Vivian is caught shoplifting, causing her parents to reignite an old tradition. They send her to Clear Lake Academy, a tight-laced academy for girls. There she meets a childhood friend and is forced to confront emotions she didn't understand back th...
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We drove past fields and trees all packed together. The trunks of the trees were older than me or my family, maybe even older than our destination.
Civilization was thirty minutes away. At least if my parents were bringing me out here to kill me, I might have some chance to escape. But unfortunately, that wasn't it.
My reflection showed faintly in the car window. It was a stupid face. I had the same light brown skin as my mother and the faint brown eyes of my father, none of it was really mine.
The only piece of independence I maintained was the black hair dye I picked up for fifteen dollars and scrubbed into my hair at two in the morning.
I turned away from the window as the car parked next to the building. It was an old victorian era design, though I don't know if there was a victorian era in America.
I remember the front page of the Clear Lake Academy website, my parents had shown it to me before sentencing.
They boasted a mission to "craft excellency," bringing in prodigy girls and making them into masters of whatever the hell they were good at. It could be anything from art to academics. One thing was for sure, it wasn't the place for a trashy teenage city kid
The air tasted gray like the sky, cold and thin. Maine was always freezing in the cold months.
I didn't do all that much to get here. At first, I was trouble in a few little ways, grades slipping, missing curfew, drawing a few things I wasn't supposed to. I started drawing with pens, on brick walls and classroom desks, then I got my hands on spray paint.
I stole a few times too, chokers, eyeliner, a pair of sunglasses. Just little things that no million dollar company was gonna miss. But I got caught.
I'm not gonna defend the thievery, because only afterward did I learn that- at a lot of places- the workers had to pay for what got taken. I'm not the kind of asshole who's gonna brush that off, but it was too late for apologies.
My ex-best friend snitched on me and told my mom I was a vandal, also finding time to spill the piercings I'd gotten. The pieces all fell into place for my parents.
Later, they sat me down and said that no more of this would be tolerated. But what would they do? Where would I go to be rid of my disobedient ways?
Why they'd send me to Clear Lake Academy for Girls. There I could become a respectable young woman, and turn my skills into something useful.
They dragged me down to Saco on the edge of Maine. We weren't new to the place, my mother was born there and we visited a few times a year.
She'd gone to Clear Lake since middle school. It made her who she was, a woman with wrinkle-free clothing, a spotless home, and a perfect family until I came around.
My mother's life was a kitchen, with pristine countertops and shining tiled floors. Not a single utensil was out of place, spoons, and spatulas hanging on the wall like on the covers of home decor magazines.
