The Gold Behind The Black

Chapter 3

Three months later.

"I cannot believe you convinced me to do this!" I whisper-yelled to Emma as we climbed down the line of balconies outside the dormitory buildings. The night's harsh wind whipped at my face causing a shiver to run down my spine. Despite wearing thermal clothing, thick long-sleeve shirts, a black designer trench coat, a thick black scarf, leather gloves, stockings under my jeans, two pairs of socks, converses (yes, Emma had me wearing them, but they were the black, leather, classy type) and a thick woollen beanie, I was absolutely freezing.

"You sounded English for a second then!" I heard Emma laugh quietly from the darkness below me. I paused halfway climbing over a railing and rolled my eyes, making an 'as if' face.

"I did not! I sounded totally American!" I whispered. I heard Emma jump from the lowest balcony to the snow-covered grounds of Ellesmere College. I followed Emma's movements and jumped, gracefully, from the bottom balcony, careful not to ruin my hair.

"Whatever, just hurry and be quiet before we get caught." Emma said, walking off close to the building, heading in a direction towards the lamp-lit road.

Turns out Emma was not the delinquent, drug addict I had assumed. Not much. The first month of sharing a dorm together was pretty much hell. We judged each other's every move, sly comments were made about the other's belongings and bitchy pranks were even pulled on one another. Outside of the dorm, wasn't much better either. We were both outcasts.

I had originally had a plan to stick to myself, but the people at this school didn't really want anything to do with me anyway. Or Emma. I thought that Emma would fit in better seeing as she is actually English, but boy was I wrong.

The people at Ellesmere despised Emma for her strong 'London' accent, which I had to admit did sound different to the other students, but it sounded a whole lot more classier. And apparently one of the girls that attend Ellesmere, found out about Emma's past of smoking and drinking and immediately everyone thinks that she is a delinquent. Like I did. But she's really not that bad, but Emma didn't really make an effort to fit in with the other students and make friends, to be honest I think that she didn't like anyone here in general. Much like me.

I on the other hand was not despised in any way. I was resented and hated. I was quickly known, in the first few weeks as the 'stuck-up rich American'. Back home, I may have deserved that name, but here I had done nothing but stick to myself and do my school work, but my accent and designer labels gave the girls here an excuse to spread false rumours about me. In the end, Emma and I had no friends and no intentions of making friends at Ellesmere anymore.

Flashback.

"Hey uh Emma is it? My friends and I were wondering if you good hook us up? Or did the stoner's kick you out of the deals once you left?" A group of students called out to Emma. For once I didn't have an urge to laugh with them at Emma, in fact, even I was getting sick of listening to them call her a stoner.  I just continued playing with my untouched dinner and looked around the large dining room and saw the nearly everyone was laughing as Emma picked up her bag, rolled her eyes, walked out of the dining hall and flipped them the bird.

The noise started to die down and I thought about leaving, but I usually wait until everyone else has left before I exit the dining hall. Some of the 'head bitches' walked past me in a group, calling out words like 'snob' and 'materialistic'. Rather than ignoring their taunts, as I usually would, I picked up my bag with annoyance and walked briskly out of the dining hall. I made my way back to the dorm and slammed the door behind me. I threw my bag and jumper at the ground the chucked myself onto the bed, face down.

"They're onto you too huh?" Emma asked. I stayed the way I was when I replied.

"If you're going to give me crap about it, then you can stop right now. I'm not in the mood." I snapped. Silence.

"Actually I wasn't going to give you crap about anything. I was just going to say that they don't even know anything about us." Um, what? I rolled over so that I was facing Emma.

"I hate it here."

"So do I."

I thought about it for a moment. Should I or shouldn't I? It's not like I would lose anything if she said no.

"Want to be...?" I couldn't yet bring myself to say 'friends'. "Allies?" I said, sitting up to look at Emma. She looked like she was thinking about it and I knew that she was going to say no.

"Ok. But we're not 'BFF's' ok? Just... allies."

"Please. American's don't actually say stuff like that." I scoffed.

Present.

"Seriously Blair, hurry up!" Emma stopped about six metres ahead of me. I jogged up to her and we proceeded to sneak across the front path of the college. Even at night the grounds looked beautiful. The snow crunched under our shoes and the breeze sent chills through us every few minutes. All the garden beds were topped with a snow glaze and as we approached the front gates, we could see that the road was also covered in snow. I had learnt to appreciate the blanket of white that covered the green 50% of the year in this country.

"Blair, come here and help me with this." Emma whispered through the darkness and I walked up to the front gate and stood next to her, my leather glove covered hands pulled the gate. The gate made a small noise in protest and hopefully the noise didn't travel back towards the school. Luckily the school didn't bother to lock the main gates in case the teachers needed to leave during the night. We went through the high school gates, which felt more like prison bars, pulled them closed again and walked about twenty metres down the slippery road. Luckily the school was enclosed by high cement walls which had ivy vines growing all over them.

"So what exactly are we doing anyway?" I turned to Emma.

"My friend, Blake, is staying with his Dad in town, is coming to get us and take us to a party and then he said he'll drop us back here before the sun's up." Emma said coolly, clearly not seeing the holes in this plan.

"Well can he hurry up, it's seriously freezing. I'm actually going to get frostbite soon." I said, hugging myself, while Emma, who looked perfectly comfortable with the weather, rolled her eyes at me.

"Toughen up Princess and you will not get damn frostbite."