A/N: Still one of my favorite chapters. Galinda/Elphaba hate is just SO MUCH FUN to write! Again, I threw in a bunch of stuff from things that I took down off my account to improve the original. Hope you have as good a time reading this one as I did writing it!
Disclaimer: If I owned it, I would be fabulously, disgustingly, obnoxiously rich, and my mother would not be nagging me to find a summer job.
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As promised, more on the subject of Her Majesty, Miss Galinda Upland, Royal Pain in the You-Know-Where. (I hope you're ready for this…)
When I finally hauled myself up to our room that first day, Galinda was already there, a thoroughly unhappy expression on her face. I confess to feeling a small glow of satisfaction when she wrinkled her nose unpleasantly as I walked in. I obviously (hopefully) make her as miserable as she makes me.
First of all, it's a good thing I didn't bring much with me (not that I had much to bring), because her stuff takes up her entire half of our room, and most of mine to boot. Having finished unpacking my suitcase and my few meager trunks within a few minutes of my arrival, I watched in mingled disgust and fascination as item after item made its appearance from her luggage, wondering how one person could possibly need so much. Her closet and dresser are full to the point of overflowing, and the vanity (which I was under the impression we were supposed to share) is already littered with the various tubes, bottles, brushes, compacts, and other sundry items that Galinda insists she needs to "beautificate" herself. She brought enough clothes to last a normal person through all four terms at Shiz, enough down pillows and velvet comforters for the entire population of the school, and enough shoes to outfit an army. (Oh, the injustice of it all!) I detest every atom of her being, but the girl has remarkable taste in footwear. It's so unfair that she can afford all the gaudy, outlandish, gorgeous things she wants!
As to her personality, I can sum it up in one word: BLONDE! She makes me sick – curling, polishing, primping, preening, chattering, giggling from morning until night. She stays out long past curfew every night, is constantly late to or absent from classes, never does any of her schoolwork…and the maddening part is, the professors all let her get away with it! She can do whatever she bloody well pleases, and she'll still be this bubbly, frilly, gorgeous example of perfect femininity. Whereas if I were to put so much as my little finger out of line, I'd be labeled a cheeky, ungrateful wretch who needs to learn her place. Then I'd probably be expected to participate in some pointless exercise to facilitate said learning of my place. This would likely involve writing lines, cleaning of one type or another, or another similar waste of my time. It disgusts me to witness the double standards applied by the professors here at Shiz.
Oh, yes. Have I mentioned that she flirts with every single boy she meets? I don't even think she really means to; she does it almost subconsciously. I'm fairly certain already that it must be a part of her genetic makeup somehow, because flirting comes as naturally to her as breathing. (I wouldn't be in the least upset if she were to stop doing either one.) And the really infuriating part is, she's not interested in any of the boys she flirts with. She already has a male entourage that follows her every move, but she barely even knows they exist. She uses them to get favors, but she has no intentions of paying back the favors she then owes them. And they're all so enthralled by her so-called beauty (well, what else was she going to use to captivate them, her razor-sharp wit?) that they don't even realize that they mean nothing to her. Or if they realize it, they don't care. She can hardly be bothered to give them the time of day, and yet any one of them would still gladly die for her a thousand times over. Does she have any idea what I would give to have even one single person feel that way about me?
Galinda complains about everything. The day we arrived, she began to talk at me (Galinda doesn't talk to me, she talks at me, because talking to me would require me to answer her, meaning we would actually have to have something approaching a real conversation), whining about how unfair it was of Madame Morrible to expect her to share her private suite with me, how her parents are paying extra for her to have a room all to herself and she expects the university to reimburse them, and how on top of the whole dreadful rooming situation, Madame Morrible won't even let her into the sorcery seminar (the very class which she offered to teach me privately – take that, Your Royal Perfectness!), which she declares is the only reason she even applied to Shiz in the first place. She was quite offended because she didn't think Madame even read her application essay (which is probably an accurate conclusion), "Magic Wands: Need They Have A Point?" She even went so far as to quote, from memory, the entirety of the aforementioned essay.
After a few minutes of her chattering away nonstop, I realized that she didn't expect any sort of response to her ranting, so I picked up a book from the neat stack on my desk and tuned her out, prepared to let her ramble on as long as she wanted to. But my concentration was rudely interrupted by a pink, ruffly pillow that came flying seemingly out of nowhere to smack me in the face and knock the book out of my hands. I looked up in surprise and annoyance to see Galinda glaring at me, hands on her hips. She had finally noticed my lack of attentiveness to her plight. Apparently I was supposed to at least listen to her pointless fuming, even if she didn't actually expect me to answer her. Returning her venomous look with one of my own, I picked up the book, found my place, and turned my back to her as I picked up where I had left off.
This did not dissuade her from continuing to rant at me, however, and the constant background noise was distracting me from my reading, so finally I told her (quite pleasantly, all things considered) just where she could stick her blasted application essay. She got a highly offended look on her face, and for a minute I was afraid she was going to tattle on me for using foul language. But she merely uttered a wordless cry of fury and despair and stormed out of our suite, probably to bemoan her troubles to her many friends, who no doubt commiserated with her about how awful it must be to be forced to live with the green girl. When she was gone, I rolled my eyes and sighed deeply, impressed by the self-control I showed in not murdering the obnoxious creature on the spot. I can already tell that this is going to be a very long school year.
My only salvation through all of this has been Madame's sorcery seminar. The key to the whole concept of sorcery, or so she tells me, is to embrace your powers, not fight them. And she apparently knows what she's talking about, because I started following this advice, and it's incredible how quickly I'm learning. Even when Madam invited me into the seminar, I would never have suspected I was capable of any of the things I've done in just a few short classes. And Madame says that we haven't begun to even scratch the surface of what I could be capable of. If I can turn a drawing of a flower into a real live plant this early on (yes, I actually did that the other day, can you believe it?!), just imagine what I'll be able to do once I've been fully trained!
I can't even begin to describe how good it feels to know that my powers, which I've always viewed as a curse, are really a blessing. I'm not such a freak after all! Or at least, I'm a freak in a good way. It's so wonderful to finally be praised and recognized for my abilities, instead of being feared and ridiculed for them. We'll just see what Father has to say about me now!
So you see why I'm glad that Madame won't let Galinda into the seminar. It's my refuge, my one escape. If Galinda took sorcery with me, there'd be no getting away from her, nothing I could call mine and mine alone. I've got to have my little sanctuary. I mean, I think I deserve a reward for putting up with Miss Galinda Upland day in and day out!
So, anyway, that's my life as it stands right now. If Galinda tries any more to get into the sorcery seminar, I don't care if it's an unethical use of magic, I'm going to ask Madame for a spell to make her head explode. And I'll use it, too, don't think I won't!
Or maybe I could turn her into a toad. A big, fat, ugly, warty toad. Then she'd see about being green. Just let her and those insipid friends of hers call me an artichoke one more time, and they'll see what happens!
A perplexing thought: if I loathe Galinda so purely and completely, then why do I so desperately wish that I was just like her? (That's a good question, actually – curses, now I'm going to be up all night wondering…)
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