Breaking The Ice Princess

Chapter 1

It was already the start of the school year by the time my admission into the fancy GD Goenka Public School came through. That wasn't necessarily something unusual for my transcript. I'd been changing schools at the drop of a hat all my life. My father was an Army official and our whole family was used to accommodating for his career. As a result of his nomadic lifestyle, we never stuck around in one place for too long and we never got too attached. Scratch that. I never got too attached because my whole life was temporary, schools, houses, people, everything was there one day and gone the next.

Not that it seemed to bother me too much. I'd learnt to adjust to the life as best as I could at that young age. I closed myself into a shell so that no one could get in. If no one could in, I wouldn't have to care too much and if I didn't care about too much, I would never get hurt. The drawback being that I had trouble making friends. Or rather, I was very good at making fake friends but at the end of the day, I always knew that I was all alone in my lonely world. I didn't talk too much at any school, I didn't try to exceed at anything too much and I didn't have any close friends. I was an easily importable person, capable of molding into any whichever shape as and when needed.

Although, that autumn, things were about to change permanently. For the first time in my life, my parents had made the decision of sticking in one place. They'd made the decision of having me stick around in one place. Over the years they had realized that my mediocre academic performance wasn't cutting it any longer. I made bare minimum efforts in school, because, really, what was the point? I had no one to impress.

My wonderful, sweet parents had decided that boarding school was the best option for me, now that I'd made it as far as 11th grade. It was time for the big preparations for my future to commence. More importantly, it was time for me to give the much feared, Board Exams. All that required one thing for sure, stability.

I knew that I was smart. I had always known that. But I didn't like to show it. I didn't want the burden of people's expectations on me. So I was always careful to stick to being average. I was an ace at being average. Average in sports, average in studies and average at life. If no one kept any hopes from me, I wouldn't have anyone to disappoint. This particular strategy of life had worked miracles thus far. Except now, I was at the most important crossroads of my life, and there was no way around hard-work anymore.

So there I was, Miss Average, entering the world of the rich, bratty and unconventional. My parents' had chosen this particular "brand" as my school, proclaiming that, thus far, my education had been minimalist, one Army school after another. Now they wanted a change in pace and they wanted to spend on the last two years of my schooling, believing that this was what was best for me. Parents! Always believing they know what's best for their kids. The naivety of that sentiment never ceases to astonish me.

GD Goenka Public School. Even the name had an underlying implication of royalty. The campus was a brilliantly spread-out 30 acres property. It took us an entire day to get a tour of the school. It was luxury personified. The student's dorms looked as though they were copy pasted from a 5-star property. Everything was centrally air-conditioned. There was a heated swimming pool, an in-built movie theater, a golf-course, a horse-riding range. It was education combined with the resources of a

high-end resort property. If that wasn't enough to impress the big pockets, they also had the best faculty in India. The best faculty that money could buy.

That's probably what sold my parents on Goenka. That and their guilty conscience for all the instability in my life. Aren't parents always over-compensated for something or the other? It never ends. They felt guilty that in all these years, I hadn't made any friends. They felt guilty for making me move so much over the years. They felt guilty for never being around at home too much. My dad was the Army officer and my Mom was the perfect Trophy Wife for the Army Officer. If he was out defending our country, she was always out organizing charity events for the army wives' clubs. Growing up, my parents had never been around much and so I had never really had anyone to rely on for anything. It was always me against the world.