Wolfgrove Academy

Slender fingers grip the bottom of her gray and black tartan skirt as she incessantly pulls the bottom of it, as if pulling the bottom will make the material stretch, making the item longer. A pair of azure eyes take in her surroundings. It looks the same as it did back then, the building may have stayed the same but everything about her has changed since she left the safety of these walls. She didn’t understand it back then, she never truly appreciated it. It is only once she left heaven to enter hell that she understood. Wren finally stops pulling at the material, now suitably convinced that her action is having no effect. She smooths out the pleats on the thick skirt. Her hands are slightly sweaty and as confident as she tries to go into everything, she is excited about this prospect, but incredibly nervous at the same time. "I don't understand what is so complicated. If she was able to be enrolled once, why is it such a drama now?" "I understand what you are saying Luna Rebekah, but you know that all records are destroyed as soon as a student leaves the school" "Undestroy them, make new ones. I don't care. Just make it happen" Wren rolls her eyes, undestroy? Is that a word now? She has been listening to her stepmother argue with the principal for the last half an hour, her opinion on the woman lowering with every word. Rebekah is doing nothing except making herself sound more like an imbecile. Wren is incredibly thankful that she was not brought into the room. At least sitting out in the waiting room she can tune out Rebekah's annoying voice, but being stuck in the room with her idiotic rantings in her vile tone, it would be too much to handle. Wren has already been stuck in the car for six hours straight with the woman. It is the longest she has ever been in a confined space with the woman who readily replaced her own mother. If she had been stuck in there, listening to Rebekah arguing, she might have shifted on the spot and jumped out the window just in an effort to escape the screeching voice of her father's new mate that grates on every nerve in her body. Wren can't understand it at all. She assumed after her stepmother suddenly announced in front of the whole family that she had been accepted back in, she thought that the school had called or at very least her stepmother had already organized this. Why is she already here? Why is she dressed in her school uniform with all her bags in the trunk? While they are just trying to get enrolled now? Wren didn't stop to think about it much when Rebekah told her that she would be coming back to this place. The last good times in her life, her last true friends, were all within these walls, so she was desperate to rekindle that, to seek that once again, desperate to feel anything but the nothingness that surrounds her each and every day. "It isn't as easy as you say Luna Rebekah.." Wren can hear the principal gritting her teeth. The way she says Luna Rebekah is with the most disrespect possible. Wren can't help but cover her mouth to cover her giggle. It is still locked in her memory how much of a viper the principal is. There is not a single person that has been able to get under her skin in all these years, but Wren is sure that Rebekah is finally about to break the unbreakable woman. Wren would love to laugh out loud but she is still aware that her father is right beside her. She can't show any dislike to Rebekah in front of the man. Marcus has made her call Rebekah mum all these years. If she states her opinion, if she goes against Rebekah in anyway, she is punished. Nothing will ever make that woman her mother. "... But it has been four years, her group is now in their final year" "Your excuse is because they only have a year to go? Is that what you are really going with? What type of excuse is that? Doesn't that make it easier?" "Don't you remember the reason you had to take her out?" "Of course I remember the reason. That has all passed now. Am I to take it that you and your staff are so incompetent that you are incapable of teaching a girl for a year? Or do you think you deserve some special recognition? Do you think you deserve an award? Do you want a medal for taking on one little girl for an extra year? Are you saying that you can't handle it?" Wren looks sideways at her father, who is just smiling happily. She can only assume that Marcus is happy with the progress his mate is making. How is it that Rebekah's action don't embarrass him? Wren is close to hiding under the seat, how is she even meant to show her face in this school after the big production Rebekah is making? "How dare you question the competence of myself and my staff?" "What else am I meant to think?" "Wren has already been kicked out of this school once. Haven’t you learned your lesson?" The truth cuts Wren to the core. She looks down at her hands twisting tightly in her lap. Suddenly the material of her incredibly short skirt is the most interesting thing in the world. She swallows hard as she thinks back to that time when her world and everything she knew crashed and burned around her. Wren’s head tilts down, her black hair cascading down around her, hiding her away from the outside world. "No, she was politely asked to leave, there is a difference. We did what was asked of us then, but now times have changed, it was four years ago, she did her time away. Before that little incident, she was here for nine whole years, doesn’t that count for something?" The principal scoffs at Rebekah's description. The incident? It was closer to a catastrophe. "I was unaware that being asked to leave had a time limit" "She wasn’t expelled, she was un-enrolled, now she is back. Just take it as an extended leave of absence, act like she never left" "What has she been doing these four years? We have certain standards" "She is just as she was before" Suddenly, Wren has an urge to laugh at herself and her own situation because it would be impossible to say that she is the same as before, but this time the laugh would be hollow, maybe it would be closer to a sob. "Fine bring her in, let me see her" Wren takes a deep breath in, showing all the confidence where she feels none. Her pitch black hair is back over her shoulders, hanging straight down to finish in the centre of her back. Her shoulders are square, she has kept a sliver of what she was before and she is able to draw on it. It helps being back in these walls, when she had all the support, when she had the loving family. This was all she knew. Back then, when her eyes were covered with a rose-colored veil, the air was a little sweeter back then. It can be again, she just has to believe it. She just has to make it through this. The door of the office opens to reveal a middle-aged woman. She has an impeccable figure, not a single sign of the gigantic baby she had twelve years ago. Wren is convinced that Lewis is so large that he was born as a teenager. She met the boy when he was eight and he was already as tall as her fourteen-year-old self. Rebekah is dressed head to toe in designer brands, if her voice is beyond tolerance, Rebekah’s face is so far past it, her nose always upturned, giving the affect that she is always looking down her nose at everyone, even though it is impossible with her five foot three inch figure, which makes it even more amazing that she gave birth to the six foot four monstrosity that Wren calls her younger preteen half brother. Rebekah's face is always twisted into a look of displeasure, especially when she is in Wren’s presence. Wren was convinced that she smelled bad when she first met Rebekah. She was constantly checking her shoes for faeces, she tried different perfumes. It was only then that she realized that it was Rebekah’s expression that was reserved just for her. Rebekah looks up and down Wren’s body, rolling her eyes in displeasure, sighing like Wren has done everything wrong, totally forgetting that she is the one that laid out the clothing, forgetting the fact that when Wren questioned that the uniform she wore when she was fourteen is not appropriate for her figure as it stands, all that Wren got in reply was the standard. "Don’t talk to your mother like that" Wren offers a smile to Rebekah, even though she can’t stand the woman and she knows the woman can’t stand her. Right now, Rebekah is doing her a massive favor, even if she doesn’t know that she is. "Wren, come in, Principal Saunders wants to see you" Wren knows that Rebekah must be trying hard to keep the disgust out of her voice. Her twisted face morphs into a sweet smile that looks worse than a grimace. "Of course Mum" Wren smiles as sweetly as she can muster. Rebekah's face turns even uglier, the sides of her lips curling into a half smirk that Wren can only assume is meant to be a smile, but it looks like she has just sucked on a trailer load of lemons, making her face cave in with a twisted expression. They make a big deal out of Wren calling Rebekah mother, but Rebekah doesn't want to be her mother and she definitely doesn't want Rebekah to be related to her in anyway, what they are is enough, the truth is enough. Wren can only assume it's a way of making her father feel better about the situation. Maybe it is a way of making Rebekah feel superior and Wren's mother inferior. Maybe Rebekah is trying to wipe Jocelyn out of existence. Whatever the reason, Wren is long past caring about it.