just going to answer me with 'I-don't-knows', then what else can I do? If you want to tell me what Kaitlyn said to make you mad…"
"No." Andrea quickly interrupted, avoiding eye contact like she had with Valerie. "N-no, she didn't say anything that she doesn't normally say at home. It's all a bit of a blur anyway, so..."
Denison looked at his paperwork, which Andrea could now see was her file, and back at her. "This is your last warning. No more of this. You do well with your schoolwork; your grades are okay. You've already been suspended once this month, I don't wanna have to suspend you again." Denison spoke with sincerity in his voice.
"Can I go now?" Asked Andrea in a hushed voice.
The moment Principal Denison nodded she stood up and walked to the door.
"Oh, Miss Farley," Denison spoke up again right before Andrea left, "I've contacted your father about this."
'Shit.' Andrea cringed and closed her eyes as she left the office. Getting into trouble with the Principal was nothing compared to getting into trouble with her father, who happened to be Captain at the Charlotte Police Department.
When Andrea arrived home, the door seemed to creak at it's loudest as she tried to sneak in.
She slowly closed the door, making sure to not make any noise, only to be happily, and noisily, greeted by her Bernese Mountain dog, Snickers.
"Ssh!" Andrea hushed her hyper pet before rapidly making for the stairs.
"Andrea Marie Farley!" Roared her father from the family dining room before she could get very far. "Get in here."
"Can't." Andrea announced through the hallway to the Captain. "Got a big test tomorrow, dad. Gotta study." She promptly tried to run up the steps again only to be stopped once more.
"Andy!" Her father, Phil, snapped once more.
Andrea took a deep breath and her heart began to pound against her chest. Plucking up the courage, she made her way towards the dining room to find her father seated at head of the table, surrounded by papers.
"Hi, daddy." Andrea greeted innocently.
"Your Principal called." Phil spoke a little too casually. "Told me you got into another fight. This time with Kaitlyn."
"Well… I don't know if you'd call it a fight." Andrea stammered. "It was more of a petty argument, y'know..."
That very moment the front door slammed and in walked Kaitlyn, complete with a black eye and dry blood under her lip. Andrea didn't think her eye would be that bruised.
"Hi Phil." Kaitlyn didn't acknowledge Andrea as she touched her eye and winced, before going into the kitchen and coming back out clutching an icepack.
"Petty argument, huh?" Phil let out a short, dry laugh, but his expression remained irate.
"I'm fine, Phil." Kaitlyn chimed in. "I'm sure my eye will be back to normal within a couple of weeks." The tall blonde touched her eye tenderly and flinched again.
Andrea's jaw dropped; she could tell that Kaitlyn was milking the whole situation.
Phil pinched the bridge of his nose. "I don't know what to do with you anymore Andy."
"I…" Andrea opened and closed her mouth, at a loss for words. She couldn't remember there being a day when she had so little to say.
"You what?" Phil paused and added. "I could ground you for life, I could take everything away from you. Hell, I could do the opposite and give you everything in the world, and you would still be this disobedient brat who feels the world owes them something."
Andrea's throat tightened. "Isn't anyone gonna talk to Kaitlyn about what happened?" She asked aloud. "I'm being practically vilified here."
Phil scoffed. "Don't flatter yourself Andy." He sneered.
"All I did was say a few words," Kaitlyn voice grew an octave higher, "and then she hit me." She seemed to wipe a tear from her eye, though Andrea couldn't see any.
"Are you serious?" Andrea mumbled. "Aren't you overreacting just a little Kaitlyn?"
"Oh, look who's talking." Kaitlyn snapped, giving up her sob story.
"D'you want a real black eye bitch…"
"ANDY!" Phil shouted, startling Andrea. "Enough! I've already got enough on my plate right now. I shouldn't have to deal with this shi- I mean rubbish."
That was when Andrea turned her attention to the multiple piles of paper on the dining table.
"What's all this?" She pointed to the documents.
"Have you told them yet?" Janet, Andrea's stepmother, asked Phil excitedly as she appeared from upstairs. "Kaitlyn, your eye!" She screeched when she caught site of her daughter.
"Tell us what?" Andrea interrogated her father before Kaitlyn could speak.
Phil hesitated. "I've been offered a promotion, to be Major." He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms.
"That's great dad." Said Andrea, genuinely happy for Phil, but she was confused as to why he seemed to waver.
"It's in Virginia." Phil announced and the slight smile Andrea had on her face disappeared immediately.
"Virginia?" Andrea echoed. "You- you didn't accept it though? Right?" She looked nervously back and forth between Phil and Janet.
Phil didn't speak, but instead just nodded.
"I start on Tuesday." He eventually said.
"That's only in five days!" Andrea belted.
"I know I didn't leave you much time…" Phil stated before Kaitlyn interrupted.
"It will take time to get used to," she said thoughtfully, "but I've already done it once when I moved here after you and mom married so…"
Andrea glared at Kaitlyn, not believing what she was hearing. "But you lived like 20 minutes away, we're talking moving to a whole new state here."
"We're only moving about three hours away." Phil shrugged and quickly put his hand up to prevent Andrea from speaking. "It doesn't matter anyway. My decision is final. I've already spoken to your principal and I've enrolled both you and Kaitlyn into a new school." He paused. "It's called Madison Preparatory School… It's a boarding school."
"Boarding school!" Andrea and Kaitlyn exclaimed in unison.
"Girls!" Janet disrupted. "I can't believe you two. This is a huge opportunity for your father. Where's your support?"
"So… that's it. We're just gonna move, just like that?" Andrea snapped her fingers. "What about my friends?"
"Friend." Kaitlyn murmured under her breath.
Andrea decided to ignore that snide remark and continued. "Did you even take the time to think about this? What about mom?"
"I've already called your mom." Phil answered quickly. "She told me she would be able to visit during the holidays. Your friends could always come visit as well."
Andrea rolled her eyes. "I guess you have it all figured out then." She gradually made her way towards the stairs. "This is bullshit."
"Andy!" Her father yelled to no avail as she left and ran upstairs to her bedroom.