The interior of the first girls' dorm, named Violet, resembled a European palace.
Jazmin stepped in and her jaw slackened. She stood on the ground floor, marveling at how spacious and classy it was. The shiny marble floor was draped in a sprawling wine-red carpet that also adorned the flight of stairs in the middle of the ground floor.
Portraits of female students were hung on the Navy blue walls. As Jazmin passed the portraits with Emma beside her, she noticed a portrait where the girls were oddly wearing dejected expressions. Only one of the girls was smiling. In the rest of the portraits, all of the girls were joined in hugs or clasping hands while smiling exuberantly. Only this one portrait was different.
"Is there something that happened before this photo was taken?" Jazmine muttered to herself, under a light breath.
"Well...I don't know myself but..." Emma's voice slid into her ears. The fairly stocky woman was beside her, gazing analytically and with slight discomfort at the perplexing painting. "I once heard that the year this painting was made had not been quite the best for students, female students especially, in the entire school."
Jazmin's attention was grabbed by Emma's words. Her green eyes flickered with interest as she turned to look at Emma curiously, "Then why is this one girl smiling? Is there really anything that can cause so much distress in the entire school...and why mostly to the girls?" she asked.
Emma suddenly grinned, brown eyes crawling to the clueless, dark-haired girl. "Well, if my sources ring true, what else could unsettle a girl more than heartbreak?"
"Heartbreak?" Jazmin echoed dubiously, her left brow arching questioningly.
"Yes, dear. Love, to be precise," Emma articulated, her brown eyes shining with slight wonder, "It is the most beautiful phenomenon, yet as a weapon, it is absolutely wretched. Fearsome, you could say. I was on maternal leave that year, but I bet the Prom—or another event of the sort—had been quite awry. I never really asked Trixella, the other security guard—the night guard for Violet House—about it."
Jazmin nodded, still baffled by the guard's words. Love was such a foreign...concept to her. It was easy in Biology though—just some hormones stimulating the necessary biological activities for procreation, the phallus erecting, and so on(you get the picture). She dismissed Emma's words and the painting and was led by Emma around the corridors where she encountered a bevy of enthusiastic girls, some in nightdresses.
"Hi! It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm Valerie, the house captain here at our very royal Violet house," greeted a tall girl at the forefront of the teeming young adolescents. Valerie, with alluring brown curls that swathed her back, wore an amiable smile that exposed rows of pearl-white teeth. In her prim student uniform, she looked reliable enough.
Jazmin demurely nodded. "I'm Jazmin."
"Nice to meet you, Jazmin. I hope you'll be comfortable here at Violet House," Valerie said, her smile deepening. They shook hands, then Valerie took Jazmin off of Emma's hands, and introduced her to some of the dorm members(whom Jazmin quickly forgot, as she often does when meeting new people, Jason excluded of course; the young charmer had somehow snatched a place in her memory). Thereafter, Valerie led her to her room as she told her some facts about their school.
"Jazmin, you're a very special case, as you're joining after a quarter of the year, but I'm sure you'll fit right in...provided that you lick the right feet...and I certainly mean girls' feet, not boys'," Valerie said and laughed after her comment, leaving the younger girl to smile crookedly, not comprehending what was so funny.
"Uh, you probably don't get my drift. That's okay," Valerie uttered and shrugged, "Nobody ever gets it on their first days, until...well...they're desperate. Then they get it. Speaking of which, you should ditch the shyness and the glasses while you still can - those are red flags in this school; it makes you look like a nerd."
But she was a nerd.
Jazmin nodded but did not attempt to follow Valerie's questionable advice.
FInally, after much waking and talking(from Valerie, of course), they halted before a door at the end of the corridor of the second floor. Valerie knocked twice, and the door creaked open, to reveal a girl with short, shoulder-length blonde hair dressed in a beige nightdress though it was only 6.00 pm. Her blue eyes were lethargic.
"Hey, Maeve. Just woke up?" Valerie asked, smiling brightly.
The blonde girl, Maeve, took a moment to absorb Valerie's question before nodding. "Yeah."
"Well, here's your much-awaited roommate-Jazmin. I guess your room will finally be getting a little more life with her around, eh?" Valerie said, and Maeve glanced at Jazmin, scrutinizing her.
"I don't think so," Maeve responded sluggishly, before taking Jazmin's hand and pulling her behind her. Maeve took the luggage from Valerie's hands with a small sigh and dragged them into the expansive room with grey walls. Then, Maeve turned to Valerie. "I think that is all from you?" she asked but did not await Valerie's response as she instantly shut the door in the house captain's smiling face.
"Oh my gosh. I really can't stand another moment breathing the same air as her," Maeve spoke irritably, mostly to herself. The sleepiness in her eyes had vanished like dew in the mid-summer heat as she grumbled about how annoying Valerie was.
Jazmin folded her arms over her chest as she assessed her surroundings. It was clean, too clean, even to Jazmin's high standards. There were two large beds on opposite walls and Maeve's minimalist ways stuck out like a sore thumb.