Published: August 6th 2024, 11:38:24 pm
The discussion didn’t last much longer. Not that it was really a discussion to begin with.
It all felt so surreal.
Being perceived as a student by everyone around her, having her stay at the boarding school extended, and all because a high school senior decided that’s how things were going to be.
Amelia was still secretly holding onto the hope that she could access a phone or a computer, though even that ‘plan’ was starting to feel dubious after everything she had gone through. What was she going to do, look herself up and show the screen to someone important? Amelia didn’t have much of a social media presence, and her reputation at Westridge wasn’t the most trustworthy. She could already see the teacher or administrator over her shoulder scoffing and saying she must have found a lookalike with the same name. Or, considering how handy students could be with tech these days, created a fake account for the sake of validating her ‘story.’
So far, trying to prove who she really was had only gotten her into trouble. Maybe following the security guard’s advice from earlier really was the best play. If Amelia could just keep her head down, follow the rules, and avoid girls like Summer, everything would go a lot more smoothly for her.
. . . That just meant accepting her fate and staying at the academy for a week as if she was actually a student.
Admittedly, the logistics were tolerable. Amelia had already paid her rent for the month, and couldn’t think of anything else she was truly on the hook for in the immediate future. There was her waitress job, of course, though it wouldn’t be the first time a no call/no show ended up leading to a girl never coming back to work at a place like that. She would just have to find something else to pad her savings while job hunting, which was the only real pain of losing a week. There was basically no chance of landing the teaching assistant job at this point, especially if Ashley canceled her real interview or, in another example of no call/no show, made it look like Amelia decided to do that with the real Mrs. Thompson. Either way, it was back to square one.
Of course, ‘tolerable’ didn’t necessarily mean ‘ideal.’ Amelia still couldn’t believe that Ashley was taking things so far.
However, the petite blonde accepted her fate for the time being. Worst case scenario, behaving like a ‘proper Westridge girl’ would hopefully make her seem more trustworthy. Amelia used to be a bit of a teachers’ pet, and had a good rapport with her educators throughout her teenage years. If she could get them to see her as the good student she had always been, rather than a difficult transfer student who had been shipped off to boarding school to be reformed, maybe one of them would be more inclined to believe her if she managed to acquire some form of proof.
There were a lot of ‘maybes’ and ‘what-ifs’ when it came to that kind of thinking, which was fine. Something like that was ultimately a fallback, in case Ashley decided to go back on her word. Or, God forbid, if Amelia failed part of her second aptitude test after a week of going to class, getting tutoring, and focusing on her studies all the while. What else was she supposed to do with her free time as a student who wasn’t actually a student?
Speaking of God, that was one part of the academy Amelia had forgotten about until Ashley knocked on her door the next morning.
The rest of her Saturday had been fairly uneventful. Once she had jumped through the mental hoops of justifying her continued existence at the boarding school, as if it wasn’t purely because Ashley had set her up and continued to make it impossible to do anything but go along with the mortifying age regression, Amelia had work to do. Not only was there all the studying, which was plenty daunting when there were so many subjects she had to brush up on, but she also spent a full hour flipping through the student handbook again in order to make sure she hadn’t forgotten anything that would potentially lead to more infractions.
Westridge students were expected to attend daily chapel services during the week, as well as a longer service on Sunday morning. As an aspiring teaching assistant, Amelia hadn’t thought much of it. Required religion for students was certainly an antiquated concept in the modern world. And, if hired, her responsibilities would have nothing to do with that side of things. There was a chance she’d end up assisting with an introductory religion class or something, though that would have been manageable with a bit of prep. Except Amelia was a student, meaning she had to get up early and go to chapel at 8:30 AM on Sunday.
Ever the helpful ‘cousin,’ Ashley swung by to wake her up, this time with Claire. It was too late for Amelia to shower, but the prefect of the duo was happy to do Amelia’s hair in the usual french braid. As always, erasing the last trace of maturity she had by not letting Amelia wear her hair down in the way that looked best on her. Sunday was also no exception in terms of the student uniform, and Ashley took things one step further by giving Amelia a simple cami rather than a training bra. The latter, while restrictive, gave her chest at least some shape. Between the cami, the dress shirt, and the blazer, Amelia looked almost completely flat.
“Fucking adorable,” Ashley smirked, “Do you remember everything we talked about the other night? What’s your name, and how old are you?”
Unable to keep from flushing, Amelia glanced away, “Millie, and I’m thirteen . . . ”
“And?” Ashley pressed.
“ . . . And I’m a transfer student until I develop physically and intellectually,” she muttered, clarifying for her own sanity, “Until Friday.”
Bright as she was, Amelia had yet to connect the dots about the former aspect of that statement. While she could appear way more mature than she currently did, she had stopped growing years ago.
Meanwhile, Ashley and Claire were well aware of the not so subtle technicality Millie had agreed to numerous times, and planned on fully using it to their advantage. Especially since a schoolgirl outfit was far more fitting on the petite girl than what she had worn to her interview.
Millie just didn’t realize it yet.
(End of Arc One)