For The Better

Skie walked through the doors of East Hill Private Academy slowly at 6:30 am on Monday. She was already in uniform, holding her bag with her clothes tightly. She limped down the hall to her dorm, grateful that it was still empty. When she entered the room, she noticed that Hannah was nowhere in sight, but could hear the shower running. Not having anything better to do until 7, she wandered down the halls to Hazel and Raven's room.

Hazel answered her quiet knock with a hairbrush in her hand and her hair dripping wet. It didn't stop her from giving the shorter girl a big hug. 

"Hey there, did you just get back?"

Skie nodded.

"You wanna come in? Rave is almost out of the shower."

Skie smiled and entered. Hazel sat on her fairly neat bed and Skie smirked when she saw Raven's messy one. 

"You wanna have a seat?" Hazel offered.

"Uh, nah. I'm ok." Skie blushed slightly.

Hazel half raised an eyebrow. "I didn't leave any bruises, did I?"

"Oh, no. No." Not that I don't have any. "My dad got back Saturday evening."

Hazel nodded in understanding. Skie decided she may as well be comfortable and flopped on her stomach on Raven's bed. She vaguely wondered how much her sister had told Hazel about their home life. 

Hazel brushed out her long curly hair and looked at the little girl out of the corner of her eye. She knew that Raven didn't get along well with her father, and from the few times she had met him, it was pretty safe to say that Mr. Matthews wasn't her favorite person on the planet. Now she wondered more but kept her mouth shut.

"So, you're actually going to be my therapist?"

Hazel smirked. "Yeah. It's gonna kind of be, like, exactly what we've been doing."

Skie laughed. "How on earth did you pull that one off?"

"I have my ways." Hazel tossed her hair and then gave Skie a serious look. "Skie, are you mad at me?"

"What? Why would I be mad at you?" Skie raised an eyebrow.

Hazel looked down. "I mean, what I did to you, I guess I kind of thought that-"

"No, I'm not."

Hazel looked up again, raising an eyebrow. 

Skie sighed. "I'm not mad that you did that to me, I mean, that's your job...and I deserved it."

Hazel gave a small smile. "Everything I did, that wasn't me. That was the headmistress, I promise."

Skie smiled back. "I know."

"Told ya she doesn't hate you!" Raven hollered from the bathroom.

Hazel rolled her eyes. "Fine!"

Skie laughed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"You wanna do something fun tonight? To celebrate you being back?" Danielle asked Skie as they walked into theatre. Ms. Wheaton gave Skie a big smile which Skie blushed and returned.

"Sure, what do you want to do?"

"We could watch a movie or something. I bet Hannah could get a pass to use the teacher's lounge microwave to make popcorn."

Skie grinned. "That'd be great." Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Madi sitting quietly at her desk, looking at the wall.

"Hang on." Skie told her friend and walked over to Maddison's desk.