Once we'd learned where all the classrooms were, and where the cafeteria was, and how the shoals of students were expected to ebb and flow throughout the day, Jane took us to our dorm rooms.
"It's usually more comfortable for the VKs to share doubles with each other," she explained. "Curfew is midnight, no exceptions, or you'll turn back into a pumpkin! That's fairy humour. You won't turn into a pumpkin, but you will get a demerit."
"What? That's so…!" Armand complained. "What if I'm… sleepwalking?! Because of a… medical… thing?!"
Jane nodded like she was expecting some complaints.
"I know it seems like there are a lot of rules, but they're all to make sure everyone is safe and making the best choices. Goodness can be difficult to master. Having guideposts will help you along your way."
"Our way to what?" Cadfael asked.
She was visibly blindsided by the question, her face froze somewhere between asking a question and starting a sentence.
"We're all at the beginnings of our stories," she finally blurted out, "but with the values of Auradon lighting our way, we're sure to make the world a better place!"
"So if we follow the guideposts while we're here, we'll have helpful lights in the future?" Ingrid smirked.
"Absolutely!"
"I think I'd better keep a flare gun handy."
The boys' dormitory immediately called to mind gentlemen's clubs where aristocrats sat around swilling brandy glasses, wondering what the poor were so cranky about. There was dark wood panelling, blue and yellow plaid draperies, two mahogany four poster beds and matching dressers, a blue rug that was probably imported from Agrabah, and a big screen TV. Armand was disappointed there were no antlers. Cadfael seemed disgusted with the amount of sun the windows let in.
We left them to argue over who got to sleep closest to the door.
Jane led us to the end of the corridor and up a hidden spiral staircase.
"When Mal and Evie transferred here, there was an unexpected issue with the colour pink," she said. "So Mom – I mean Fairy Godmother – thought it might be better to put you in a buttercup room instead of a rose room. That means a fountain view instead of a garden view, but there's more square footage."
Behind her, we exchanged pleased smiles. No talking posies to haunt our dreams and a bigger space? If anyone asked, pink was toxic to us. We couldn't stand to be near it.
"There are course outlines on your nightstands," she went on. "Last year, we just had Doug figure it all out, but he's off with Evie starting a fashion house now, so…"
"Classic Doug," Ingrid laughed like she'd known him for years. "I've never met him in my life, but please go on talking like I care."
"Oh! Doug is Dopey's son! He's a really nice guy, he used to be in the marching band, and he was the top of about every AP course we have. He and Evie really hit it off, they're so happy. I went and saw the workshop over the summer, and you will love some of Evie's new designs. It's like VK meets AK."
"I was being sarcastic," Ingrid said very carefully, as though she wasn't sure if this was some kind of trick or not.
"Mal used to be sarcastic a lot. I never really got the hang of it…" Jane reminisced as she stopped in front of the door to a corner suite. "Here we are! Home sweet home!"
She swung the door open, and a flood of buttery yellow light spilled onto the polished corridor floor. The room was around the same size as Armand and Cadfael's, but decorated with a softer tone of wood. A pale yellow fabric patterned with buttercups was draped in the window, decorating the beds, and upholstering the chairs at a set of matching vanities. I walked into the center of the room and held a hand to my chest like I'd never seen anything so beautiful. I can't believe I'm going to get to live here! I could cry!
"Pretty different from the Isle of the Lost, huh?" Jane said warmly.
I nodded like I was too overwhelmed to speak.
Here's what actually caught my attention:
Two vanities, no desks. A strange choice for an academic institution. Two full height dressers and twin closets, but no built in bookshelves except for one small wall-mounted plank between the windows. It was helpfully stocked with a row of pre-approved textbooks. Most glaringly, where the boys had their big screen TV and entertainment center, we had a three piece full-length mirror with ottomans on either side.
It was obvious what our energies were supposed to be expended on.
"I'll leave you to get settled in," Jane smiled benevolently and shut the door behind her.
Once she was gone, I let myself relax a little. It was nice to lose the meek, wide-eyed expression – you know that saying "if you keep making that face it'll stick that way"? Too long looking nervous of everything, and you start to feel nervous.
"There are five separate full-length pieces of reflective glass in here," I said in my normal, irreverent voice, "for two women."
"All I want to know is what the plan is for getting us one of those TVs," Ingrid grumbled, taking her jacket off and hanging it on a peg on the back of the door.
"The office undoubtedly has a list of all the unoccupied dorms in the boys' wing. We'll pick out a room nobody uses and steal a TV while everyone's at a ball or a rehearsal ball or a post-ball brunch," I said, pulling off my riding boots and sitting back on the bed closest to the window. "The question is what to do with the mirror."
"Ten months living in a room that looks like a funeral home for florists," Ingrid inspected the buttercup drapes. She turned to me, gave me an appraising glance, and folded her arms like a professional interrogator. "Those were some smooth moves today. I especially liked the lump in your throat whenever someone mentioned second chances. Are you ever honest about things?"
"You'll notice that I'm being honest right now," I said, "and I was honest with you all day until the pomp-and-circumstance crowd showed up."
"Yeah," she nodded. "I guess you were. Okay princess, what are our long-term mission parameters?"
"For you? Survive the year. Do what you want. Try not to interfere too much, and don't use my title. I like to go incognito among the peasants."
"I think I can handle that," she smirked. "But do me a favour and warn me if I'm getting too close to your firing line. I'd hate to be in caught in the crosshairs of an innocent little sweetheart like you."
She opened a few of the utility doors with a patterned precision, like she was checking for bombs or surveillance equipment.
First closet – empty.
Second closet – empty.
Washroom – gasp-inducing.
I leapt up out of the bed, the wooden floor surprisingly warm beneath my bare feet, and practically slid into the ensuite on reflex. Ingrid was stunned; her mouth slightly agape, her eyes shining with disbelief. In that room was the only object worthy of the sentimental praise heaped upon that school, the one thing of true magnificence to behold within the entire building so far.
An extra-long, extra-deep clawfoot soaker tub with three separate shower attachments and dual taps.
I couldn't stop myself from slowly walking towards it, reaching one hand forward like Sleeping Beauty enchanted by the spinning wheel. I kept thinking I bet the water pressure is amazing here.
"That is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen," Ingrid murmured, still hypnotized. "I am going to fill it with water and spend all night there. Check on me every two hours to make sure I haven't drowned."
"I don't know how you're going to manage that since I'm claiming the tub on behalf of myself, the newly appointed Empress of the Bath."
"You can't appoint yourself empress."
"Of course I can. That's how imperial lines get started, someone says that they're the empress now, and everyone else agrees."
"I don't agree, so you can't be empress because that's my bath."
"No, it's our bath, but I'm always in charge of it, and I get the first bath."
"Pretty sure I can overthrow your tyrannical bathroom regime, I have ten years of mercenary training. I can take you down in a physical fight."
"Are you sure about that? Because I always go for the eyes, and I will bludgeon or stab people with anything on hand."
"You can't bludgeon what you can't reach, shortstop."
"That's a good point. I hope you never took your Achilles tendons for granted, because you're going to miss them."
"Have you ever been thrown out of a four storey window before? It's going to be a memorable experience. While you're in the hospital, I'll send you get well postcards. From the bath."
Looking back, I think this was when Ingrid and I realized we were going to be good friends.
Our argument was put on hold when the door to our room was flung open and a cheery voice called out:
"Knock knock! Welcome wagon!"
Ingrid and I looked at one another with shared bafflement. Back home, people either knocked on a door or they burst in like a pack of thieves. Nobody burst in while pretending to knock with an obvious sound effect.
It was bizarre.
I stuck my head around the door and saw a small gaggle of our fellow students. At the front of the group was a short, curvy blonde with an enormous amount of pin-curled hair and a set of false eyelashes that would put a porcelain doll to shame. I admire women who can put on false lashes and not scratch their corneas or give themselves eye infections, even though I don't share the cosmetic dedication that drives them to perfect that particular skill.
To the left, a girl with pale blue, almost-white hair and large glasses was fidgeting nervously. To the right, a boy and a girl that were either twins or close-in-age siblings waved their greeting. They both had sparkling, cheerful expressions, the same dark skin, and the same caramel coloured eyes.
"We're just admiring this bathroom!" I said, all golly-gees and holy-cows, no doubt looking like a fortune teller's disembodied head. "We didn't have anything like this back on the Isle of the Lost!"
"Who is it?" Ingrid whispered urgently.
I waved her off while I managed a shy blush to imply I felt ashamed of my lack of sophistication.
"Oh, sugar," the blonde cupcake said with enough melodramatic sympathy to fill my new gigantic bathtub. "Well! You are just luckier than a wishin' star on a slow night, because you have the all-time champion bathroom organizer right here! And your basket's got a couple of moisturizers for you gals – we didn't know your skin type, so we went with combination, I hope that's alright – and some fancy little soaps, and some fizzy bath bombs!"
"Bath bombs?!" Ingrid demanded, sticking her head around the door frame just above mine.
The girl with the light blue hair's whole face changed at the sight of her. She now looked extremely determined, like she was about to fight a dragon, or scale an erupting volcano, or some similar feat of life-and-death daring.
"Oh." I heard Ingrid say over the top of my head. "Hi."
"Ingrid Sinclair, my name is Kiki Thatch," the blue haired girl announced, sounding more regal than any of the other princesses I'd met at Auradon. It was a temporary achievement, because the next thing out of her mouth was the longest, most fretfully babbled run-on sentenced I'd ever hear. "I don't know what your mother's told you about what happened in Atlantis, and I saw you at the party and I wanted to say something, but I didn't want you to take it the wrong way, like I was forgiving you, because I can't forgive you, you didn't do anything, and really, what happened between our mothers is their business, so even if I apologized you'd have no right to accept, and then I thought it might be best if we just ignored each other and focused on our academic careers, but then I remembered that I'm taking Pre-Auradonian Historical Cartography this year, and I thought 'I wonder if she's going to choose that for an elective?' and then I was like 'of course she is, Kiki, who's not interested in Pre-Auradonian Historical Cartography? It's a fascinating subject, maybe even the best elective available from the curriculum this year', and I didn't want any old grudges hanging over our heads to distract us, which is why I decided to come and make sure that the past is in the past and that you and I are starting on fair terms."
I had no idea how she managed to get all of that out without pausing to breathe.
Ingrid simply said:
"Okay."
"Oh, that's great!" Kiki sighed, slumping her shoulders forward so that her oversized glasses started to slip down her nose. She pushed them back up and beamed at us.
The cupcake cleared her throat.
"Well now that the air's been cleared," she said, "I'd like to introduce the rest of us properly! I'm Charlotte La Bouff Junior – of course, y'all can call me Junebug, all my good friends do. And speaking of good friends, this is my dearest friend in all the world Princess Naomi of Maldonia, and that's her no good pain-in-the-ass brother Nathaniel, don't pay any mind to him. And Kiki has… made her introductions, but in case you lost some of that in the shuffle, she's the next queen of Atlantis."
"Nice to meet you," Naomi chimed in graciously.
"Yes, very nice," her brother winked at Ingrid. "So, what's the situation? Single? Taken? Taken but willing to be unfaithful?"
Ingrid balked.
Junebug's face went two shades darker than the pink of her dress, and she pointed to the exit with cold fury.
"OUT!" She bellowed at him.
"I'm just trying to get to know our new classmates!" Nathaniel protested with mock innocence.
His sister rolled her eyes, then jerked her head in the direction of the door. With a mischievous, hang-dog smile, he slumped out of our room.
"I'm sorry about him," Naomi sighed. "He was a perfectly reasonable young man until one morning two summers ago. He just wandered down to breakfast with his hair slicked up and half a bottle of cologne on, and he's been a walking harassment claim ever since."
"I've got an idea how to fix it," Junebug nodded sagely.
"It's not ethical," Kiki whispered to us.
"Well, it never seems to hurt the dogs at the veterinarian's office too much…"
"So!" Naomi said, clearly eager to change the subject, "Tell us about yourselves!"
We were still standing in the washroom doorway, neither one of us willing to concede territory. Our guests hadn't picked up on it yet, but they were bound to start wondering why we weren't moving around casually.
"We'd love to," I said. "Ingrid, why don't you see what's in our basket while I finish washing my hands?"
"Sure," Ingrid slapped my back like a pal, "wash right up. You've probably got some of your boyfriend's vomit on you."
A look of mild disgust and confusion passed over the faces of our new acquaintances. It was an excellent torpedoing of my planned first impression, very commendable, and the message was clear. If I locked the door and took a bath, who knew what else she might accidentally blurt out? And that's how all kinds of rumours could get started.
I laughed with meek embarrassment.
"He ate too much at the party," I explained. "He was excited to see all the fancy food. And he's not really my boyfriend, just a friend who's a boy."
"Mmm-hmm," Naomi sounded more than a little skeptical, while I turned on the faucet and plotted my next move. "Was he that big bag of muscles that spent the whole brunch standing next to you like a bodyguard?"
"That's him!" Ingrid supplied happily.
"Oh, he's cute!" Junebug cooed, "What's wrong with him? Why's he not your boyfriend?"
"Nothing's wrong with him," I said with a perfectly modulated catch in my throat. "I just feel like it's not fair to… it's just… if I had a boyfriend or something, everyone would think that it was some kind of trick, or that I didn't really…"
I was in the process of washing my hands, but I could tell the arrow had hit its mark. The other room had gone completely silent.
Of course, the real reason Armand wasn't my boyfriend was because he was entirely lacking in prospects. He was one of five sons set to inherit basically nothing, and he had no imagination for how to claw his way out of the heap. I've always intended to be exactly the kind of person who uses romantic alliances to get ahead, and I've told Armand as much on several occasions. He usually said something like: "Okay, but we're on a date right now, so maybe you're wrong."
Sometimes, I had no idea what to do about him. I wish my father had given me some advice about boys…
"People can surprise you," Kiki said to break the tension. "But, then again, they can also pull your pants down in front of half the school during a fake geology club meeting."
"I think what Kiki's trying to say is there are too many different kinds of people, good and bad, to go around worrying what they think," said Naomi.
"Easier said than done!" Junebug scoffed, "Did I tell you about Suzanne Darling this morning? There I was, all ready for the brunch in that cute little dress I got special, you know the drop waist with the pleated skirt? Well, I thought I looked as gorgeous as you could get. I put on my lucky t-strap shoes and did my face, and I walked past her and that horrible Asherah who's got the room next to mine, and she said – it was sort of like a whisper, but a whisper I was most definitely supposed to hear – she said 'I knew they were letting in more VKs this year, but I hadn't heard we were also getting some of the Hippos from Fantasia'."
"She didn't!" Naomi gasped.
"I thought to myself: 'I'll just show you, Suzanne Darling!' So I held my chin up as high as I could, marched straight into the bathroom and cried off all my eye makeup. Then when I was sure they were gone, I went and changed."
"I would've looked her square in the eyes and told her to repeat that," Ingrid announced, sitting cross-legged on the bed, rifling through our welcome basket. The other girls had arranged themselves on various pieces of furniture around the room.
I hesitated halfway out of the washroom door. Not because of the bath war, that was on hold until the guests left, but because I didn't know what I would've done to Suzanne Darling.
I mean, I knew what I, Greta, Princess of the Southern Isles would've done (told Suzanne it was heartbreaking how she had to lash out at other people, then given her some tips on how to improve things about her looks). But I wasn't totally sure what Greta the noble, sensitive sidekick who attended Auradon Prep would've done.
I suppose I would've had to burst into tears in full view of Suzanne and Asherah, then locked myself in my room and missed the party.
Taking a seat on one of the ottomans by the big mirror (almost the exact same distance from the bathroom door as Ingrid was on the far bed), I let out a sigh of commiseration.
"Let's talk about something more cheerful," Naomi demanded. "What classes are you two taking?"
When it was discovered that we hadn't decided yet, Kiki sprang into an enthusiastic rundown of our options. After around forty minutes of academic planning, the welcome wagon bid their farewells and left Ingrid and I alone in our room.
She was still on her bed and I was still on the ottoman.
Equidistance from the tub.
"I have a proposition," I said, "we flip a coin for who gets to go first."
"That sounds fair," Ingrid replied, watching me like an unblinking hawk. "What's the catch?"
"No catch! I even happen to have a coin right here in my pocket, I'll flip it right now!" I smiled, "I call heads."
Ingrid raised an eyebrow and stood up.
"I'm going to flip a coin that I know isn't rigged," she declared and went to her jacket hanging on the back of the dour to search through the pockets.
I stood up very quietly, padded past the bed and the picked over basket to grab one of the bath bombs, glided back into the bathroom and swiftly but silently shut the door and turned the lock.
Ingrid let out an expert string of profanities on the other side of the door.
She angrily twisted the knob a few times while I turned on the faucet, and she tried to break the door down while I was tying up my hair and looking through the cupboards to find out where the towels were, but it wasn't long before she gave up.
As I slipped into the soothing water and breathed in the delicate fragrance of the bath bomb, I smiled to myself and remembered something my father used to say before his mysterious disappearance:
"Never be a tortoise or a hare when you can be a fox."
