Coffee and a Sketchbook

Chapter Five

"Hey Alice." It was 6PMish and the other girls had gone to see if the rumours were true about Mr. Flack and Opal went to see if she recognised him from anywhere; basically, they were spying on him through the staff room door.

"Hey. Don't mind me, I'm just getting a blog post up." She said, tapping away at her keyboard. I nodded and settled on Kayla's bed for a little while, working on a recent design of mine. It was an outfit inspired by flowers. The top was two giant petals sewn together, the skirt looked liked it was a flower unfolding and the shoes were ballet flats that were inspired by leaves. I heard a gasp from Alice and looked up to see her staring at my sketch.

"No way." She said. "You drew that? No wonder you won a scholarship."

"Thanks, but it's not that good." I murmured.

"Shut up. It's excellent."

"It's not my best work." I admitted, scampering across to my bed to collect a scrapbook from my bag. "However," I continued, returning to Alice. "These are all of my best designs." I handed her the book. "You can take a peek...if you want that is. And I can have a look at your blog?" She agreed and we traded work. I scrolled down Skolour and selected a smokey eye makeup tutorial. I'd never been any good at makeup.

'Step 1. Collect your makeup.

-Kohl

-Dark eye shadow-'

"Marina." Alice interrupted my reading. "Why didn't you tell us you were so talented?"

I blushed. "I'm not."

"Let's put it this way. You got in to this place using pure talent, the rest of us had to bribe the school with money." Before we could take the conversation any further we were interrupted by Kayla bursting through the door.

"You should have come."

"It's true!"

"He's hotter than I remember!"

"He has a Polaroid camera!" The last comment was Opal. Me and Alice grinned at each other - the noisy lot were back.

***

Fashion School is quite different to normal school. In the first year, the first week is called introductory week, where you get to experience all of the classes you might like to take. You have two 'fashion' classes per weekday and four 'normal' classes. On Saturday, you get to experience the class you specialise in without all the stragglers holding you back and on Sunday, you get to pick three fashion classes you want to do permanently. The only thing I didn't like about this regime was that we had to attend classes we didn't necessarily want to; namely, modelling.

 "My first class today...modelling! Yay!" India enthused.

 "Ugh. At least I don't have it until tomorrow." Grumbled Opal.

 "Hey, modelling isn't so bad." Macy countered. "It's fun."

I snorted, and Macy raised an eyebrow. "I...strutting around a-and showing off my body is not for me." I said.

 "Here here." Opal called from her iPad.

 "Modelling? I can take or leave it." Alice said, not looking away from her phone.

 "How come you're on that thing so often?" Kayla asked, checking her reflection in a compact mirror and causing Alice to blush.

 "Aha. It's totally a guy." Macy decided.

 "Oh. My. Grande." Kayla squealed.

 "Grande?" I whispered to Opal.

 "Ariana Grande. Pop star, started off on Nickelodeon." She hissed back.