"Are you an obedient girl?" Mr. Brocklehurst was a stout man, with small, watery eyes and a sweater vest.
"Yes."
"Lies are not indicative of obedience," replied the headmaster.
"I'm not lying," replied Jane. "And what would you have me say? If I said I wasn't obedient, then I'd be chastised for that."
He looked to Mrs. Selvig. She rolled her eyes. "Jane, you know quite well that you argue with John, with Rose, with Samuel. You neglect your chores, and you speak back to your uncle and aunt."
"You are not my aunt," Jane said, with defiance. "And what's more, I do my chores, and your children are horrors."
Sarah looked at Mr. Brocklehurst. "Do you see what I suffer?"
He cleared his throat. "Jane Foster, at our school, we do not tolerate defiance, nor do we accept children's misbehavior. You will learn to bend, Jane, and we will make you a proper girl."
Jane took a deep breath. "I am a proper girl, and I don't lie. You, Mrs. Selvig, are a terrible person, and I'll go to this school, but only because I'm getting away from you," she paused. "And I hope that I never see you again."
Jane left to get her bag. She didn't want to go to Lowood School, but she felt as though anyplace would be better than what she tolerated at the Selvig's.
She left without ceremony, without a goodbye to anyone.
The taxi pulled away, and Jane watched as the grand place faded into the distance. She folded her hands on her lap, thinking that she might be on the precipice of a grand adventure. It might not be so bad...
Mr. Brocklehurst remained silent, watching the houses pass by, the city...
Lowood School was ancient looking structure, imposing and grand. It was situated by a cemetery, a church of unknown denomination, and a large park-like garden. There were trees peppered throughout the place, and wild flowers adorning the perimeter. It was lovely. And Jane thought that perhaps she could, in fact, divine a happy future for herself here, Mr. Brocklehurst notwithstanding.
She followed the headmaster into the main hall, where the rest of the girls were having lunch, it was a dank, depressing place, and the girls looked with wide eyes at Jane as she made her way through the place.
Jane's eyes remained fixed to the backs of the shoes of Mr. Brocklehurst as he brought her up a stone staircase. She stumbled once, catching herself before she fell, and he offered her a wry grin as a response. She suddenly felt as though she was wandering into a bit of a precarious situation...that he was not to be trusted, and that the headmaster cared little for Jane, or indeed, any of the other pupils at Lowood.
He brought her to her dormitory.
"Miss Scatcherd, this is our new pupil, Jane Foster. She will be sharing a dormitory with Darcy Lewis..."
Miss Scatcherd smiled, but it was a most unfriendly smile...too much teeth, without joy. Her brown hair was pulled back rigidly, and she had very dark brown eyes. Her skin was without much color, but Jane wouldn't say she was pale...more like she simply refused to see the sun.
"Well, Jane," and she turned with a brisk movement, and brought her further down the hall. "Darcy is an interesting girl...I'm quite certain you'll have much to talk about."
She wasn't paying attention...her eyes were on the walls. They were stark and dreary. No paint, no announcements, nothing to indicate that it was a school, a dorm, or that life existed at all.
Perhaps that was the intention.
Miss Scatcherd didn't offer conversation. She showed Jane her room, and stated simply, "You'll want to hurry if you are hungry for lunch. It is already half past noon, and the period ends at 12:50," she turned, and left the room.
Jane sighed. She set her bag down, and looked around.
Duran Duran posters were in the wall, a calendar, and a big picture of a kitten with the phrase, "Kiss Me Cuz I'm Cute," on it.
Duran Duran. Who was this girl?
Jane decided to head down...she was rather hungry.
She hurried as fast as she could, and found the dining hall without much trouble.
She went up to the lady behind the counter..."Pizza?" Jane asked.
The lady with bleach blonde hair, purple glasses and much too red lipstick handed her a tray with a slice of pizza on it.
Jane turned toward the room. Most seats were taken.
There was one particular girl...she was looking at Jane curiously.
Over she went, for Jane wasn't shy.
"I'm Jane Foster."
"Yeah. I heard that we were getting a new girl, and that she would be my roommate," replied the girl. She was pretty, with glasses and thick brown hair.
"Oh!" Jane exclaimed. "You're Darcy Lewis."
"Yep."
"Can I...sit here?"
"Well, I'm not gonna stop ya, " replied Darcy.
"So," Jane began. "What's the deal with this place? Is everyone miserable?"
"I guess you'll find that out for yourself...it's kinda a prison," she finished in a hush.
"Oh."
"Don't worry. I'll watch out for you. Some of the girls sneak out at night to the boy's school a couple of miles down the road...I don't usually, but...every once in a while..."
"Why don't you usually?" Jane asked, stuffing the pizza in her mouth.
"Mr. Dicklehurst has a thing about me...he's always blaming me for stuff, and so I try to keep a low profile."
Jane giggled. "Well, he doesn't seem very nice."
"He's not. Most of the teachers aren't."
"Do you have many friends here?"
Darcy lowered her eyes. "Not really. The girls here, well...they're a bit..."
But the bell rang, and Jane never found out what the girls were a bit of.
Her first day was uneventful. Her classes too rudimentary for Jane's quick mind. She was already bored.
She got out a book and began to read when Darcy came in from the bathroom.
"You read a lot?" Darcy asked.
"Not a lot, but often enough, yeah."
"I have an old laptop. We can look up YouTube videos or something..."
Jane laughed. "This from a girl with Duran Duran posters...I'm surprised you even have a laptop."
"What? Duran Duran is the shit." And Darcy took out her archaic laptop."I got it from my uncle before he died...it's pretty old, but it works," she turned it on, and it sputtered to life. "We need to keep it low...they listen to everything here..." she began to turn the computer this way and that, trying to catch a signal. "There!"
Jane snuggled next to Darcy and watched silly cats, movie clips, and interviews with famous people Jane had never heard of. It was fun.
At midnight, Darcy closed her laptop, and slid it under a floorboard by her bed. "Night, Jane."
"Goodnight, Darcy."
Jane smiled. She had a friend for the first time in her young life.
Jane had been at Lowood for about six months, and now knew and understood the inter-workings of the politics, the relationships, and the expectations. Keep you head down, don't make trouble, and even the likes of Miss Scatcherd or Mr. Brocklehurst would lose their close eye.
"Jane! Come ON! It'll be fun, remember fun?" Darcy was attempting to convince Jane to sneak out and meet the boys from another school a few miles away. There was a pizza place about half way between. "And those guys, some of them are cute, you know. We are thirteen years old. It'd be nice to at least be kissed before we turn 15."
"I dunno, Darcy..." it wasn't that Jane was afraid of punishment, or getting caught, more like she genuinely had no interest in being kissed by a boy before she turned 15. She figured that it would all present itself soon enough. "I've got homework...algebra, physics..."
"I still don't get how you're in physics," as Darcy combed out her hair. "That's for the girls ready to leave the place...16 and 17 year olds..."
Jane shrugged. "It's not difficult for me to understand."
Darcy went over to her friend, grabbed the book, and slammed it shut. "Goddammit, Jane. Come on. Let's just GO!"
Jane sighed, and without as much as an application of lip gloss (not that the girls at Lowood were allowed such things, but some snuck it in), put on her shoes and a jacket.
The pair climbed out of the window, landing softly on the ground below. Darcy began to giggle, but Jane hushed her. It wasn't as though this was the first time Darcy had snuck out, but Jane certainly never had.
They ran down a path just beyond the school...it was dark and overgrown, which was fortuitous...it cloaked their presence, but did little to hide the sound.
Twigs snapped and leaves crunched, until finally the girls made it out of the woods and to the road.
They walked the mile and a half to the pizza place, and lo and behold, a rather nice mix of young boys was to be found. Darcy beamed with satisfaction and excitement. Jane rolled her eyes and went inside, thinking how she had only tasted pizza a few times before she came to Lowood, and how much she liked it...the Selvig's weren't much for pizza, or indeed, allowing Jane to partake in its consumption.
Darcy immediately went to the group of boys, Jane to the counter. She ordered two slices, a coke, and went and sat down with her food.
And she sat, thinking how she should be back at school, doing sums and formulating algorithms.
"You look like you could use a friend," said a boy's voice.
Jane looked up. "Um," her mouth was full of pizza.
He laughed. "I'm Charles. Charlie. Mind if I sit with you?"
Jane blushed and shook her head.
She swallowed her food.
"You got a name?"
"Jane."
He nodded.
Jane decided he wasn't bad looking. He had sharp features for a young boy, blue eyes...dark-ish hair.
"So, Jane. Is that your friend...Darcy, is it?"
"Yeah. She's funny."
"She certainly is. She's flirting with every single one of my friends. How old are you guys, anyway?"
Jane's eyes squinted a bit. "How old are you?"
"Fifteen."
"We are..." she hesitated. "We'll be fourteen next month."
Charlie laughed. "You both have birthdays in May?"
"Yes," Jane said defiantly, though it wasn't true.
Charlie nodded. "You like school?"
"Yes," she said immediately.
And they spoke about school for a bit.
Jane decided that Charlie wasn't so bad...he had a nice voice, he was bright, and well spoken for a 15 year old boy. They talked for an hour, when Jane noticed how late it was.
"I should get Darcy. It was really nice talking to you," and Jane got up.
"You guys sneak out a lot?" Charlie asked, rising with her.
"No..."
And he took her wrist. "That's a shame...I would've liked to have seen you again..."
Jane swallowed, he was very close. "I..." and before she knew it, Charlie had his lips on hers. It was fleeting, the moment had barely occurred when it was over...
She smiled at him, make turned toward Darcy. "Darcy...! We need to get back."
But Darcy was busy kissing all of her new admirers goodbye. "Yeah, totally. Next week."
The pair hurried back the way they came.
They approached their window, and Darcy pulled on it. "Jane!" she whispered. "Did you close this?"
"No..."
"Uh oh," replied Darcy. "We need to go in through the basement, then. It's the only other way..."
Jane shook at the thought, but nodded.
They crept along the outside of the building, and rounded the corner.
Mr. Brocklehurst was standing there, arms folded in front of him. "Well, well, well. Lewis and Foster. Do tell me...what do the two of you think you are doing?"
"I..." Darcy began.
But Mr. Brocklehurst didn't wait for an answer. He took the girls by the elbows and marched them through the front of the school.
"Miss Scatcherd!" he bellowed, and turning to Jane and Darcy, said, "You girls will be made an example of..."
A few minutes passed, and the headmaster did not waver his watery glare from Jane or Darcy.
Darcy fidgeted, but Jane remained firm.
Miss Scatcherd emerged in her robe. She took in the scene before her. "Yes, Mr. Brocklehurst?"
"Wake the pupils."
"All of them?"
"Yes," and he gave her a mutinous glare.
Within ten minutes, the school was in the great hall, sleepy eyed, but all curious.
"Do you see these girls?" And the headmaster pointed at Jane and Darcy. "These girls are false. They are liars, they are sneaks. Such behavior will not be tolerated at Lowood school."
And he got two chairs, and placed them in front of the crowd. "Miss Lewis, Miss Foster, kindly take your places on these chairs."
"It was my idea, headmaster," said Jane.
"Was it, Miss Foster?"
"Yes. Darcy had nothing to do with it." Jane was saying this because Darcy was keenly afraid of Mr. Brocklehurst, and Jane was not. She could take it.
Mr. Brocklehurst looked at Darcy. "Well, Miss Lewis. That was bad judgement indeed on your part, but it appears that your friend Jane here will be alone in her punishment. Miss Foster, take your position."
And Jane stood up onto the chair. She looked out into the crowd with her head high. Yes, they had been wrong...but so many things about this school were so very wrong, that Jane felt like what her and Darcy did paled in comparison. She would take this punishment for both of them, because Darcy was her friend. Her only friend. The only friend Jane had ever known.
"Observe, students. Jane Foster is a liar," said the headmaster.
He clapped his hands together and the throng of a hundred or so girls left the hall.
Darcy looked miserably at Jane.
And Jane remained at her station, beaten but not broken, and wondered how long she would remain there...