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Annabelle is tipsy. Possibly drunk. Hopefully just tipsy, though, because Annabelle is developing enough of a St Trinian’s spirit to cringe at the idea of getting drunk off liqueur-filled chocolates-- not the gluttony of eating so many sweets (anyway she’d only had five. Ten. At most seventeen) but the shame of such a low alcohol tolerance. Kelly is not drunk, probably not even tipsy, and Kelly has had all sorts of intoxicating substances. Kelly is not here right now. Kelly is taking a shower, to wash off the glitter that has been sitting inside her clothes for the last eleven hours. Annabelle had thought all of the glitter had gone away when Kelly brushed through her hair and shook out her jacket, and now that she knows otherwise Annabelle keeps thinking about Kelly’s skin, smooth and soft, with tiny bits of sharp, shiny metal clinging and pricking and glimmering.
The glitter is the First Years’ contribution to the festivities and Annabelle suspects it’s a gift that will keep being given to everyone, in odd corners and stuck underneath bra straps, until at least mid-April. The First Years of St Trinian’s celebrate Valentine’s Day by making cards proclaiming their eternal friendship and devotion (generally accompanied by a flap that makes rude noises when you open it or ink that stains your hands for a week or glitter or paint that explodes all over you), eating immense amounts of sweets, and running wild through the halls until the sugar rush wears off and they collapse into unconsciousness. This is, to be perfectly honest, not that different from the First Years’ regular behavior, except that as the evening wears on they truly have made an effort to contain themselves to the corridors only. Someone bursting into a classroom or storecupboard at St Trinian’s on Valentine’s Day runs a high risk of interrupting students whose ability to celebrate the holiday in a conventional manner is not affected by the absence of males.
Annabelle didn’t make any cards, but she received several. The surprises inside were limited to the mildest of farting sounds and one burst of completely innocuous confetti. Now that the First Years have warmed up to her they have decided to be sympathetic to the fact that she is still adjusting to the St Trinian’s lifestyle, even if it apparently is hysterically funny when she jumps and shrieks. Annabelle has also eaten a number of chocolates, although the First Years’ likely contained rather more caramel and popped rice and less cacao and liquor.
Like the First Years, the other cliques of St Trinian’s have their own Valentine’s customs. Kelly, who belongs to none of the cliques now that she has become Head Girl and must lead all of them, has gone the full length of the dormitory visiting with each group. Annabelle, who came to St Trinian’s too late to full-heartedly choose an allegiance, has followed her.
The Chavs spend their Valentine’s Night making life miserable for the boys and girls they dated while they were home over break. Annabelle’s never dated anyone so Taylor offered to have twenty anchovy, jalapeno, and pinapple pizzas sent to her Daddy’s house instead, and, after an approving smirk from Kelly, Annabelle’d said yes. Kelly doesn’t seem to have any exes she cares about enough to harass, but she’d sipped a can of cider sociably before beckoning Annabelle over to the Posh Totty.
The Posh Totty’s Valentine tradition is closing the chat-line and spending the evening drinking champagne and looking at lingerie online, planning out purchases for the post-holiday sales. Annabelle likes her new look but she still doesn’t really understand how it’s achieved, so she’d stayed quiet.
“Order her some more thigh highs,” Kelly’d said, gesturing at Annabelle, “you can never have too many stockings. And maybe a corset?” Peaches brought up the file with Annabelle’s measurements and Chelsea added A. Fritton-- thigh highs to the list and Chloe clicked over to the bustier pages of several different websites.
“Black?” Chloe’d asked.
“Or red?” suggested Peaches.
“She’d look fab in a halter style,” Chelsea observed.
Kelly looked Annabelle over so long and thoroughly that she knew she was blushing by the end of it. “Cream,” Kelly said slowly, “or pale grey. And none of that cheap itchy lace.” And then she’d leaned in closer to Chelsea and murmured something about-- handcuffs? “Leather this time, please. No more of those fuzzy pink atrocities you tried to foist on me last year, hmmm?” Peaches and Chloe had giggled and Chelsea had written it down and Kelly had nodded smartly at them, taken Annabelle by the wrist, and led her on towards the Emos.
Annabelle’s pretty sure she’ll never understand poetry. There wasn’t enough space on the beds so she’d sat down on the floor and picked through the last of a box of brandy chocolates and hoped they’d move on soon. But then Kelly had finished her glass of absinthe and she’d pulled Annabelle back until she was leaning against Kelly’s knees, and Kelly had run her fingers through Annabelle’s hair, fingernails scraping ever so slightly, over and over, until the dark and the warm and the alcohol and the droning voices sent her nearly to sleep.
Annabelle half-heard Andrea say something to Kelly, and Kelly fisted her hand in Annabelle’s hair and tugged, until she was wide awake and bent backwards, staring up at Kelly’s face. “C’mon, lazy, can’t not pay our respects to the Geeks.”
It’s dim and quiet with the Geeks, too, but a different quiet, a busy quiet. They are clicking away on their computers, finding dinner reservations for the Chavs to cancel, turning the heat too hot and then too cold in hotel rooms, and writing code to make sure that the Posh Totty purchases go through first thing when the sales start, temporarily changing inventory numbers so nothing ends up sold-out beforehand.
Kelly had guided Annabelle over to her own bed, just off the Geek-lair, and reached beneath it for her shower things, explaining about the glitter. Polly has the school’s cctv cycling through slowly on the biggest monitor and when Annabelle lay down on Kelly’s bed she’d told Annabelle to watch it, see if the cameras picked up anything interesting. At St Trinian’s, failure to disable recording devices counted as consent to be filmed. It said so in the papers you signed at the start of each term.
When Kelly leans over Annabelle, her head blocks out the view of yet another moonlit, motionless room. “Hey-hey!” she says, taking her hair out of the towel and shaking it right above Annabelle, so the tips brush cool and damp over her face.
“Stop it!” Annabelle says, and she swats at Kelly ineffectually, who leans back, curls her tongue against her teeth, and grins.
Kelly comes back from hanging up her towel with a tumbler of the Geeks’ scotch. Annabelle has to sit up so that Kelly can slip in behind her, and in the process of settling back into place she jostles Kelly’s arm. Scotch splashes all over Annabelle’s shoulder and Kelly leans forward to suck it off. Wet, the thin fabric of the shirt is rough, and she can feel the warmth of Kelly’s mouth, the strong press of her tongue. Kelly nips at her, when she’s done, and then pokes Annabelle in the ribs when she yelps. She jerks away, and Kelly finishes off her scotch in a hurry, “which is a waste, but not as bad as letting you spill the rest of it.”
Kelly bends down to set the glass on the floor and comes back up with a box of chocolates. “No,” Annabelle groans, “no more,” and she tries to roll over, bury her face in the mattress, but Kelly brings her legs and arms up, locking them around Annabelle so that she can’t move.
“And who said they were for you? Greedy!” Kelly teases. She sets the box on Annabelle’s lap and Annabelle watches her hand dart around, rustling the paper, before she makes her selection. “Buttercream,” Kelly announces, pleased.
Annabelle devours sweets, gobbles them down in a hurry, but Kelly’s seems to be lasting forever. When Annabelle turns her head back to look, Kelly is licking the filling from the chocolate casing, the pink tip of her tongue lapping quickly in and out. “Yummy,” she tells Annabelle, raising her eyebrows, before popping the last of the candy into her mouth.
On the monitor, the cameras have picked up Auntie and the Matron, dancing slowly with each other and a bottle of gin in the teacher’s lounge. Kelly leans forward to get at the box again. Her breath gusts past Annabelle’s cheek, warm and moist and chocolate-scented. The screen shows another still, dark room, and then a bright one, light shining through some sort of white covering.
“Put a shirt over the camera,” Kelly says. “Clever. No use bothering Polly for that.”
In the box, Kelly’s fingers dip inside one of the little ruffled paper cups.
“What kind?” Annabelle asks.
“Chocolate covered cherry,” Kelly says, and she presses it against Annabelle’s mouth. “Open up.”
Annabelle bites down fast, teeth and tongue skating past Kelly’s fingers. The covering cracks and the cordial seeps out, bright and sweet, and then the roundness of the cherry. She sucks and sucks until all the chocolate has melted away and then sticks her tongue out at Kelly, picturing the way the cherry looks against the shadow of her mouth, slick and red and gleaming.