He motioned me to follow him into his office. He hadn’t bothered to introduce himself, but it was clear as we walked down the long hallway that it was Mr. Hawk’s office we were headed to. Seeing the same portraits that I’d seen on the website made me curious and I slowed until we got to the last picture on the wall. The man in the photo was the man I now followed. I glanced at him and examined him more closely than I had before. He wore a dark grey suit and was quite a few inches taller than me. My gaze finally made it back up to his captivating eyes and an intriguing thought occurred to me. I wondered if I was developing a crush on him. I’d never been into the teacher/student thing, but I felt an urge to flirt with the handsome man who stood in front of me. But I would be kidding myself, apart from a few recent kisses I’d had no experience with flirting or passion. I wasn’t the kind of girl that knew how to flirt with someone my own age, let alone a lot older. I started to get nerv

“You ready to go out and face the big Vogue world?”My nerves started to kick in as I’d finished up in the bathroom and walked out of a cubicle to look at myself in the mirror. I didn’t look anything like Claire. I’d thought the uniforms would put us on a level playing field, but they didn’t. I sprayed a spritz of the perfume Mom bought me for my last birthday and dropped it in my pocket. I might not look like a Vogue model, but I could smell like one. I’d put on the uniform left for me in my room and frowned a little. The uniform clearly didn’t fit. The buttons of my shirt were about to pop open, my butt could probably be seen if I bent down at a 45 degree angle, and as for the blazer? Well, it was on, but I didn’t know how much longer that would last. I felt as if I was about to turn into the Incredible Hulk and the last thing I wanted to do was face anyone, let alone Vogue people.“Are you sure that this is my uniform? I mean it’s not even my size. I can’t even breathe.”She reass

I sighed as I woke up in the room, a bedroom that Mr. Hawk said that I could stay in for a few days. A few days to think it all over. How not to be bullied?Or how to live with being bullied?That part of the conversation we never covered, but then again, we didn’t say much about anything apart from him calling the school nurse. He’d told me after that I could move to another room, in the main house. His house. Mr. Hawk’s. That was two days ago. I’d been online, spoken to the girls and they’d told me to get the fuck out of here. They wished they’d been here to help me, and I felt the same way, but didn’t tell them that, there was no need to make them feel worse. I’d stayed in this room, to myself.Waiting.Waiting to leave. Not having the courage to tell Aunt Rose, let alone Uncle Graham about my fate. I just sent them both a text saying that the academy was hard, and I had a lot of studying to do. True, Mr. Hawk did bring a few books for me to look over and I was a straight A stud

The first day back at the academy. Technically, it was my second, but I was trying to move on and get past my worse fear. They’d done the worse to me on the first day. I just hoped that they couldn’t do any more. I knew that Mr. Hawk was on my side, but I didn’t want to be the kid that told on other kids every time they were mean. But these guys weren’t mean. They were downright cruel. But that was all in the past. I could only fucking hope that we could all move on. I was the orphan.I was not even close to a size six. And my parents weren’t rich. One was dead and up until four days ago, I thought that both were dead. I sighed as they looked at me, the same way that they did the first day. But I knew that no one was laughing at my tight uniform or the fact that I looked as if I was in the middle of a monsoon. I recited in my head a hundred times last night and this morning about how to get to each class and back. I didn’t want to ask anyone the way. I wanted no reason to be anywh

Lunchtime couldn’t come any sooner, as I rushed into the line and wished that I could point to everything that was being cooked. The kids may be rich, but the food was fit for royalty. Damn, one thing was for sure, they’ve got everything on the stove when it comes to lunchtime. Chicken, lamb, fish and even vegetarian. It was like a buffet at a five star hotel, that I’d been to only once and even then it didn’t smell as good as what was on offer in front of my eyes. I must admit that my heart was beating so hard as I heard the lunch bell that all I could think about was eating and how good it was that first day and every meal that I’d had here had been the same. But food wasn’t that great that it would keep me here, not against my will. “Chicken and fries please with some peas,” I said as my mouth was watering and I was almost too damned hungry to speak but dying to ask for her just to put every damned thing on my plate, like the lamb and fish too. “Ok, sugar. Here you go.”The caf