I don't know yet???

seven

Eleanor had finally gotten lucky. A pair of rich parents had adopted her to be their only child, and now she was going to a fancy private school for rich kids.

    At first, the school was intimidating. It was huge, and it was built to look all modern with metal and glass and lots of perfectly symmetrical shapes. There was a courtyard filled with gardens and sports stuff and winding paths for the kids to walk on. There was even a pond.

    The inside of the school was weird too. There were lots of classrooms on lots of different levels. Eleanor was in fifth grade, so she stayed in one classroom pretty much the entire day.

    That classroom was presided over by Mrs. Rhodes, a short, chubby woman with greying brown hair that went just down to her jaw. She had a high-pitched, scratchy voice, like that of a smoker. She seemed nice enough, but also fairly strict with her rules.

    Eleanor sat in between a boy named Brax and a girl named Kat.

    Brax was short for Braxton. Eleanor thought that was an ugly name, but she didn't say anything about it. Eleanor wasn't rude, especially not on the first day. But Brax was rude. He stole her pencils and cut the erasers off with his safety scissors, and sometimes he snapped them. Brax constantly pulled on his tie and messed up his uniform. He was very fidgety. It drove Eleanor crazy.

    Kat was short for Katrina. Katrina was a pretty name, just like Katrina was a pretty girl. She had curled blonde hair, which Eleanor was instantly jealous of. She had ice blue eyes with a little too much messily-done mascara and eyeshadow lining them. She was nice, too. Not really nice, but she wasn't mean or rude like Brax.

    Kat and Eleanor held a conversation while Mrs. Rhodes was out of the room making copies. Kat invited her to sit at her and her friends' table. Making friends was a lot easier than Eleanor thought it would be.

    Kat's lunch table was right in the middle of the cafeteria. There were four other girls: Evvy, short for Evelyn, Ari, short for Ariana, Nev, short for Nevaeh, and Sky, short for Skylar. Shortened names was a pattern at Eleanor's new school. Upon being introduced, all the girls had even asked her if they could call her Ellie.

    "Yeah, o' course," Eleanor agreed.

    "Well, then," Nev-short-for-Nevaeh said, pursing her lips semi-judgmentally, "nice to meet you, Ellie."

    Eleanor nodded. "Nice to mee' you too." She was lying a little. She knew that most of them were just pretending to like her because Kat did.

    "So, what brings you here?" Ari-short-for-Ariana asked. "We've all been here since kindergarten. New people don't come often."

    "One of the families around here adopted me," she explained. "The Martels. Tha's wha' they're called."

    "You're adopted?" Sky-short-for-Skylar asked, voice sneering. "What happened to your parents?"

    "They died." Eleanor dragged her fork through her pasta. "Two years ago. But it's fine now."

    "Where did you live for those two years?" Kat questioned. Her tone was genuinely friendly, which was a pleasant surprise.

    "I wen' to an emergency foster home and then a group home," Eleanor answered. "I stayed a' the group home almos' the entire time."

    "What was it like?" Evvy questioned.

    Eleanor shrugged. "It was se' up so we lived in little families. I' was a Catholic home, so we wen' to church on Sundays, weren' allowed to listen to any secular music, watch any PG-13 movies, stuff like tha'. When I first got there, there was this guy named Hunter, and he had a girlfriend. They did some bad stuff together, and that caused some major issues within our family. And after he left, there was a boy named Cole, and he had some problems with religion. But tha' was all the trouble I had in the system. Just the family comin' and goin'."

    "Are you an only child?" Kat asked. Eleanor nodded.

    "That's cool," Evvy said. "At least you didn't have a sibling to get separated from."

    "Yeah." Eleanor sighed. "Bu' sometimes it's a little lonely. Especially now, you know? Bein' the only kid in that big house."

    "I'm an only child," Nev-short-for-Nevaeh said. "I don't mind being the only kid in my big house."

    "Maybe her house is bigger than yours," Kat teased, smiling brightly. She had really white teeth for a kid.

    "No way," Nev-short-for-Nevaeh argued. "My house is bigger than all of yours. It'll be bigger than hers too."

    "Well, maybe y'all can come t' my house and see," Eleanor suggested.

    "Really? Sweet!" Kat exclaimed. "When?"

    "Well, I don' know." Eleanor shrugged. "I'll have to ask the people who own the house firs'. But I'll tell you as soon as I figure it out."

    "That's so nice of you!" Evvy said. "I'm sure we'll have tons of fun."

    Eleanor wasn't sure if she was being sarcastic or not. Then again, not many fifth graders were skilled in sarcasm. She only knew about it because of Cole.

    "Yeah, me too," Eleanor uttered.

    They spent the rest of lunch exchanging small talk and gossip, which made Eleanor mildly uncomfortable and extremely confused. Being new to any school was hard: being new to this one was the worst.

    It seemed to be a pretty exclusive place. Once people found their group, their friends, their clique, whatever, they stopped talking to anyone else. Eleanor realised how lucky she was that Kat had even talked to her in the first place, let alone agreed to let her sit with her friends at lunch.

    Evvy was nice too. Not as nice as Kat, but far nicer than anyone else. Nev-short-for-Nevaeh was particularly stuck-up. Apparently her family was the richest out of everyone's. Eleanor didn't understand why she thought being rich made her more of a person than anyone else. Then again, Eleanor had spent the last two years around parentless kids. None of them had any reason to brag about their family's financial class.

    The day ended with Eleanor getting far more homework than she was expecting as well as Kat's home phone number and Instagram username. She would have to ask the Martels about getting some social media once she got home.

    Naturally, they said yes. The Martels weren't very restricting, and kind of let her roam the estate on her own, as long as she didn't leave it. They gave her a cell phone her first day there, and told her to do whatever with it. Eleanor was very happy with where she was placed.

    A good day. For the first time in forever, she had had a good day.