When the Blossoms Fall

3 ~ Traitor

We spent the next hours catching up. We only decided it would be a good idea to go to sleep when the church clock was ringing well past midnight.

In the morning we groggily got out of bed and started to get changed into our uniforms. The school being a 'classic English boarding institute' we were all required to dress in scratchy kilts, loose collared shirts and black shoes of our choice. Whereas the boys had to wear wide legged trousers and a similar style shirt. The uniform wasn't bad... but needed a lot of tweaking according to personal preference.

Many people altered their uniforms themselves, as I have done, but there are a few people who take it upon themselves to hire someone to get the base fabric out of the clothing and then turned into whole new pieces to wear. No one goes against their decision, but there have been a few... imaginative... takes on what the uniform should look like...

Waking up was the easier part of the morning, staying up was a lot harder... eventually, Emma and I managed to finish physically and mentally preparing for school and we made our way down the grand staircase then left into the huge dining hall.

I scoured the room for any sign of my other friends. It wasn't hard to find the people frantically waving their arms at us. We steadily walked towards them avoiding eye contact with them, mentally begging them to stop.

There were two other people who liked to spend most of their time in the library other than Emma and I. Coco, the one who you had to cover the ears of whenever anyone swore. And Ember, she was... crazy... to say in the slightest. Coco's marking was a dragonfly and Ember's was a flame.

We sat down on the long, wooden and probably at least 200 year old benches opposite Coco and Ember. They had the courtesy to have already served us breakfast so we took no delay to dig into the sorely missed school food.

"Guys! It's been, what, two months? And we don't even deserve a 'hello'!?" Ember exclaimed, "ok. I see how it is."

I take my fork down to another sausage. Only to find nothing under it except the hard table. "Ember! Give me my food now!" Much the same reaction came from Emma. Coco was giggling while Ember took the courtesy of stuffing her face as quickly as she could with all of our food. Within seconds, it was all gone and me and Emma were clambering over the table to try and get back at her.

This, unfortunately, was a regular breakfast for my group of friends. But we knew after, Ember would give us enough snacks in the library to make up for our stolen breakfast. We each had a strange role in supporting the others. Emma was kind of the mother the mother figure, Coco was a toddler, and me and Ember were twins that either teamed up to prank the others, or pranked each other.

Secrets were not something that even had the confidence to appear in our relationship. This took me a little while to get used to, as it was normal for me hide everything from people. But meeting these people allowed me to remove my previous mask. And when I met them, I really, truly felt happy with them. For the first time ever.

Coco noticed my distant smile. She looked at me with understanding and returned to the argument between Emma and Ember.

~first lesson~

Once my Breakfast was devoured by Ember we made our way to the first lesson of the day. Sports. And being the first sports class of the year all of us were required to take agility and speed tests.

With just my luck, our sport kit did not in the slightest cover up the huge eagle marking on my chest. This new marking was hard to miss as it was; A) huge. It spanned across both of my collarbones, and; B) the ink of it was extremely colourful. The tips of the wings of the eagle were yellow, and this went ombré to dark red towards the inner parts of the wings.

Our school was co-ed. Meaning there were both boys and girls studying here. We mostly got along, but there have been few rare cases of any tension between us.

I could see some of the girls drooling over the new boys, but considered these boys were also drooling just the same. I could see why though... the boys sports uniform was... droolable. Fitted white tops and navy shorts could do that to any girl.

Girls did tend to fantasise over the newcomers, but so did the boys. At least until the other guys snapped them back into reality. Out of the corner of my eye I could see people staring at me. This made me uneasy, as I did not know whether it was due to the basically see-through V-neck white top and sports skirt, or the fact that my chest was looking like a vibrant sunset.

The coach blew his whistle and everyone stood to attention. "Ok, girls, start on the exercises, and boys, do 5 laps." This followed with grumbling from the boys and muttering about it only being the first day.

I love sports. I was in A team hockey, and put in 100% with all I did. But my prize position was being captain of rowing, two years early. Because of this, i was put in to lead the girls in this sports sessions. Facing away from the group I realised my back was to the path of the boys running all too late. I felt a strong hand squeeze me and I whipped my head round to see only a mischievous smirk.

Panic rose up in me. I did not recognise him. But it was obvious that he was only trouble.

"Come on babe. You know I couldn't resist it when you looked like a ripe peach for anyone to pick." He purposefully moved himself forward.

I stumbled back, uneasy and oblivious about what to do in that situation. But a solid wall placed himself between me and him.

"Yo dude, stop. She isn't something to be owned"

Nicholas? Of anyone, why him?

But the point was put across and mischievous smirk moved away.

The wall that saved me turned and tilted his head. He had raven black hair shorter on the sides, and bright blue eyes, which at the current moment were dull with boredom.

"Don't expect it to happen again." His eyes moved to the bright marking that was not even remotely covered by my sports top, "Traitor"

Hey guys~~
I just wanted to say, I'm really sorry that this chapter took a little long... but I was trying to think about how to develop the plot and characters.
Thank you so much for your support! Just by reading this, you have made me so happy!
Please please please as this is my first story so I'm new to all this, PLEAAAASE tell me what I can do to better my story...