"I failed to tell you, to tell you now

That I've been fooled

Cause I'm not cool

And the scissors slide

Away with my pride…"

Sohodolls—I'm Not Cool

Chapter Three: Away With My Pride

Eating breakfast wasn't a sin so why was she being punished by the porridge? Kelly's spoon lapped her bowl as she swirled it through the milk around the island of oats in the middle of her dish.

"I am telling you there is something going on with her," Polly said across from Kelly, moving her empty bowl to the side and setting her laptop up on their table in the dining hall.

"Reckon maybe you just caught her on an off night?" the head girl suggested without conviction, dropping her spoon and leaning her chin on her palm.

Polly looked over her screen at Kelly and raised one eyebrow that suggested that the geek thought Kelly's sidelong quip wasn't funny.

The head girl had had enough practice growing up with that eyebrow and the various situations that she had gotten them into and it had criticized her for (like deciding to see just how strong the reinforced metal on an armoured car was by strapping a stick of live dynamite to the fender while it was driving down M5 at 80 mph) that she couldn't mistake its meaning.

Kelly just shrugged her shoulders in answer to the unvoiced question. Only Polly would ever see her like this: relaxed, informal, and vulnerable and she preferred to keep it that way. The only reason she could be this way around Polly anyway was because the geek didn't care and she knew her friend wouldn't think less of her for it.

Upon arriving at St. Trinian's as first years, the would be geek and the future head girl had found that they'd had similar experiences at the primary schools they had attended and reacted in similar ways. Kelly had set fire to a snobby year six's skirt during class who had teased her that her short mushroom haircut made her look like a pikey boy. Polly had gotten back at a bully who had stolen her glasses by exposing the pornographic emails her father was sending to the nursery teacher he was having an affair with to the media while cc-ing further copies to his wife and boss as well.

Both girls had had healthy defensive reactions to the things that offended them at an early age—Kelly since she was old enough to know that the pointy end of a knife went into the other person and Polly since she was tall enough to Xerox. Their similarities fostered a friendship that had sustained the two through broken relationships, family problems, complete chaos, and one year of Paul McGann in a Doctor Who movie. Their friendship had been tested by enough violent forces that Kelly never doubted that Polly would ever go behind her back and betray her.

Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for all of her St. Trinian's girls.

They were pack animals at heart, needing a leader and if that leader showed even one moment of weakness, she would be taken down and replaced almost immediately. Kelly couldn't afford to let that happen. All her responsibilities and everything she was rode on her ability to remain as impassive and impenetrable as possible to the outside world. Best not to give anyone any opportunities to get at her because once they did…it would be all over. There was no getting up when another predator had you by the throat no matter how strong you were.

Kelly shook her head ruefully. Been watching too many wildlife documentaries. Damn BBC.

The head girl pushed her still full bowl of porridge away from her and stood. Polly spared her a bemused glance.

"Rounds, Pol," Kelly explained, not that she had to. She had had the same routine since year four. Even before she had been required to watch out for the other students, she had always patrolled the halls looking out for the school's best interests. It was one of the reasons J.J. French had recommended her for head girl in the first place—she had already been doing part of the job on her own anyway.

"Just remember what I said," Polly interjected before Kelly could get away. "There's something going on with that new Fritton girl. Might want to watch her, just in case."

"I'll make a note of it, but I think you're blowing this thing with her out of proportion," Kelly's voice floated back in Polly's direction as she sauntered away.

Polly smirked and leaned over her computer. We'll see, Kelly Jones, we will see.

Annabelle grimaced and opened her eyes only slightly on the light filled dorm. It was morning in the school where bombs were never disarmed and matches were plentiful and much to her surprise, Annabelle Fritton was still alive.

She hadn't expected to be, to be honest. She had just sort of assumed that the other girls might try another prank and it would go deadly wrong while she slept. Maybe one of those first year twins who were always glaring at her all of the time had put a landmine underneath her bed for kicks or maybe Bianca wasn't as full of shite as Zoe claimed about those tongs and what she would do with them.

However, when Annabelle sat up, no bucket full of goo poured over her head and when she gingerly took her first step onto the hardwood floor, nothing exploded. On closer inspection, all of limbs seemed in working order and there were no red marks on her skin that she could see.

Either she was just damn lucky or the other girls had accepted her enough not to prank her. Either way, it was never a good idea to tempt fate and in a dorm still full of sleeping girls it was never a good idea to have one of them wake up and pick you as their target of ridicule for the day.

Annabelle bent low and quietly gathered her clothes and toiletries before leaving for an early shower.

Despite being a public school, next to nothing and no one roamed St. Trinian's hallways before ten in the morning except for Matron—when the alcohol stash in her room wasn't sufficient enough to give her the much needed buzz—and Kelly.

Like the head of any pack, the head girl enjoyed touring her territory on a daily basis. It helped to know what she was dealing with before it happened. Until the girls woke up, there was no way of telling what their moods were going to be or what sort of hell they were going to unleash in the coming day, but patrolling the halls would help Kelly find any traps the girls had set the night before that had failed to be activated as well as find any students who might have wandered off after curfew and not quite made it back up the steep set of stairs leading to the dorms. Rarely did she find such students. Any St. Trinian's girl worth her Trinski could drink until the Bursar came in and still manage to crawl up that last flight and into their beds.

As Kelly sauntered through the halls on the first floor she passed empty classrooms and the toilets before coming to the communal showers. As she passed, Kelly was surprised to hear the spray of water from within. No one should have been out of bed yet except for her and Polly and Polly was still down to breakfast. There was no way she could've gone back to the dorms and beat Kelly back down to the first floor in record time. The redhead had never been very athletic and she never pretended that physicality was one of her strengths. Who could it have been then?

There were no other possibilities Kelly could pull from her knowledge of all of the usual suspects. The chavs didn't want to be up before the sun came up. The emos were usually just falling into their beds at dawn and the posh totties were usually passed out somewhere. The head girl braced herself and walked into the community showers, her heels clicking sublimely against the tiled floor. The sound announced her entry long before she could have been seen by the young brunette trying to rinse the shampoo out of her hair as quickly as possible. Kelly paused midstride as she recognized Annabelle Fritton's profile though the dividing glass.

Almost as quickly her brain processed who it was, part of it had sent down an order to the muscles to make an immediate retreat from the room before the young Fritton turned to find her there. But the other part—the more dominant part that controlled the management of anarchy and the insatiability of her teenage libido—gave the order to stand her ground. And she did.

Annabelle ran the fingers of one hand through her dark hair, washing out the shampoo. She hadn't heard Kelly's heels enter the room and apparently had no idea she was being watched. As the girl's hands threaded through her hair in concentration, it involuntarily thrust her chest forward and exposed her breasts in a way that made all of Kelly's sex-soaked dreams look as innocent as children's movies. Weird how the girl's thin, lithe body channelled the graceful sleekness of a fashion model even when she wasn't paying attention or meaning to. The steaming water highlighted the pale reflection of Annabelle's skin, bare of marks save for a thin red scar across one hip and a mushroom shaped birthmark on her back.

The whole image together sent a flash of heat through Kelly that made her feel giddy, bothered, and dizzy all at once. Being hot for someone was one thing, but this new feeling was stronger than that. More overwhelming, more all-encompassing than just lust it seemed to rock her all the way through to her core. It made her want to get to know Annabelle better, figure out her hopes, her wants, and maybe give her some of them. It made Kelly want to be the centre of Fritton's world in a way that shifted the centre of the head girl's own life and vandalized it "property of Annabelle". Kelly shuddered with the strength of emotion running through her.

Annabelle hadn't been aware she was being watched and wouldn't have known anyone had been there if it hadn't been for the heavy shutting of the door that made her almost jump out of her skin as the one person she wanted to know more than anything retreated to safer ground.

The St. Trinian's team had already set themselves up on the hockey pitch with the rest of the student body to taunt their approaching rivals for the first game of the season. They had just settled onto the pitch, the younger girls giving a rousing chorus of 'Who Let the Dogs Out' at the Cheltenham team when the trouble started.

"Oi! Kel, check this out."

Kelly looked in the direction of the more than slightly angry voice. Taylor wasn't just the head rude girl, she was also voted the most likely of the student body to commit herself to a one person war against the world. At a school like St. Trinian's, this was saying something. This time though the chav's anger came with a little bit of well thought out caution. She was standing not too far from where Andrea and the new Fritton girl had set themselves up into a loose team formation. Annabelle was being stalked by a group of Cheltenham girls. A tall blonde was leading the pack and she looked to be as obnoxious and ominous as she probably was stupid and snobby. She made a v-line straight for Annabelle leaving no question as to who her target was.

"Girls, look who it is. It's Annabelle the Cannibal."

To her credit, the new girl didn't do what half the second years were taking bets out on her to do, she hadn't run from the pitch in tears and she didn't look like she was going to anytime soon. But the last thing Kelly wanted to do was watch her get beaten to death with a hockey stick because she couldn't defend herself. After all, the head girl had spent the past two weeks making sure Annabelle was surviving life at their school and aside from that, she was beginning to figure out that she had taken a liking to the new girl that wasn't strictly platonic.

"Damn," Kelly grit her teeth and started for what was bound to turn out to be a bad situation.

Andrea's arms were slung loosely over the hockey stick on her shoulders, but even she looked like she might use it soon. Taylor was way ahead of her, marching towards the small group in a long stride. A few of the Cheltenham girls had noticed the attention they were getting and had moved back to practicing instead of getting involved in a fight that might get the whole team disqualified and give St. Trinian's the win by default. One of them tried talking Verity into backing off before the situation could get combative, but she wouldn't have any of it. Instead, the tall blonde raised her stick and pointed the end of it towards Annabelle menacingly.

"You're dead, Fritton. You hear me? Dead!"

With one final stare, Verity turned and went back to her team just as Taylor came up behind Annabelle. The chav leader followed Verity's retreat slightly as if making sure she wouldn't be coming back anytime soon.

"What was that all about?" Taylor asked.

Kelly hurried up beside Taylor, seemingly just another obstacle between the Cheltenham bully and Annabelle, but she also managed to make the movement look as unrushed and natural as possible. The head girl's eyes followed the withdrawing back of the blonde girl then shifted towards Taylor and into a short, sidelong glance at Annabelle to make sure there wasn't a scratch on her.

Annabelle rolled her eyes, frustrated with the whole humiliating situation. "I used to eat people," she sighed.

"Huh?" Kelly squeaked. That had thrown her completely off. A fruit fly looked like it could beat this Fritton girl's arse in a fight and here she was confessing that she could beat the stuffing out of something roughly human size and then still have the strength to eat it? Bollocks.

Annabelle suddenly looked chagrined and fiddled with the hockey stick in her hands to help hide her growing embarrassment at the curious scrutiny from the two girls.

"I used to have…braces…and bits of food got stuck in them," she grudgingly admitted.

Taylor and Kelly both shared a look. At St. Trinians every mark of difference made each girl worth their weight in hydrogen bombs. Normalcy wasn't something that was tolerated without any sort of retaliation.

"Nice," Kelly appraised, a tad impressed.

Almost imperceptibly, the head girl let out a deep breath and released tight muscles she hadn't realized had been tense in the first place. It was so unusual for her to lose her composure that she hadn't realized how afraid she was until the adrenaline had begun to ebb away. Yes, it had happened: Kelly Jones had finally felt actual fear since she first set foot in the doors of St Trinian's as a napalm-praising ten year old and it had taken this Fritton girl to make her feel it.

Odd. Must be coming up on my time of the month or something, Kelly reasoned.

The hockey match that followed was dirty, underhanded, and a battle to do St. Trinian's proud for years to come. It all culminated in the final goal made by St. Trinian's own head girl, which incidentally also knocked the other team captain off her feet (not accidentally). After running around and reveling in the cheers of the other girls, Kelly quietly slipped out of the mosh pit that had gathered around her on the pitch and walked towards where Verity lay, Miss Bagstock and a paramedic leaning over her. Despite a growing red spot on her face and blood running from her nose, Verity appeared to be alright and her blue, pain-filled eyes followed Kelly's lithe form hatefully down to kneel beside her.

"Good game. Sorry about what happened to you," Kelly said in a rich tone that showed just how proudly unrepentant she really was.

Then beneath the interested looks of both Miss Bagstock and the paramedic, Kelly bent even further down until her lips were just a fraction away from Verity's ear.

"You so much as breathe on her again, Thwaites, and my girls will be wiping your blue blood on the walls," she whispered, straightening enough for the Cheltenham bully see the unwavering look in her dark eyes. There was no question as to who Kelly was referring to and even Verity seemed to acknowledge it when her bloody nostrils flared.

With that small thing taken care of, Kelly stood and sauntered back to the group of jeering St. Trinian's. Annabelle was still laying on the ground where she had been pushed by one of the Cheltenham team. She didn't appear to be hurt at all, just unwilling to get back up and rejoin the world. The sun was bright in the light blue sky and her head was turned in the opposite direction to avoid the glare and the celebrating throng of school girls hopping up and down beside her. Kelly walked up beside her, trying not to let her eyes linger the way they did over the slight, supple curves concealed beneath the girl's gym kit. Get a hold of yourself, Jones. You know better.

"See anything good from down there?" Kelly quipped, announcing her presence.

Annabelle didn't move, didn't look at the dark haired girl or give any indication that she even knew what was going on aside from her words.

"Grass and dirt," Annabelle answered unenthusiastically.

Kelly's smirk widened as she studied the defeated girl, "Can't go wrong with the basics."

Annabelle didn't reply. She had expected the head girl to move away from her, to run off and celebrate her victory with the other girls and just leave her to contemplate the day, but that's not what happened. Instead, Kelly lowered herself down on her back and laid beside the other girl, deep dark eyes turning to peer into Annabelle's own hazel ones. A pink blush rose over Annabelle's cheeks at the closeness of their bodies, of their faces…of their mouths. What's she playing at? Annabelle wondered.

No one in this whole hallowed school really cared for her, not even her aunt whom Annabelle was willing to wager on the first year's board, only made a pass at familial love for the school fees her father had dished out in cash. Even the head girl whose every attention dripped mystery, acumen, and sex in every direction probably wasn't particularly interested in Annabelle's well-being passed the fact that she was the headmistress's niece and it wouldn't do to have her die…at least not on school grounds.

But even that couldn't explain the head girl's behavior right now or the flush of Annabelle's skin in response to the other girl's closeness. Internally, she was just as thrilled as she was confused that Kelly was paying attention to her. She had thought she didn't have a decent hormone in her body, but the older girl's close proximity had proven Annabelle wrong. They were there, pulsing like tiny pinpricks of light and heat beneath the surface of her being and whenever she was near Kelly they burst forward, a force so overwhelming it seemed that they might crash against her skin and explode out the other side.

"Good job today. We usually give Cheltenham hell on the pitch, but you put the fear of fair play into them and that's not easy to do," Kelly complimented in a whisper.

Even with the nearness overwhelming her, there was no mistaking the humor in the head girl's voice. Kelly's wine-coloured smirk widened and Annabelle felt a shiver of energy speed up her spine like a shot of mercury.

"Ready to re-join the living again? They'll party without us, but I'd rather be there before the twins get the idea to spike everybody's drinks with shots of Trinski. Not something to miss for the world," the head girl coaxed, rolling up onto her knees and extending a hand towards Annabelle. When the other girl didn't move, she nodded her head to one side causing her black bob to swirl around her head in the sunlight, a move too sexy for anyone other than her to pull off.

"Come on then. I won't bite…hard," Kelly quipped.

Annabelle took the head girl's hand, but hesitated only a moment before she allowed Kelly to pull her to her feet beside her. They walked back to the group of cheering girls, Annabelle lagging behind Kelly by a few steps, not sure if she could stand to feel the promising heat radiating off of her body another second.

Comments? Thanks for reading! :]