ᴍᴏᴄʜᴀ | ᴛʏʟᴇʀ ɢᴀʟᴘɪɴ x ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ ✔︎ [ON HOLD]

VIII

"Nevermore was founded in 1791 to educate people like us: outcasts, freaks, monsters, fill in your favourite marginalised group here."

By then, lessons had ended, and students would be either preparing for after-school clubs, or going to study. But either way, the foyer was a lot more crowded, and it wasn't like we didn't attract attention.

Majority of the school would still remember me; the girl that was the principal's daughter that dropped out.
Not to mention Wednesday and I weren't wearing uniform.

"You can saved the sanitized sales pitch. I don't plan on staying here for long," Wednesday muttered. Enid paused from gesturing to the awards stored behind the glass showcase.

I crossed my arms. "Why not?"

"This was my parents' idea," she peered into the showcase, zeroing in on the fencing team's pictures. "Oh look, there's my mother smirking at me. They've been looking for any reason to send me here. It's all part of their nefarious, yet completely obvious plan."

"Which is...?" I prompted.

"To turn me into a version of themselves."

From behind, Enid shrugged. "In that case, perhaps you can help clear something up. Rumour's been swirling that you killed a kid at your old school, and your parents pulled strings to get you off."

Girlie hadn't even formally joined Nevermore and there were already rumours? I guess I should have expected that; gossip moved way too fast.

"Actually it was two kids, but who's counting?"

She marched off from the stand, looking pissed. Enid and I chased after her into the Quad, where the students were getting after-school snacks. I felt more out of place than I had been first going to Jericho High School.

"Welcome to the Quad," I said. As subtly as I could, I flipped my hood on, covering my face as much as possible.

"It's a pentagon."

Enid sighed, pulling my hood off. "Look, the whole snarky goth girl might have worked at normie school, but here things are different." No shit.

She began leading us along the side of the Quad, through the hoard of students. "Let me give you a wiki on Nevermore's social scene."

"I'm not interested in participating in tribal adolescent cliché's."

Her single sentence held so many big words that my brain took a while to digest it. She spoke like Mother, formal, uptight. "Then use it to fill your obviously bottomless pit of disdain."

"There are many flavours of outcasts here, but the 4 main cliques are Fangs, Furs, Stoners and Scales."

I widened my strides, catching up with them. "There are also smaller sub-groups, like psychics and telepaths, like me."

Wednesday raised her brows at me. "That's how you read my thoughts."

"Those are the Fangs, aka vampires," Enid began on her clique lecture, pointing. "Some of them have literally been here for decades."

"That bunch of knuckle heads are Furs, aka werewolves, like Enid," I said, following along. They howled as we walked past, which could mean a variety of things: wolf-whistling, or calling attention to us. "Full moons get loud as hell; that's when Furs wolf out. You should pick up some noise-canceling headphones."

We neared the water installment, where the Scales were hanging out. They were surrounding my... new roommate. "I'm assuming Scales are sirens?"

"You catch on quick. That girl, Bianca Barclay, is the closest thing Nevermore has to royalty," Enid whispered. "Although her crown's been slipping lately. She used to date our resident tortured artist, Xavier Thorpe. But they broke up at the beginning of the semester. Reason? Unknown."