Pinky Promise

DISCLAIMER – This is a work of fiction. All the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The story is for entertainment purpose only.

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"Students, today is your last day of being in junior high school. From tomorrow you will be referred to as seniors as your senior high school will start since you are all promoted after such a phenomenal result," said Ms. Davis who was the class teacher of a wonderful batch of students who were also called the star performers of Liberal International School.

The star performers of the school were students who got exceptional results in all of their exams, and they were clubbed together in one section. Teaching them was much simpler for teachers as compared to the other section. So, teachers would not have to do much work for them in class to make them understand the things that were being taught to them, and they would give them tougher questions as homework.

Whereas, the other batch of students were either average or below average in their studies, and they needed teachers to give them extra attention. Also, explaining course topics to them by breaking it down as much as possible was mandatory in order to impart the maximum knowledge to them so that they could be promoted to the star performers' section.

Ms. Davis was talking to her class after the graduation ceremony which the school hosted for students of the junior high school to make them feel more responsible about the senior classes that they were promoted to. She was letting them know the next course of action that would happen before their summer holidays started.

"A lot of students get excited about the senior years because they get to be a part of dance socials that are organized for all you girls to mingle with the boys from the opposite wing of this school building. Many students look forward to that because it is a fun event and it grows you as a person as well, now that you will be an adult in about two years from now which makes all the more important for you to feel comfortable around the people of the opposite sex," she mentioned to make the kids enthusiastic about the next class which is going to be their second last year of school.

"Now that you all have to go back to your hostel rooms and get ready for tea-time at the cafeteria, let me quickly tell you something about the coming week."

"You will be given five days that will be from Monday to Friday to understand what it is going to be like in senior high classes. It will be like a small introduction that each one of you will get about the three streams that are offered in this school, which are liberal arts, finance and accounting, and science."

She also added, "After an introduction given to you in each of the streams to set your expectations of what you may study in them, which will also give you an idea of what may follow after your senior school is over, you will be given the liberty to choose over the holidays the stream that you want to pursue."

As Ms. Davis continued with her explanation, Marie, who was known for securing the second or the third position academically in the class of star performers in every examination controls her mouth from opening wide as she wants to yawn because she feels sleepy listening to her class teacher concluding the talk that she is having with them after the graduation ceremony that got them very excited but now everyone was getting bored.

The girls were looking forward to the fun weekend in the school hostel and the last week before their month-long holidays started for which each one of them would be going back home to their families. This was the only holiday where they wouldn't have to spend time doing any holiday homework which was given to them almost every other time, even for the weekend.

Rosy, who was a backbencher, couldn't wait to rush to the canteen as she had a big time crush on one of the young looking attendants over there who was just a couple of years elder to her. She would look at him with her eyes expressing interest in him, but he was too busy to be involved with any school girl since his mother worked in the same school as a maid, and I bet he didn't want to get in any trouble of that kind.

Alina, who had formed another group in class that had all the girls who were interested in sports and would often play for school. They would go for interschool tournaments together and had their own way in which they studied. Even the time that they studied at was different. They were a bunch of girls who would pull each other's legs and pass an offensive remark to joke around with them.

Not each girl in class was cool enough as per them to take their jokes lightly. Most of them would get offended and decide to end their friendship with them. The worst would be if they started fighting with them for such petty issues because their fights would turn very bad at times, and thus, they chose to keep separate from all of them.

With their class teacher concluding the talk that she was having, she said, "Girls, be good during the weekend, and try to grasp as much as you can in the following week. I am here for your help but take nothing for granted."

She furrowed her eyebrows as she instructed, "Choose your stream wisely."

The girls hurriedly got up from their seats to rush out of the classroom and talk to their friends regarding how happy they were about starting senior high school in the coming week. They formed groups as they were running from the classroom to go outside in the corridor. And amongst all of them, the loner, Marie, is the last to walk out into the corridor.

Before she left, she made sure to go to the teacher first as Ms. Davis was putting all the belongings that were lying on the teacher's table in her purse. As the class teacher looked at Marie with a raised eyebrow, she asked, "Yes, Marie. What do you want?"

"Nothing, Ms. Davis. I just want to thank you for a wonderful year of teaching me such difficult things so well. Thank you that I was awarded the silver medal in academics for this year," Marie replied and made Ms. Davis smile from ear to ear.

She had never hugged any of her students, but right before she left that batch of class on their own, as she was not their class teacher anymore, she hugged Marie as if she was her own daughter. Marie also smiled as she was not expecting that to happen at all. Her teacher had been pretty strict during the year, which made it very difficult for anyone to even think of her hugging anyone could actually happen in the school building.

Both of them walked out of the classroom together, and they were the last ones to exit the room. Marie started walking towards her hostel building as she bid her teacher a goodbye, and Ms. Davis walked towards the parking lot as she had parked her car over there.

At the time that Marie came to the lobby of her hostel building, she saw her classmates gathered there, and it looked like their warden, Ms. Mejia, was going to address them. At least that is what she could assume from the way the entire set-up looked like with two nannies standing on either side of the chair that was placed in the center for the warden to sit, and all the girls were in the lobby in their respective groups, talking a lot.

The girls would usually talk about other chicks and the stuff they did, clothes, who had bigger changes in their body, the guys that attracted them, and all that jazz. They had nothing else to talk about because discussing studies was not termed "cool" and it was not the trend.

Marie placed her stuff that she was carrying in one corner and stood waiting for the warden to step down from the first floor as her room was there. She wondered why all of a sudden this meeting must have been called. Did any of her friends sneak out again to meet the boys behind the building? Was someone going to get in trouble yet again? She had such thoughts in her mind, and she was not wrong because a lot of things had already happened in the girls' hostel; too many to list rather.

Ms. Mejia walked down the stairs, and the girls in the lobby stopped talking and became silent. It was out of respect for the warden or because of fear, but the discipline at the hostel was at its peak, and it felt as if Ms. Mejia had that control over them. But still there were a few girls who were rebellious and didn't like her as she was stringent with the rules she set.

"Goo-oo-ood mo-orning, Ms. Mejia," the girls sang as she stepped down and was walking to sit on the chair that was kept for her in front of where everyone was standing.

"Good morning, girls!" Ms. Mejia responded. She looked at one of the nannies signaling her something, and the nanny went from there to get something for her, it looked like. The other nanny smiled and nodded as she turned to her and asked her about the status of something that had to be taken care of by the nanny.

In the meantime, the other one returned with a bunch of pamphlets in her hand. The girls got excited about knowing what pamphlets were these as they were given such leaflets before any event was organized for them. It used to be a proper invitation for them, and they would feel over the moon if the event also had the participation of the boys who lived in the boys' section of the school which was at the far-end from theirs.

Some girls would still find ways to go to that side of the school and meet the boys. A few would also indulge in hanky-panky with them behind the hostel buildings where not many would visit, and it was a secluded area. The students were scared of the huge trees behind the building that they had made up stories of being haunted and would never go at the back, making it the most exciting place for the so-called "lovers" to display their puppy-love.

Because they were in the teens, even if a boy happened to look at them, they would automatically think about spending the whole life with that boy without thinking about anything else, especially the important things like their career, their parents, their income, their examination result, their studies, so on and so forth. They would feel accomplished as if they were living for only that to happen; being validated by boys their age was a big deal for them.

Staying in the hostel made most of them feel lonely even though everyone was their age, and they would talk to everyone even if it was little or more. They had shaped their lives in a way that they considered that if they were being given attention if they were shown sympathetic pity by others, and they enjoyed the feeling of sadness and compassion that they got from them.

Also, the boys were taught by their seniors on making a girl fall for them, which was not only stupid, but it was also inconsiderate enough of them to make the girl look stupid because they formed strategies on their limited knowledge and a lot of assumptions. They believed that girls were not smart enough to figure out that they were being played.

They thought that they were the smartest of the lot. Their strategies were to live the "cool" lifestyle in the hostel at school; by messing their hair after applying hair gel to look like they were bad boys, by playing football only to be in jerseys in front of the girls, by taking guitar lessons only to walk around with the guitar and showing it off, the girls would go all gaga over them and to quite some extent they were not only right but a few of them were also successful in getting a girl to love them for all of that.

As the nannies distributed the pamphlets to the girls, the look on their faces showed how exhilarated they were as they were reading through the pamphlet. It talked about the first dance socials that they would be having the day after the current day, which was Sunday. The picture of a boy and a girl where the boy had one hand on the girl's back and with the other one he was holding the girl's hand was enough to get naughty thoughts in the minds of young girls.

The picture of them dancing made it quite evident that the first ever such event was going to take place for them to celebrate their promotion to senior high now. As they started talking about it to their friends, Ms. Mejia shouted, "Girls! Don't make this a fish market."

And when she had pin-drop silence in the lobby and also everyone's attention, she ordered, "Listen to me."

"There is one more thing to tell you all. We will be moving to the new building that is near the admin office for one week before your summer holidays start as this building will have a renovation happening to take care of the water leaking problem on the top floor. Please get yourselves packed as the moving has to happen by tomorrow evening at the latest. It will be fun because you will get to meet your new roommates as well. Now that you are going to the senior year, you will be shuffled, and there will not be any floor dedicated to the star performers."

All the girls were confused about packing and shifting to the new building only for one week before their holidays. Only a very few of them were happy about it because they were the ones who lived on the top floor and suffered from water-leaking in their rooms for quite some days to make happy about the shifting as soon as possible. The whole building needed inspection from the water damage, and thus everybody had to shift.

There was a silver lining to the ones who were slightly raunchy most of the times because that building was closer to the boy's section, and they would get to see them very often and for much longer. As Ms. Mejia called off the meeting, everyone started climbing the stairs in their respective groups to go to their rooms and start with the packing.

Marie was the last one to join them as she was strolling intentionally to be accompanied by her warden, Ms. Mejia, expecting her to join. She was also going to the first floor as her room was right after the warden's accommodation.

"How was your graduation ceremony, Marie?" The warden asked as she stepped on the same stair that Marie was already on.

"It was good, Ms. Mejia. I thought you were there," replied Marie.

"I am sorry for having missed it because of the meeting that I was having with the maintenance department for the repair work."

"No, miss, it is completely fine. I will show you the pictures when we get them."

"That will be amazing!"

"See you in the evening," said Ms. Mejia as they reached the first floor and she entered her room while Marie walked to hers after smiling at the warden showing acceptance for what she said.

A little excited to be going home in a week's time, she was happy from within about meeting her step-mom and dad and also for having completed her junior high school remarkably well. She couldn't wait to tell her parents about her results to win her step-mother's approval. That was something which she had been waiting for since the start but in vain.

Long back her mother died in an accident and within a year's time her father remarried. The lady was young and was seeking acceptance from someone as she had a love child, and it was a big thing in their country. Her step-mother used to be loving towards her in front of her father, but as he left to work for the day, she would become indifferent to her despite her father being really accepting of her step-mom's love child.

Marie had been trying to win the place her step-sister had in her mom's life, but she never succeeded for so many years. Now that she was done with her junior high school, she was expecting her step-mom to be happy for her and treat her the same way she treated her own daughter and not discriminate between them. She had also planned to make a card for her step-mom and sister to give them when she went home.

She started packing all her stuff the minute she entered her room even though her roommates were on their phones as they were not really friends with Marie. She was looking forward to doing the shifting and meeting her new roommates.

With the shifting having happened yesterday, and the girls having moved from the building that they were living in to the new one near the main school building where the admin offices are, each one of them is excited about this evening because the most awaited event, which is the dance socials, will be happening at that time.

The girls are running around in the whole building to arrange for different things they would need to look spectacular for the event. It will be the first time ever that they will be dancing with the boys officially in school. Which is why all of them wanted to look as good as they could with their make-up, their hair, their dress, their footwear, and their accessories.

But before they went to the auditorium in the main building of the school for the event, they were asked to gather in the lobby before they started getting ready for the dance that was organized to give them a welcome to the senior high school which was starting the next day. This time the meeting was planned to introduce the students to their new roommates who will be allotted a room together right after their summer holidays.

They were expected to make up their minds to stay with new people when they returned from their holidays, and to stay in touch with them via emails during the vacation so that they understood the kind of people who they would be staying with and to be at least build some sort of friendship with them to get comfortable living with each other and figure out the way to keep misunderstandings at bay as it was going to be an important year for them.

Right after tea-time, as they were returning to the hostel building to get dressed for the beautiful evening that was planned by their school, the nannies were in the lobby to make sure that all of them assembled in the lobby and didn't go back to their rooms yet without the warden assigning them the new rooms.

Ms. Mejia came down, and she didn't take time to start announcing the names of students one after the other. She announced four names and took a little pause to make it obvious that the four of them would be sharing one room. As the kids were hearing her call them by their names, they would raise hands to make other roommates identify their new roommates.

After a couple of names were announced, and almost half of the people were through, the warden announced, "Marie, Sophia, Charlotte, Jean."

Marie, Sophia, and Charlotte raised their hands, but the fourth hand was nowhere raised. So, Ms. Mejia announced for the second time the last girl's name who was supposed to club with them. "Jean!" She called out, but again she didn't see the fourth hand being raised among all the girls who were standing there.

She understood that Jean was missing from the crowd, but she wanted to give it one more try. With all the voice that she could use, she shouted, "Jean!"

The main door of the hostel opened almost at the same time when she was calling out that girl's name. Someone in jeans and a striped shirt with boy-cut hair entered at that very moment making it seem very dramatic.

"Where were you?" Ms. Mejia asked and Marie wondered why the warden was letting a dude enter the girls' hostel. It was only after a reply came from the person who entered the building and was walking into the crowd standing in the lobby, she realized who the person really was.

"I was having my snacks, Ms. Mejia. Sorry I am late."

"You called my name?"

"Yes, Jean. These three girls with their stands raised will be your new roommates after you all come back from the holidays. Turn around and let them see you," said the warden.

When Jean turned around instantly, facing all the other girls, some of them waved their hands at her as they knew her already. The rest of them who were mainly from the star performers section were not able to recognize her as she was from the other section which was for average performing students and too much into sports to be seen around in the class.

Jean was the head of the basketball team for girls, and she was the main reason that they won several interschool tournaments. She was extremely talented and knew how to take care of the little things in life. The time when the rest of the girls would ask others for help, she would do such stuff on her own in some or the other way as she was smart like that.

She was also very helpful to everyone despite the fact that she was looked at differently because of the way she dressed, and the way she chose to live. Her haircut used to be talked about the most where girls would mention that she didn't know how to look like a girl and behave like one as her posture would confuse them.

Similarly, Marie was looking at her with doubts as she was unable to understand why such a beautiful girl with extra sharp features would look otherwise. In fact, even the way that her shirt was tucked in from one side and left hanging from the other looked as if it was a boy who dressed her up.

As Marie checked her out from top to bottom, she noticed her figure which increased her curiosity to know the reason why she was not flaunting it. The roommates which she had at present would purposely wear short clothes to maybe expose a little, maybe flaunt one part of their body which they thought would attract the boys or even if not that, then maybe to make other girls jealous. That is how spoilt the students of Liberal International School were.

Immediately after the warden was done taking all the names of every student and assigning them their roommates, she asked them to get ready for the dance that they had to go to which was planned by the school to celebrate their entry to senior high school.

Just in about thirty to forty minutes from that time, all the girls stepped down from the respective floors that they had their rooms on and were looking absolutely breath-taking. They were attired differently; some of them were in an elaborate evening gown, a number of them were wearing jeans with a cute top, a few of the group were also in shorts and a t-shirt, but almost everyone was dressed in striking colors.

Marie was dressed in a knee-length, dusty pink dress which had a small slit on one side. It was an A-line dress and had a boat neck at shoulder level. The fall of the dress was pretty natural, and she looked stunning the way that she was carrying her dress with the perfect hairstyle, and she was wearing just the right amount of make-up unlike a lot of others who had applied everything in excess on their faces that made them look a little scary.

While everybody was leaving the hostel building to go to the auditorium where the event was planned to take place, Marie got nervous and sat on one of the chairs in the lobby to feel a little better before she left for the dance. The thought of being around boys and well-dressed girls was also frightening. The worst would be to dance with a boy in front of all of them looking at her.

She had never been so close to any boy other than her cousin brothers who she would meet during the holidays when she would go home. Going out to meet random boys in a dress looking so fine, she was very worried if she was doing the right thing because her family was very strict about such matters.

In the time that she had her eyes closed and was lost thinking about the way that she must be because she ought to participate in the school event, she felt a hand on her shoulder. The time she opened her eyes to see who was holding her, she was surprised to see the same person she was shocked to see in the evening, Jean.

"Hello, Jean!" Marie greeted her with confusion as to why she was there.

"Come, let's go and dance with them boys!" Jean said with a smile on her face and a twinkle in her eyes. She pulled her hand from Marie's shoulder once she opened her eyes.

"I don't know; I am scared," mentioned Marie, to which Jean replied, "Don't be scared, Marie. I will be there for you. Come!"

That made Marie feel a little comfortable, so she took a step forward to go with her. Both of them left for the auditorium holding each other's hands for the dance socials to follow.