The Feminist and the Gentleman

Summary (cont'd) (ninety characters is just not enough):

    When Valerie Steele enrolls at the prestigious and overrated private boarding school of Emperor Academy… she doesn't know what to expect. After all it did used to be an all boys' school up until very recently. With a very small ratio of females to an overwhelming majority of sexy, hormone-crazed males is it really so surprising that she falls for the charming Zachary Daniels? But when his loser-cheating-self breaks her heart and her pride, can you blame her for wanting his very being snuffed out? Now, a year later, Valerie's plan is finally ready and with the unexpected help of new transfer student, Jason Knight, the two do whatever it takes to make the sexist jerk regret the day he ever grew balls. 



Prologue



“Why is it that men can be bastards and women must wear pearls and smile?”—Lynn Hecht Schafren



Part. 1

This was running through my head as I walked up the steps to the fancy, prestigious-looking building and went inside. My mother followed a few paces behind me snapping into her Blackberry complicated terms that all I got from it were words like ‘the’ and ‘and’. She was a top-notch lawyer so of course she could not waste a second of her precious time by actually talking to me as we prepared to meet my new school principal—well, actually my new school dean. And why should she? It’s not like she’s spoken more than a dozen sentences to me since she divorced Dad. In fact I hardly saw her anymore that I was wondering how different it was going to be to have people around again. Our house had become so quiet that it was going to be strange to stay in a dorm where other girls would be chattering about boyfriends and make-up and sexy teachers. I was kinda looking forward to it.

    We walked down the long ominous-looking hallway and found the door marked ‘Dean’s Office’.

    And that wonderful quote flashed through my brain again. Why did I have to be so dressed up just to meet the infamous Dean Crabtree? His total bastardness was what he was infamous for.

    Up until this year Emperor Academy—the wonderful (cough)—private boarding school I was standing in right now, was for boys only. But for some strange reason Dean Crabs decided to try out five or six semesters of it being coed. At the end of the semester he would officially—if he liked it coed—open it as a coed school, but until then only “guinea pig” female students were enrolled. And of course I was one of the lucky ones. My mom had gotten a hefty discount for my admission which explained the pretty new pair of pumps she was currently wearing (she had a weakness for expensive Italian shoes and handbags, go figure).

      I only hoped this school was better than my last private school, St. Rosemary’s, which ended in total disaster. Who would have thought hanging a nun’s collection of French lingerie around the school was cause for expellment?—no, who would have thought a nun would own any French lingerie at all? Who were they going to show it off to? The priest? Anyway, Dean Crabs was not known for his pleasantness only for his rudeness and OCDness on professional dress, which was why I was suffocating in this horribly ugly knee-length black skirt, dark gray suit jacket and iron white blouse—along with a murderous pair of black heels. And don’t forget the lovely pair of pearl earrings to match the pearl necklace around my neck.

    My mother opened the door when I stopped in front of it and didn’t move. She gave me a dirty look and I went inside.

    “Smile,” she threatened in a whisper her red lips stretched wide as she followed behind me. I saw she had put the phone away.

    I rolled my eyes and tried to. I think it came out more like I’d just swallowed one of my aunt’s cleaning tablets for her false teeth again.

    “Hello, Dean Crabtree. Thank you so much for allowing my daughter to come to your very impressive school,” my mother said.

    I looked at Dean Crabtree. Then I wished I’d hadn’t. If he was married I doubted his wife loved him for his charm—or his face. Dean Frederic Crabtree was not easy on the eyes. He looked like he was in his late fifties with graying hair that might have once been a light brown color. His face looked like it’d been run over at least once and then made out intimately with a vacuum cleaner. His eyes were squinty and annoyed and his frown lines were so deeply imbedded in his forehead and around his unsmiling mouth that they looked like they’d been there for centuries. He had thick glasses and was wearing a very formal and stiff-looking business suit.

    “Hello,” he said. “Have a seat.” He gestured to the two chairs in front of his wide desk.

    We sat.

    “So you’re Valerie Steele, I presume?”

    “I would hope so,” I replied, “otherwise what would we be doing in your office at the time you scheduled?”

    My mother dung her nails into my arm. Ow. “She’s joking.”

    Dean Crabs’ frown deepened. “Here is all the information you will need. Your first day is this Monday. Your dorm room number and key is all there along with your class schedule. I hope you have an educational time at Emperor Academy.”

    I took the manila envelope from Dean Crabs’ ugly hands—ha, no wedding ring. “I hope so, too,” I said. And I meant it.



Part 2.

    My first day at Emperor Academy was loads of fun. And I mean the losing-your-schedule-getting-hopelessly-lost-pissing-off-your-teachers-and-getting-detention-on-your-first-day-of-school kind of fun.

    It was also really fun because that was the day I met Zachary Daniels. Mmm, yummy, mouth-watering Zachary Daniels. He was so charming he could get a PMSing lioness from attacking. He was also the biggest sexist in the entire school and had a record for having done every female within a hundred mile radius of Emperor Academy; he was excited for finally getting some new female students to play with.

    He was the dean’s nephew (the dean’s brother must have been the handsome one in the family) and had more money in his back pocket than probably the Queen of England. And although I had tried to tell myself again and again: you’re cynical, you’re smart, you’re sensible, you know better. There was nothing I could do when on that first day he turned to me in English class and smiled his charming smile at me. My fate was sealed, bull’s-eyed and all before he even opened his mouth to ask me my name.

    That day I’ve relived over and over again for two reasons: first, because, God, he looked so hot that day and he’d put on double the charms for me, and, second, because that was the beginning of the biggest mistake of my life.

    Zachary and I dated for two semesters of my sophomore year. He’d been a junior and I’d been enchanted, feeling so blissfully happy every time he held my hand or kissed me that I had been oblivious to his obvious signs of cheating.

    Of course I would be lying if I said I didn’t suspect anything; I’d had a growing sense of uneasiness because Zach was spending less and less time with me. He started forgetting to call me back and he would show up anywheres from thirty minutes to an hour late for our dates.

    One day I was looking for him. I used my special “gift” that I refused to tell anyone about—I even denied it to myself (but we’ll get into that later). When I found him, he had been with a blonde girl in my Spanish class, in an empty classroom on the second floor. They’d moved apart as soon as I entered. I’d been in denial, though, I hadn’t believed for a minute that he would be cheating on me, that I didn’t mean anything special to him. And, I mean, hey, they still had on their clothes, right? It wasn’t like I’d walked in on them having mad, passionate sex or anything. They hadn’t even been kissing—of course, I had totally been unaware of the fact that there were other things to do besides merely kissing and having sex.

    I had brushed off the incident.

    But a couple days later, the problem bit me in the ass—savagely. I had been looking for him again when he didn’t show up for our date after school. This time I walked in on him having mad, passionate sex—with my now ex-friend and cousin, Susie Sweet (oh, she’d been sweet all right, sweet as cake frosting and probably just as tasty, too). They hadn’t even looked guilty when I stood there staring at them in shock! Susie put her shirt back on and got off the dean’s big desk. She didn’t even look ashamed for heaven’s sake! And Zachary had only looked irritated that I had interrupted them.

    Then I started chucking things at his head. Susie dashed out, running for her life and Zachary started yelling that it wasn’t his fault, that he was only human—no, that he was only male and he’d never do anything like it again (of course later I found out that he’d been simultaneously screwing five of the eight new female students and one of the new Algebra teachers). That was when I got really pissed off and took one of the dean’s handy golf clubs and swung it at Zachary’s face. My aim was so bad—or good, I guess—that instead of his face, the handle got caught on something and flew out of my hands hitting Zach nicely in the family jewels instead.

    The bastard howled like a wounded animal and fell off the dean’s desk. Of course the owner of the desk and the golf club had to come waltzing in at this point. I ended up getting suspended for a whole semester while Zach was taken to the hospital and was only reprimanded for having sex in his uncle’s office—next time, the dean had told him, do it somewhere else where you won’t get caught. Men. They were all bastards.

    That had been when I regained my cynical mind and my feminist views. That was when I stopped wearing my pretty, feminine skirts and blouses for tattered jeans and T-shirts. That was when I had thrown away (okay, well not really) all my make-up and and traded in my heels and sandals for tennis shoes and converse. That was when I had cut my long, beautiful curly dark brown hair short, where it was straight and slightly layered and hung above my shoulders.  That was when I got the nickname, Nutcracker, by all the fearful boys at my school when Zachary returned from his extended stay at the hospital and told them what I’d done to him.

    And that was when I swore off men entirely and vowed revenge on the bastard who I’d never forgive.