Friends and Foes

Part 1 - New Beginnings

As we filed into the quad for assembly, the atmosphere was dull. The first assembly of our final year; me and my best friend Nats taking on St. Ann's one last time. But where was she, I knew she wasn't a naturally punctual person but this was ridiculous. Where could she be? My eyes searched through an ocean of Ruby red blazers, white cotton blouses, shin length black pleated skirts, white ankle socks and black lace up shoes. Everyone's hair was tied and pinned back neatly as was custom on the first day at least. We all sort of looked like the same person just different races, heights, and body types, but not Nats. She stood out like a sore thumb. She was the only person I knew who could make the uniform look remotely sexy. Her thick curly hair was wild and untamable. Her big bosom pulled at her shirt leaving small revealing spaces between the buttons and her round hips turned the boring square skirt into a vase shaped vision. Her big hazel eyes were always filled with mischief, mystery and laughter and her pouty pink lips never stopped moving enough for you to really admire them unless she was painting them with red gloss as she sometimes did on the weekends. Her laugh rang out like music and was contagious, even when I was in the worst of moods. Naturally Nats had loads of male suitors of all ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds. Not to say she was easy, but she'd sampled her fair share of the guys whose heads she had turned. I understood the dynamic of our friendship; in and out of public. I was 'Nats' friend'. She was the luscious headliner, and I was her opening act. No, not even her opening act; I was one of the ushers.

"Jojo!" Hollered a familiar voice from behind me.

I spun around to see a glowing, familiar face. Nats was standing behind me, flushed and out of breath with the broadest smile I had ever seen.

"You won't believe what I saw. He-" She was cut off by Mrs. Langton, the deputy head mistress, getting on to the stage before the school.

Mrs. Langton was not particularly attractive, she was on the mature side of 60 and her long, thin red hair was too red to be natural. She wore her bedazzled glasses at the end of her thin, wrinkled nose. Her make-up was reminiscent of a circus clown; always over the top with green eyeliner, bright pink lipstick and hot orange blush. The Sixth formers had a nasty nick name for her 'CB' which stood for 'coloring book'. Her flamboyant way of dressing did not in any way assist the disbanding of this ruthless nick name, as even that morning she was wearing a bright green blouse with a navy blue Christmas theme vest with small white snowflakes falling about a snow man and some reindeer. Her trousers were so long that they barely made her shoes visible; moccasins, no doubt a relic of hers from the 70's. Her tiny frame was barely visible from over the lectern but her squeaky voice drilled into your mind like a woodpecker to a tree, but after years of assemblies with her, we were used to it.

Mrs. Langton went on about a new term of hard work and focus, clubs that went on tour over the vacation break and following the rules and regulations in the school for a 'prosperous' year. I couldn't help but let my mind wonder to how stupid the notion of a drama free year was. It's not like any of the students in the school were there by choice. St. Ann's School of Salvation; that doesn't exactly translate to the world's most well behaved school. Most of us were there because it was St. Ann's or juvie. Nat had been detained because she was caught breaking into a house she thought was her ex-boyfriends with an axe, he had slept with someone else and she intended to make him pay dearly for crossing her. The owners decided to press charges to teach her a lesson about her violent nature, she laughed when the judge sentenced her come to the school. But this was years before we'd met. I was busted for my indiscretions at 16 and she at 15 and now there we were at 18, changed women, not really. I glanced up at Nat who was looking straight ahead as if she was waiting for something. I couldn't make out the look on her face; it was a look that I wasn't familiar with.

"And finally, following Ms. Mack's departure at the end of last year, we've had a gaping hole in our English Department..."

Nats took me hand and squeezed it. Her face turned red and I couldn't understand what it was that had her so excited.