The Academy

Chapter 3

Alicia's POV

I turned my head when I heard the sound of feet pattering. The girl was running away and, by the way she was covering her face, she was crying. I groaned when I saw her bump into Yasmine. I assume Yasmine told her she was fine before fixing her intense stare on me. I pretended that I didn't see the interaction and started to practice my serves.

"What did you do to her?" I turned to see Yasmine comfortably seated on the bench. She crossed her legs and rested her chin on her hand.

"Nothing."

"Then why was she crying?"

"I don't know. You'd have to ask her." I replied with a shrug

"For some reason, I'm not convinced by your answer. Did Ivan push you too hard?" I rolled my eyes as she brought up my trainer.

"Ivan always pushes me too hard."

"What a burden it must be to be so talented." She smirked. "Anyways, you need to apologize to the poor girl." She was fixated on her nails.

"Why would I do that? I have nothing to be sorry about."

"I beg to differ." I was about to retort when I saw something shiny out of the corner of my eye. I picked up a rose gold bracelet. It must've fallen off of that girl. Unfortunately, the bracelet appeared to be broken. One of the charms fell off.

"Lucky you. Looks like you have a prop to apologize to her with."

"I'm gonna take a shower. Come to the jeweler with me after?" I asked while staring at the bracelet.

"Are you done with training?"

"Yeah. She interrupted it, so I'll end it early."

"Okay. I'll be here." Yasmine started to scroll through her Instagram feed. I took that opportunity to head to the showers. As I was washing my hair, I remembered my first encounter with that girl. I was already irritated in the morning since Tamsin was bugging the hell out of me. I was already annoyed and it didn't help when that girl spilled chocolate milk all over me. It pissed me off since I had to walk on campus with a stain the size of Texas on my shirt. Gemma distracted me this morning, so I forgot to grab my blazer. I began searching for Astrid since she's always cold and would more than likely have her blazer. Luckily, I found her and she gladly gave me her blazer. I then had to rush to get to class on time. Imagine my surprise when I saw that she was in my class. My friends beckoned me over to the seat they saved. One of them asked me why I was glaring at the new girl. After explaining, they all turned and glared at her. I guess our glares were too intense for her since she quickly turned around. I then saw her again at lunch. Our eyes met and I returned her gaze with my signature harsh glare. She turned and started talking to her new friends. I was able to tell that Rosé was probably telling the new girl about my family because her pointing wasn't that subtle. I dismissed that thought and went back to chatting with my friends. When I saw her again today, I was shocked. I heard a yelp and turned to see her falling backwards. She looked stunned so I quickly ran to her since I was worried. After a while, she came to her senses and looked up. I glared down at her since she interrupted my practice. I was really hoping that Ivan wouldn't walk by now since he'd write her up for interrupting my practice. I dismissed Ivan by stating that she was simply my ball girl and assisting me in my practice. He seemed convinced enough and left. The girl then stood up and gave me a new shirt. She meant it as an apology for ruining my other one. I don't know why she bothered to buy me a new shirt since it was obvious that she was on financial aid. I really hope she didn't spend all of her allowance money on me. I quickly recomposed myself and did a bitch move. I took the shirt and used it to wipe my sweat before tossing it back at her. I made a lame statement about how she is now a true ball girl. I turned to walk away, but didn't get that far since I heard her sniffle and runaway. I turned the faucet off and stood in place for a while, allowing the water to drip off of me. Yeah, Yasmine is right. I do need to apologize. I quickly got dressed and left to find Yasmine in the same spot.

Yasmine hopped into the passenger seat of my Bentley. There was a lot of traffic, so the usual 10 minute drive turned into a 30 minute journey. My jeweler was a guy in his mid 30s. He's extremely talented and I buy all of my ice from him. I showed him the damage and he said it'd only take him an hour to fix. I was satisfied with that. Yasmine decided that we should waste the hour by walking around the shopping center. Her "walking around the shopping center" meant eating Ma'aroud. She likes to have a taste of home as she puts it. We found the Israeli bakery and ate some pastries. As we were eating, Yasmine started to question me.

"Did Ivan see her?"

"Yeah." I simply answered.

"What did he say?"

"Wanted to know why she was there. I told him that she's my ball girl." I simply stated again.

"Why did you protect her?"

"I didn't want her to get written up. She's new and obviously on aid, so she'd definitely get kicked out on her second day."

"Why do you care?" She leaned forward. "Ahh!" She snapped her fingers. "You're her sponsor aren't you?" She pointed at me while laughing. I rolled my eyes because it's true. After the first day, I went to the registrar to see who I was sponsoring and I unfortunately saw that she was one of my scholars. Normally it's confidential, but when you own nearly half of the school, you can practically do anything. "You're basically responsible for her and if your dad found out that one of your scholars got kicked out, then..."

"Yeah. So now you know why, Yaz." I rolled my eyes. Yasmine glanced at her watch and noted that an hour had passed. We walked back to my jeweler and picked up the bracelet. He was able to make it more durable than before. So now that I have her bracelet, I can apologize to her tomorrow. I convinced Yaz to sleepover at my place since I wasn't in the mood to battle the traffic back to the school. She agreed and we made our way back to my home. 

Yay! We finally got to see things through Alicia's perspective. What do you think of her?