Outrunning Her Shadow

Chapter Thirteen - Tactical Retreat

Friday, October 12th 2028

After a roller coaster opening to the school year, the next week felt dramatically different. Ellie did her best to isolate herself and ignore Ashley after the big fight, an event which the school now ominously referred to as 'The Royal Brawl', but hiding away had become much more difficult than previous years at Marlborough.

She was still committed to over a dozen clubs more than she could handle, clubs she couldn't bear to leave because doing so would be as good as a defeat. Ellie didn't want to let Ashley get in the way of all the good work she had put in, all the late nights spent completing top grade essays and all the confidence she had built up.

It didn't help that every time she got back to Ivy House Ashley was there to greet her, to tell her she'd done it all for them and that Abby was bad news. The remarks got worse as the days passed by and Ashley's desperation steadily grew. One day Abby was a product of incest, the next day she was a boy in disguise. She did everything she could to get Abby expelled, even threatening her with a DNA test to prove her true sex. The rumour mill of Marlborough that Ashley kept spinning had truly gotten out of control.

When it was clear that Ellie wasn't going to change her mind, Ashley stopped bothering with the niceties and decided if she couldn't have Ellie, nobody could.

Total scorched earth tactics.

Soon the school was turning against Ellie, making the corridors uncomfortable, the stares of students became more severe instead of fascinated. Every step outside felt toxic beneath her feet, unstable and acidic. Nowhere was safe, except her bedroom. The only thing she was glad about was the immediate freeze on her new Facebook account, where activity had died overnight. The constant buzz of notifications that she would have to sift through at the end of the day had shrunk down to a trickle, group chats had gone silent and replies to her posts (which were still just photos) were now non-existent.

If there was any doubt about Ashley's power over the school, it was all too clear after that point. From being a school full of students that supported a Royal in amongst them, Ashley had turned it into a poisonous pit that matched the outside world, a world where public opinion was already turning against the Royal family. Ellie was sure that new group chats had been formed without her, that anything being said about her was now going on behind her back and was far from positive.

In a way it was just like previous years where she could pretend she didn't exist, that she wasn't the famous girl at school, that if they didn't know anything then they couldn't say anything. Back then Ellie could coast by fairly well, be the odd sighting around school that people spoke about briefly before moving on.

If only it could be like that again. Ashley made sure she was always being talked about, and none of it was good. It had been days since Ellie had opened her bedroom window, since the garden below was where most of the girls would gather and laugh about her friendship with Abby.

The only place where the gossip was out in the open was on the football pitch, where the team openly mocked her for anything from being friends with Abby to being part of the Astronomy club. It was so far the only sport that Ellie was considering quitting, but she couldn't quit before the season had even begun, could she?

Ellie was adamant that on top of all the titles and nicknames she had gained so far this year, she would not be adding 'Quitter' to the list. Still, she was close to her breaking point by the time the half term break came around on October 12th, a break which could not have come at a better time.

Half term had always been a mixed bag for her in the past, bringing with it the usual family holiday to Mustique whilst also pulling her away from her comfy seclusion at school. Now it was needed more than ever, even if things didn't seem smooth back home either, even if it meant being babied by her parents. She needed somewhere as far away from Ashley as possible, and there was no telling how much homework she could catch up on with two weeks away from the hellhole that Marlborough had become.