Love For The Bad Girls

one | welcome to the wellmouth

Kendall had packed all of her life up into two blue suitcases. This amazed her mother - the whole car ride to the school, she kept asking Kendall if she was sure she'd brought enough stuff. Her mother's make-up collection wouldn't fit into two suitcases, never mind all the rest of her stuff. Kendall ignored her for the most part, occasionally making a sarcastic comment her mother failed to pick up on.

On a very basic level, Kendall and her mother looked alike. They had the same frizzy, untameable brown hair, the same set of slightly crooked front teeth, the same long nose, the same devious smile and the same high cheekbones. However, years worth of plastic surgery and expert application of make-up had fixed all her mother's imperfections, making her the image of a famous movie star. She'd even chopped all her hair off, dyed it blonde, and wore extensions (which were, Kendall had to admit, highly realistic looking). Kendall couldn't fathom the effort her mother put in to look beautiful, and had no ambition to follow in her footsteps. She kind of liked her teeth; it made her look menacing.

"Why are you staring at me? Do I have lipstick on my teeth?" Her mum squinted in the wing mirror, trying to angle it to see her reflection.

"Your teeth are fine." Kendall said hurriedly, lest her mum cause an accident. She then retreated back into her shell of silence, blocking out her mum's attempts to tell her about some new TV show she was guest starring on. The show actually sounded rather cool, and Kendall had planned on watching it before her mum told her she was going to be in a couple of episodes. Kendall didn't care if it wasn't very daughterly of her to avoid everything with her parents in it at all costs. She saw enough of her parents in real life without the added bonus of a TV screen, plus even though she knew it was just acting, it was kind of freaky to see her mum flirt with someone who wasn't her dad. God forbid she stumbled across a sex scene.

"Oh, look! There's the school." Her mum seemed relieved they'd finally arrived. She probably couldn't handle the one-sided conversation much longer. Kendall herself was already sick of it. She leaned out the window, craning her neck to catch a view of the school. To her disappointment, it was a bog-standard school building, with nothing to differentiate it from her own school. She'd expected something a bit more Malory Towers-esque, especially due to its location on a cliff overlooking the sea. Boarding school must not be like the way Enid Blyton described it, which was a shame, as midnight feasts sounded like something she could get on board with.

The building actually looked very out of place surrounded by the beautiful scenery, a classic example of modernisation and the human urge to build stuff everywhere causing harm to nature. Her mum pulled into the staff car park, and insisted on helping Kendall tow the cases, even though she could handle it just fine on her own. She eyed the cars, half-wondering how easy it would be to hot-wire one. In a school full of delinquents, she was sure someone had the skills to steal a car.

A woman in a lilac flowery pantsuit was waiting at the front of the school building for them. Kendall liked the outfit well enough, but it didn't seem to fit with the fifty year old woman wearing it. "Good morning!" The woman beamed at them, with way too much enthusiasm. "I'm Mrs Moore, and it's lovely to welcome you to our school."

Her mum shook Mrs Moore's hand. "Thank you so much for taking her as a late arrival." Kendall rolled her eyes at her mum's obvious sucking up, whilst feeling slightly impressed by the fact Mrs Moore hadn't broken out into raptures over her famous mother. She supposed the teacher dealt with a lot of rich parents, and celebrities simply didn't faze her anymore. "If I'm being honest, I don't know what to do with her anymore." Her mum dropped her tone to a confidential whisper, although Kendall could still hear it clear as day. "She seems determined to fight the whole world." Kendall felt oddly pleased at that statement.