St. Mallory's Forever!

25: HELEN: Don't say the B-word.

Just when I thought this school was beginning to seem normal, it has to go and prove me wrong. Not only am I expected to wear a kilt and study Latin, but now I have to play lacrosse. In an inter-house competition.

I don't know who looked more horrified at that prospect — me, or Abby. Not that I blame her. I did almost take her eye out a few times.

But yeah, lacrosse. I always thought lacrosse was a fictional game, you know, like Quidditch. I mean, whoever heard of lacrosse outside an Enid Blyton story about Malory Towers or St. Clare's? But apparently it's for real.

Abby was trying to explain some of the rules to me and Xuan yesterday, and it doesn't make sense. Not. At. All.

It's nothing like any sport I've ever played before, and whoever invented it seems to have had a grudge against anyone who can't remember a million and one different rules simultaneously. You can only hold your stick a certain way; you can only got as far as a certain white line; you can only pass a certain way, move a certain way, defend a certain way. I tell you, it's driving me mad! And, somehow, I'm supposed to grasp all this by next Saturday? Ha, fat chance.

Oh, and here's the cherry on the cake. We have a disco this weekend.

With boys!

Gasp! Shock! Horror! Panic!

Well, that's what the others seem to be doing anyway.

Honestly, you'd swear we were getting ready to greet Her Majesty the Queen the way they're carrying on. All panicking over what to wear and what makeup to put on, and will this ring go with that outfit. It's enough to make you go insane. And that's before we actually start talking about the boys themselves.

You'd think we were in a convent the way everyone goes all giggly whenever a member of the opposite sex is mentioned. I was telling them about some of my friends (not that I had that many) in London, and they were gobsmacked that so many of them were boys.

But this is what you get from being locked up in a girls' school for months on end, isn't it?

To be fair, not everyone is panicking. It's mostly Christie and her twittering horde — none of whom, can I just say, will so much as set foot out of the house without at least half an hour spent on makeup and hair arrangement. And now all I hear, every waking minute of the day is boys, boys, boys, boys, boys!

I'm surrounded by imbeciles...