Prologue
“If you mention ‘moral imperative’ to me one more time, Blair, I swear to you I will personally sign your expulsion before the sun goes down!”
Headmaster Henderson’s voice echoed through the office like the crack of old wood under pressure. The room smelled of heated leather, bitter espresso, and the quiet, suppressed rage of a man who realized he had lost control. Henderson’s face was the shade of a ripe plum, and a vein on his temple pulsed rhythmically.
The four of us took up space like a silent but heavy threat. We didn’t fidget. We didn’t look at the floor.
“The man was blackmailing younger girls with locker room videos, Headmaster,” I said, leaning forward until my knuckles turned white from the pressure against the edge of his polished mahogany desk. “The fact that his Mercedes ended up at the bottom of the school pool wasn’t vandalism. It was a lesson in basic human ethics. And you should be thanking us that we didn’t cut his brakes.”
That is my problem. My tongue has always been sharper than my brain, and my fuse shorter than a second. Some people back away in danger; I take a step forward and bare my teeth. In a world that demands you quietly take the hits, I was the one who swung first. Whether it was a professor abusing his power or a rich bully thinking he could buy everyone’s silence, my reaction was instantaneous, raw, and uncompromising.
“You dumped a car into the pool during gym class!” Henderson slammed his palm on the desk, but his voice cracked.
“From a technical standpoint, the car was put in neutral,” a voice chimed in from my left, steady, quiet, and ice-cold precise. “We only pushed it a few centimeters. Gravity and the four-degree incline of the terrain did the rest. According to Article 12, Paragraph 4 of the school statute, students cannot be held responsible for the laws of physics.”
Sloane. Tactics, cold math, and our invisible shield. With that flawlessly pressed uniform and aristocratic posture, Sloane looked like every administrator’s dream. But behind that facade of a perfect straight-A student hid a mind capable of hacking a bank account or finding a legal loophole in any system. While I was the fire that burned everything in its path, Sloane was ice: calculated, flawless, and unstoppable.
“Don’t quote the statute that you altered yourself in our database, Sloane!” Henderson hissed.
“Well, if we’re talking about aesthetics, the pool finally got a purpose,” Lola spoke up from the armrest of the leather chair, fixing her dark lipstick in the reflection of the glass cabinet. “Until now, it only held floating dead wasps and the egocentric outbursts of your favorites.”
Lola was our walking cynicism. Her defense mechanism was a sharp, dark humor that cut deeper than any insult. While others would feel fear in tense situations, Lola would pop a piece of gum and make a remark that left the opponent feeling pathetic and ridiculous. People were afraid of her because they couldn’t find anything to blackmail her with. Her indifference was her strongest weapon.
“Enough!” the headmaster yelled, standing up so abruptly that his heavy chair shook.
At that moment, the silence was shattered by the sound of something breaking.
“Oops! God, I’m sorry... I’m so clumsy!” Wren squeaked, as her large, woven bag snagged a massive brass pencil case off the edge of the desk.
The pencil case fell with a deafening crash, and hundreds of pens and papers scattered across the carpet. Wren immediately dropped to her knees, tangling herself in her own sleeves, mumbling confused apologies and gathering things with trembling hands.
Henderson closed his eyes and sighed deeply, rubbing his temples. “Wren... please. Just don’t touch anything else.”
To any outside observer, Wren was a klutz. She was a quiet, withdrawn girl who tripped over her own feet and looked like a strong gust of wind would break her. But it was the most perfect mask ever created. While her upper body performed a drama of physical clumsiness, her fingers, fast and precise like surgical instruments, worked flawlessly.
I watched as, under the guise of gathering the scattered pens, Wren extracted a confidential file from the desk’s bottom shelf with incredible illusionist elegance and seamlessly slipped it into the inner pocket of her coat. It was masterful. Wren was our invisible ghost, capable of breaking into any room, picking any lock, and stealing anything, only to have everyone pity her “clumsiness” in the end.
When she stood back up, her face was flushed, and her eyes were wide with fake embarrassment. “I really didn’t mean to...”
“Sit down, Wren,” Henderson said, sounding exhausted, like a man drained of his last drop of vitality.
He sat back down, folded his trembling fingers on the desk, and looked at us one by one. The four of us. The gang, as they called us. We weren’t bullies. We were the answer to the violence this school had swept under the rug for decades.
“This is the end,” Henderson said, his voice quiet, almost monotonous this time. “The school board met this morning. You are expelled. All four of you. But since your guardians are too influential to just let you out on the street, a compromise has been found.”
Lola stopped playing with her lipstick. Sloane straightened up slightly. Wren clutched the stolen paper under her coat.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, a tight, cold knot forming in my throat, though my face didn’t betray a shred of weakness.
The headmaster pulled a black, hardbound folder from his drawer, sealed with pressed red wax.
“You are being transferred. To an institution that doesn’t deal with education, but with breaking those who are impossible to tame. A place where your tricks, your sharp tongue, and your legal loopholes mean absolutely nothing.”
I reached out and touched the cold wax on the folder with my fingers. “What school are you threatening us with, Henderson?”
He smiled. It was the smile of a man who knows he is sending you to hell, but has successfully washed his hands of the responsibility.
“Welcome to St. Jude Academy.”
Interesting.