Wild Secrets Within

The first day of school… Well, it wasn’t technically the first day of school for the rest of the kids, but for me, it was the first. It was accompanied by a flutter – or whole hurricane – of butterflies in my stomach and a sick feeling that really made me wish that I could opt out of my first day of school.

I should’ve been used to it by now, all of the moving around while John, my adoptive father who I preferred not to call Dad, had business opportunities that kept us moving around a lot. Not to mention those weird happenings that always seemed to follow me. I couldn’t stop it; it was a gut feeling and it always got me in trouble – but I couldn’t help but to act upon it.

John promised that this was the final move – for me at least. Jonathan F. R. Smith Prep was the boarding school I was going to be staying at now. I, Julieta Renee Parker, was finally going to settle into a school. Not for long of course; only the nine months left out of my senior year. Still felt like a hell of a long time to me, when I was going into school a month late, but I would adapt… I always did.

The school felt like a place off into the distance from everything. It looked like an old manor; like a place that I had been to for a bed and breakfast in a distant memory. I had to say that it didn’t seem right; it felt eerie to me. I expected more of a moat with alligators and a mist rising from the ground… Maybe an eerie wolf howling in the background like all of the scary movies portrayed with abandoned haunted houses. The green grass that was there instead didn’t seem fitting to me, but I couldn’t complain. It looked well enough here – and I would take anything to get away from the family for a little. It was a high-end boarding school anyways – lots of money that John and Maria complained about.

They didn’t wait very long after I had pulled my bags out of the back of the car before they drove off. I could’ve collapsed and died in the parking lot and they would’ve missed it… I knew it was probably my fault since I was the one to push them away; it just wasn’t so easy to pretend they loved you when I heard them talking in the dining room one night as “she’s just like her mother. It scares me.” It scared me too… What that meant, I didn’t know. I hated being compared to someone I hadn’t ever met.

I stared off at their car leaving for a long time until the dust that had most-likely been kicked up rested back down on the ground. I walked through the gate to the front entrance and sighed to myself, knowing that I would fit in here – and trying to rest my mind on that thought. I had known since I had laid my eyes on the pamphlet for the school that this was the right place for me; it was just a feeling – but I trusted it to be right.

As I walked into the main office, the adults there all gave me a look up and down. What they were searching for in me, I wasn’t sure. I felt like these teachers were already trying to decide what part of the social order I would be in – and I hadn’t prepared for that until I met the students. The beady-eyed woman at the front desk seemed to stare into my eyes for a longer time than I had hoped to have contact with anyone before she finally turned away, nodding her head as she typed something into an old computer.

“Riley,” the woman turned to a group of kids behind her and one stood up, “here’s your newest charge. Give her a nice tour of the place after classes; the rest of you: back to your previous duties!”

The rest of the students all gave me a disappointed look before hanging their heads and leaving. I wasn’t sure of her elimination process to pick my tour guide, but I didn’t argue. Instead, he walked over to me and I had to raise my chin slightly so that I could look up into his face.
“You must be Julieta?” He said with a welcoming smile and I flinched.

“Julie…” I responded. “Please call me Julie!”

Riley nodded his head, as if understanding and cordially took my hand and kissed my knuckles. “Well, welcome Julie,” he repeated with a teasing grin on his face. Here it was again… That feeling that I was safe here; that I fit in. “We have quite a while until first class. How about I show you to the cafeteria and we can get to know each other over some nice breakfast?”

I nodded my head and he started to lead the way. Jonathan F. R. Smith Prep… The very name had a scary ring to it that exhilarated and terrified me at the same time. I knew now that it was a good choice to come here; I could feel it throughout my body – and for the first time realized that the butterflies had completely dissipated from mind. I belonged here – I could just feel it. Sure, it seemed a little weird here, but that was just my skepticism. I was ready to spend my senior year here…