Read Miss Mabel's School for Girls for Free Online Page A

looking me over. A few girls walked down the hall behind her, their dark dresses and long white shirts flashing as they went. I’d been dressed for hours, too nervous to sleep. I hated waiting for the day to start and spent the time reading a few books on defensive magic. Wrinkles creased my dress.
    “It’s a lumpy mattress,” I said with a weak wave of my hand. I didn’t want to tell them that in my nightmare I failed the first challenge and had to kneel before Miss Mabel with blood on my hands. “I’ll get used to it.”
    “No,” Leda shook her head with a grim purse of her lips. “You won’t. But eventually you’ll get tired enough you won’t care.”
    Something in her serious tone sparked my fatigued brain, and I laughed. Camille smiled, but it looked tight, as if she’d missed the joke and couldn’t figure it out. The corners of Leda’s lips raised.
    So she isn’t made of stone.
    Camille fidgeted for a second.
    “Are you going to wear your hair that way?” she asked.
    I instantly took in their hair, pulled back into a tight bun at the nape of their necks. Mine fell down my back in a thick ponytail.
    “No,” I said. “I was just about to put it up.”
    Leda’s eyes slipped down to the hem of my dress, where a pair of leather shoes from Papa covered my feet. The soft suede made it more like a slipper than a shoe. I curled my toes to draw them further under the skirt and wondered how long I could get away with it. The rigid black shoes I saw most of the girls wear, a pair of which sat now under my bed, meant a world of blisters and pain. If she saw them she made no indication.
    “Let’s go,” Leda said, motioning towards the hall with her head while I grabbed a matching dark blue ribbon from my desk. “Miss Celia’s porridge tastes like chewy leather when it’s cold.”
    The dining room was only half full when we arrived, so I didn’t have to fight for a full seat on the bench. Camille prattled on about a lesson in Herbology while I put the finishing touches on my hair. The skin on the back of my neck prickled. Instantly alert, I looked around without moving my head and tuned into the sounds about me, focusing my attention on what I could hear through the everyday clatter.
    Close footfalls. One set, and then another. Three pairs of shoes walking through the dining room. The light talk of the girls at our table died down.
    “Uh oh,” Leda muttered, her pale face darkening. “Here they come.”
    Someone approached from behind me. I shot to my feet and spun. My quick movement jarred the bench, and a couple girls squawked, almost tumbling backwards.
    “Oh, dear. Did I scare you, Bianca?”
    An enchanting face with the lightest kiss of freckles met me. Priscilla and I stood eye-to-eye in height, and, I suspected, determination. Up this close, her eyes were a light green color flecked with gold.
    Hoping to distract attention from the over-active jump to my feet, I gave her a smile.
    “Not at all,” I told her. “Thought I saw a spider.”
    She glanced down and danced back a step, her nose twitching with a cringe.
    “Yes, well, that’s not entirely unexpected in a school this old, is it? Nasty things. My name is Priscilla.” She spoke with the drawl of someone from Ashleigh, the richest village in the Central Network. The affluence of her family was unquestioned if the pearls in her ears gave any indication. School uniforms supposedly kept everyone on an even standard, but poverty and wealth had their own way of bleeding through uniformity. “It’s nice to meet the bravest first-year in the school.”
    Priscilla smiled beatifically, as if she thought she’d done me a favor by introducing herself. The two girls that came with her sniggered behind their hands, privy to an inside joke. One of them had the nose of a pug, turned up and pressed in. Her blonde hair flaunted her jaw in an unflattering line. I recognized her as Jade from last night, the first to volunteer after Priscilla. The other