The Feminist and the Gentleman [01]

Chapter 1.



Being a woman is a terribly difficult task, since it consists principally in dealing with men. ~Joseph Conrad

   

Welcome to Emperor Academy a.k.a Pompous Academy. Where the bastards go.

    I stared unhappily at the elite private boarding school. This year was going to be different, I told myself fiercely. This year Zachary Daniels, Asshole #1 was going to pay. And this time I was going to do much more damage to him than just whacking his weenie with a golf club. This year I was going to emotionally damage him so he wouldn’t be able to look at another girl for as long as he lives without remembering what he did to me, what he’s probably done to every girl.

    This was my junior year of high school and things were going to be different. I just knew it.

    I stood before the sprawling white brick prestigious private boarding school, holding my luggage.

    Another year, I thought, watching as returning students surged into the building, most heading toward one end of the campus where the boys’ dorm was located. The few others trickled toward a run-down, dilpadated two-story building farther from the main building. Lucky them, they had a huge, still-standing place to sleep. While the girls had to live in a piece of crap. It wasn’t fair! Just one of the many sexist injustices female students had to put up with at Emperor Academy.

    Carrying my manila envelope of information: my schedule, map of the school (which was unnecessary), key to my dorm room, and list of rules (all pertaining to the girl students), I started off toward my dorm.

    But, before I got very far I saw him. Zachary Daniels. My hate spiked and I glared daggers at the cheating son of a bitch as he made out with Marigold Lewis, his newest arm decoration.  She was beautiful, your classic pain in the ass bitch, and was shaped like a life-sized Barbie doll. And just as empty upstairs—which went double for Ken.

    At the moment it looked like Ken and Barbie were eating each other’s faces as they groped each other in broad daylight.

    God, I thought, it was like watching some R-rated erotica film.

    I clenched my fists as I remembered I had let that same mouth of his touch mine and I started toward them, my fist raised to—

    “Val!”

    I turned, startled, as my best friend launched herself at me and squeezed me unmercifully. It’d been a long time since I’d seen her.

    “Hey, Maddie, you’re cutting off my oxygen, here.” Maddie laughed and hugged me tighter.

    Madeline Rose and I had met last year after my ordeal with Zachary. She had been the only one that had actually gotten me to enjoy the rest of the school year; she was the only genuine friend I ever had. She also had been the one to suggest sending a ‘Thinking of You’ card to Zachary while he had been in the hospital; it had been a nice colorful card with a golf club on the front. And it took a true friend to bail you out of detention by distracting the discipline teacher with the ‘how high can my skirt go?’ game.

    The wonderful and rare thing about Maddie was how adorable she was. She had the most innocent face but underneath those soft brown eyes was a smart, clever person who never got enough credit from people. Even teachers underestimated her—like the discipline teacher who learned that the hard way when Maddie ended up locking him in the janitor’s closet with his pants half-off.

    Maddie let go and gave me a long, hard look. “I know what you were thinking about a few seconds ago, Val. Attacking him now won’t do you any good.”

    “It’ll make me feel better,” I muttered under my breath. I sighed. I knew she was right. Sensible, pratical Maddie. Without her I’d probably be sitting in a jail cell right about now. Or being frisked by a sexy police officier. Hmm, that actually would be worth punching Zachary in the face for and sitting in a cell.

    “Come on, Val, let’s go put our stuff in our dorms. Classes don’t start until tomorrow, so why don’t we enjoy our free time?”

    Because there were not many female students and since the dean was cheaper than a down-on-his-luck greedy tycoon creep, there were not many furnished rooms so Maddie and I shared. There were only like fifteen other girls in the dorm; seven more than last year.

    We clumped up the stairs to the second floor where our rooms were. The building was two stories; the first was the commons room that had a middle-sized bathroom with stalls and showers. There were some decently comfortable couches and worn love seats (probably from local garage sales) near an old fireplace that looked like it belonged in Abe Lincoln’s log cabin. A large bookshelf and some tables and chairs along with a scattering of flickering lamps were the only other things there. The second floor was where the dorms were; there were only about nine rooms.

    Maddie and I entered ours. I dropped my luggage on the floor and threw myself on the bed to the right and stretched my arms out. I sighed. The beds were at least mildly comfortable. At least they weren’t cots, even if they did smell faintly of mildew.

    Maddie began unpacking, putting her clothes away neatly in the midget-sized closet that we shared. I seriously doubted even a leprachaun could fit in it.

    “Dean Crabs is such a bastard,” I said.

    “You know you shouldn’t call him that, Val.”

    “Or what? S’not like he’s got cameras in here; he’s too cheap for that.”

    Suddeny there was a huge crashing sound followed by several thunks and thuds from the first floor. Someone shrieked.

    “Valerie?” a voice asked from the open doorway a moment later. Lane Hathaway poked her head in.

    “What’s up, Lane?” I sat up. She looked upset.

    Lane was a good friend of ours—then again most of the girls in the dorm were, us girls had to stick together after all against an entire school composed mostly of boys—and pompous, girl-using boys at that.

    “It’s Cindy! She fell through the floorboards!”

    “Again?”

    “Well…yes…”

    “Didn’t Dean Crabs fix those yet?” I demanded. “He promised last year after she fell through them the first time and twisted her ankle on the stairs.”

    “Yeah, well obviously he didn’t because Cindy’s feet are dangling over the commons rooms’ floor right now.”

    “Damn it!” I hopped off my pathetically tiny bed. “That as—”

    “Val.”

    “asthetically ignorant feckless son of a bitch! I’ll go talk to him,” I said to Lane.

    I ran out of the room, leaving Lane and Maddie staring after me with exasperated looks.

    I leaped over Cindy’s struggling mid-section as Rebecca Story and Olivia Thomas tried to pull her out of the hole in the floor.

    “Val—” one of them called, probably asking me to help.

    “I’m going to go give Dean Crabs a piece of my mind!” I yelled over my shoulder not slowing down even a little as I flew past open dorm rooms and startled girls.

    “He’s not gonna wanna keep it,” I heard one of them mutter.





Eleven point three minutes later I burst into the dean’s office.

    “Alright you have some serious explaining to do, you negligent, half-witted, son of a—”

    “Hello, Miss Steele. What an unpleasant surprise. What complaints and issues to you have today to bore me with?” Dean Crabs sat behind his desk, an unhappy expression on his face. “It seems to me like you’re in the mood for another detention. Ah, not even the first day and already you are causing trouble. Would you like to finish what you were saying to me? Referrals are excellent gifts for the beginning of a brand new school term, you know.”

    “I wouldn’t take a gift from you if it was solid gold, Crabby. After all the only gifts you give are those that are stolen.”

    “Tisk, tisk, tisk, you really want that detention, don’t you, Miss Steele?”

    “Not anymore than I want to spend another moment having to be in the same room as you.”

    “Alright I have had enough of your sass, Miss Steele and I’m going to write you up that detention right this…moment. Hmmm…” Dean Crabs eyed the chair in front of him.

    Up until that point I hadn’t realized there’d been someone else in the room.

    The person sitting across from ugly Dean Crabs was a guy with tousled blond hair. I could only see the back of his head as he said something quietly to the dean.

    Dean Crabby smiled suddenly and my skin crawled. His smile looked like something out of one of those slasher films where homicidal psychos posed as pleasant and refined school teachers. I wondered if Dean Crabs owned a chainshaw.

    “Since you seem to have nothing better to do than antagonize me, Miss Steele, you are going to give this new student a guided and indepth tour of our campus. You are to show him everything everywhere and if you don’t I will personally sit with you for your detention and keep you company since you seem to enjoy my presence so much.”

    I wanted to gag. Sit with him for an hour and do nothing? I’d rather stick my head in a rabid, venonmous snake’s hole or clean the boys’s toliets with my toothbrush.

    “What if I choose not to?”

    “You can’t,” Dean Crabs said simply. “You don’t have a choice in this. Either you do it or you serve a weeks’ worth of detentions where you will write a thousand word essay on why it is impolite to call your dean a ‘a son of a bitch’ with yours truly.”

    Damn it.

    “Fine,” I retorted. I started toward his door. “Oh, and by the way, Cindy Glass—who fell through the broken floorboards of the girls’ dorms on the second floor—is severly injured and bleeding all over the place. I heard she may even have broken a rib or two and is saying something about suing for personal injury due to a negligent dean who cannot even find himself a decent handyman. And you know Cindy’s father, don’t you? CEO of that one company that supplies your school with pens? Wouldn’t want to go penless, now, would we? So a revoir and have fun finding a lawyer,” I finished sweetly.

    The dean gave me an uncertain look. “Are you serious?”

    “Of course,” I replied curtly. “As serious as hospital costs and legal fees.”

    Dean Crabs picked up his phone and barked some orders to his secretary—a brainless blond with super-sized breasts and long legs. Then he rushed out of his office.   

    I turned to look at the guy staring after the dean; his eyes shifted to me. He had blue, blue eyes. Like melted crystal.

    “You coming?” I asked him when he didn’t move.

    He got up. “Is she really—?”

    “Of course not. Cindy’ll be fine. Women are tough.”