Blood is Ruby Red Chapter 1

I glanced meticulously at the girl in the mirror. My perfectly brushed blonde hair and manicured fingernails contrasted with the gross dull black sweater and ugly clumpy shoes I had on. Disgusted, I wrinkled my powdered nose at the sight of my school uniform. On the weekend, I wore gorgeous Gucci tops and beautiful Jack Wills dresses, but in the week, I was stuck in this. I tried to mix my home life with school; I rolled up my black pleatless skirt and unbuttoned the top button of the harsh white blouse. I wore my gorgeous blue bracelet with an E for Elina dangling off the charm loop. I also found the prettiest handbag from Primark that was possible. If I took in one of my Prada bags it would be stolen within a week.

I had to be careful about that. That’s the problem with being the only rich kid in a state school; if I take anything expensive in, it’ll definitely get nicked. Which is why I have two phones. An iPhone to contact all my friends out of school, and a cheap Nokia for school. I have no idea why my parents sent me to Michaelmount Academy. It’s the dodgy local secondary school, free and government funded. I’m sure everyone else at school is as puzzled as I am as to why I had been sent here; if I wanted to go to Oxford University my parents could probably buy it. Not that I was old enough to go to university yet. There was a rumour that I was sent here because I’m so dumb I couldn’t get into any other schools, but that’s so not true. I personally think my parents wanted to spend their money on themselves instead of my education, but I don’t let this bother me. After all, I won’t really need to work if I get a whole load of inheritance money from them.

The flashy limousine dropped me off three roads away from school; I was made to walk the rest as usual. If it got too close to school, the very expensive car would undoubtedly get a key scratch down the side. I ambled slowly by myself into school, noticing the amount of school kids around growing; a bunch of sixteen year olds smoking, three girls pointing at others and laughing whilst chewing gum, a couple of Goths with black lipstick and about fifty times too much eyeliner, a small group of year elevens exchanging dodgy substances, and five boys playing football across a road. I would have shuddered at most of these sights three years ago when I started here, but I had grown used to it by now. Idiotic teens who couldn’t care less about others or safety. Yep, I went to school with all of them.

Fortunately I had learned to blend at little, else I would have been bullied like hell. I tried to talk like a chav as much as I could and forget my posh English, swapping perfect grammar for slang. I had been gradually adopting ‘Whatevs babes’ as my catchphrase and had traded glitter eye shadow with framing my hazel eyes in dark eyeliner. Very few people at my school have seen how I look and act outside of school- only my friend Lex, my ex-boyfriend Hans and my best friend Ruby have seen me as I normally am, and prefer to be.

As I entered the school, most students ignored me. A few younger ones whispered, ‘Oh there’s that girl I was telling you about. She is well minted.’ But I smiled as one girl approached me. Ruby Chaplin had gorgeous wavy cinnamon brown hair, which, being honest, I envied. She had a slim build and large, intense dark brown eyes, which didn’t seem to match her usual careless, flippant attitude. She took my arm in hers as she came alongside me.

“Whassup, El?”

“Just the usual babes. You?”

“Jude asked me on another date this evening,” she giggled.

Jude is Ruby’s boyfriend. They’ve been going out for at least five months. I can totally understand why she likes him; he’s all tall, gorgeous and hunky. What I don’t like is the way he acts. He’s the year above us, and I’m pretty sure he smokes or has done drugs at some point, which he’s hidden from Ruby. He couldn’t care less about his grades or most of other people’s possessions. He is also way too egotistical.

“Are you sure he’s good for you?” I asked.

Ruby gave me a raised-eyebrow look.

“Innit.” I added quickly.

She laughed, clearly amused at my attempts at trying to fit in. “What does it matter anyways? Like seriously mate, it ain’t like he’s gonna force me to self-harm or nothing.”

That was another problem at our school. Self-harm. It kinda grosses me out. And anyway, the last person I would want to injure would be myself. Self-harm, drug abuse, getting drunk, smoking, danger. People at our school have done all these things. The one thing that scares me the most though is knives. Apparently, six years ago at our school, this boy stabbed his classmate or something. It could have been a made-up rumour, but, since it had really worried me, I searched on the internet and found a police report on it. I’ve seen a few kids with penknives at school, although they’re obviously banned. But drugs are banned. Smoking is banned. Chewing gum and wearing jewellery besides small gold stud earrings for girls is banned. And all those rules have been broken.

Ruby and I reached our form classroom, also where we have History as our first lesson on Monday mornings. Our teacher was already there, so after quickly taking the right books from my locker, I shuffled over to my desk. I hated sitting down on the old, broken plastic chairs. I hated having to put my legs under the wooden desk and put myself in high risk of getting ABC gum stuck to my tights or a splinter.

“Late again, Miss Arias and Miss Chaplin.” Our stern History teacher, the constantly frowning or yelling Ms Bushnell, rebuked.

Neither of us replied but Ruby slammed her heavy bag down on her desk in a disrespectful, argumentative manner.

To be fair, we were only five and a half minutes late to the lesson, and the only reason I keep being late is because the limo has to drop me off far away from school. If the school didn’t have such unreliable, unruly and unpredictable pupils then yes, the limo could come closer and yes, then I wouldn’t be late. But that’s not the case, so I’m late.

It’s not as if we’ve missed much either. Or as if we were the last ones into the classroom. At least a third of the class still aren’t here. Probably one of the reasons that pupils here are so rebellious is because the teachers are so harsh.

I glanced round the room. Approximately half of the class, that was actually present, were texting under the desk and almost everyone was chewing gum. No one was listening to Ms Bushnell, although she was in the middle of explaining something to do with the Second World War. No one here had the slightest concern for any of the teachers.

My eyes flickered round my class mates. Ruby was doodling boredly on the side of her desk. Lex was sitting at the back of the class with her earphones in, hidden by her hair, listening to her iPod.

My gaze fluttered over to a slim blond boy. I watched as he subconsciously swept his disobedient fringe away from his striking blue eyes. Hans was gorgeous. I had also dumped him three months ago. When I looked up again at him from my History textbook I realised he was staring straight back.

Hans winked at me. I sighed, returning a small, just-friends smile, trying not to lead him on. He’s so good looking, so enticing, but I couldn’t go back to him. I just couldn’t.

“Elina, detention!”

My bottom jaw practically hit my desk my mouth had dropped open so wide. I gazed at my teacher, stunned. She couldn’t be serious. Maybe I’d heard her wrong.

“Sorry?”

“You heard me. Or maybe you didn’t, since you weren’t listening. Detention today at lunch, unless you can tell me what I have just been teaching you about,” Ms Bushnell continued.

I stared blankly at her, unblinking. “Um... World War Two?”

“That’s not good enough, Miss Arias. One thirty, detention. Don’t be late like you were this morning.”

This was so not fair. So I glance around the classroom for a few fleeting seconds and get detention, whereas the seven people still not here yet and the twelve pupils on their phones are left completely unpunished. Sometimes I feel like some of the teachers are a little jealous of my family’s wealth and make my life tediously extra hard. Sometimes.

Ruby gave me a pitiful look, which I accepted mildly appreciatively. I scrawled furiously in my homework diary, creating a large black scribble representing my feelings. My somewhat abstract piece had taken up the whole of today’s homework’s section. I made a face at it. Not like I cared that much about homework anyway.