16 | Celtic Knot

**SIENNA**


Three weeks came and gone by. Meanwhile, I was summoned to Father Sullivan’s office at least twice a week. There were endless and boring sessions of bible reading, extra homework and a few ridiculous punishments, completely unfitting for a nineteen-year-old, but I guess that was his point. His brand of humiliation was to subject me to juvenile punishments while I thoroughly took advantage of them because I hated the teachers.
Save for Miss Lara Powell for history and Father Lucas for theology. I never thought I’d live the day to say this, but theology classes were becoming the highlight of the day for me. There was something about this old man connecting with the young blood that probably nobody gave him grief, including me.
While I still struggled to utter the Lord’s prayer with sincerity, I found solace in Father Lucas’s words. It brought me the calmness I had been striving with since my mother’s untimely illness. Maybe I should start to reconcile with the old version of myself in order to build my life. I could not live to count for the impending doom for the rest of the year.
As for the other teacher, Miss Lara Powell, she was crazy. Her history lessons were boring, but nothing about her blue streaked hair and quirky sarcasm fits the bill of a prude teacher.
Within a month, I had already figured out the intricacies of this school. Or should I say, reformative prison for rich brats? I had absolutely no qualms in admitting that I was both rich and a brat, but I also knew the wealth of reasons why I was different from the lot, primarily because my last name was a curse.
Every night since that fateful day, I stayed awake and wondered if my life would have been any different if my last name was not Emerson. I did wear it with pride, but I just could not make it work for me.
Nobody was interested in the first name, which was why when Father Sullivan uttered it, I was a little taken aback. He rolled out the word ‘Sienna’ like the last name never mattered to him. And it made me crave to use his name as well. I did not know separating the title he held would somewhat help me understand him better.
He was mysterious, through and through.
Maybe it was the reason the girls of this school was so taken by his dark and intriguing demeanour. Or perhaps it was those perfect abs or corded muscles or perfectly formed ass. It could have been anything, really.
I, on the other hand, wanted his secrets. The biggest of them was to decipher why he has chosen to wear black for the rest of his life. And what about his past? As far as I had remembered, nothing came up on the internet about him. As if the man did not exist a day before he was admitted into the priesthood.
Could it be because he was a criminal?
“Are you daydreaming, Princess Emerson?” The plummy voice pierced into my ears as I mentally groaned but did not look up from my lunch tray.
“Not so popular here, I see, Emerson,” said another unwanted female voice. Once again, I knew who it was very well.
*Mean Irene and Eva Porter*.
News travelled fast in this small school because, apparently, girls had no other choice of entertainment than being a bunch of bullies when it came to newcomers. My long-standing history with Eva Porter was already the gossip in the first week, followed by my standoff with Mean Irene.
These two idiots thought that they could team up against me because clearly, they didn’t stand a chance alone. I guess their motto was: enemy’s enemy is a friend.
“Look at that,” I said lazily, dragging up my gaze. “Two bitches makes a fine team.”
“So, where’s your dorky new friend? Hiding in the closet?” Irene asked as both of them took the seats across the table where I was sitting all by myself.
I was already late for lunch, thanks to Miss Harvey’s extra assignments for me. And by the time I rushed into the dining room and grabbed the tray, I could not find Harper. Over the course of time, I began to enjoy her silent company than the boisterous and flashy companions around me. But sometimes, she would just disappear because a few girls would pick on her for no good reason.
Unlike me, she did not fight back. *Something* I highly recommended her.
“What do you both want?” I asked, irritated.
“We heard that you are spending some quality time with Father Sullivan,” Eva prompted with an evil glint in her eyes. The jealousy was transparent in her features.
“Go bother someone else. I am not in a mood.” I dug the fork into the sautéed veggies and stuffed them in my mouth, hoping I would not be tempted to run my tongue.
Irene turned to Eva, twirling her locks. “Remind me, please, what is the other word for a dirty little secret for an older man?”
“I guess whore is the word,” Eva said and then leaned closer to me. “So you are a priest’s whore, now? Suits you.”
“You would not know, Eva. After all, nobody bothered to take you up on your offer. Last I heard, you couldn’t score a sugar daddy for yourself.”
Her eyes narrowed and glowed. “Is that why you told Father to change his morning workout routine? Ever since you started to misbehave purposefully and spent time with him in the classroom, we don’t see much of Father Sullivan,” she accused with half her brain.
In fact, it was the latest gossip doing the rounds in the school. While I was not the one who unnecessarily snitched, the news did slip out of me. As a result, Father Sullivan no longer exhibited his muscular body that would satisfy the lady boners around him.
“Thank you for the high praise, by the way. Since you bitches are so impressed by my methods, how about taking a page out of my playbook and make it work for you?” I taunted, taking another mouthful of veggies.
“Unlike you, we are not whores,” Eva gritted.
“And yet you are here, annoying the fuck out of me to know about me and Father Sullivan. Do yourself a favour and find out your standards, please.”
Irene jabbed a finger at my face. “You can’t—” But the rest of her words were drowned by the sharp sound of the bell announcing the end of lunch hour. A blanket of heavy murmur fell around the room as every uniform-clad girl hurried back to their respective classrooms.
“Have a nice day, bitches,” I said, dropping the fork back into the tray to make my way back to the next class.
“Emerson, this isn’t New York,” Eva threatened before leaving. “And you don’t have many friends here. If I were you, I’d watch my back.”
I didn’t bother to grace her threat with a befitting reply and casually made my way out of the dining hall while two pairs of vicious eyes burned behind my back.
The next set of classes were boring, or simply because they weren’t Father Sullivan’s. I had to sit through tedious social science and English literature sessions and counted every second in my head for the clock to strike four and mark the end of the school day.
By the time I had walked out of the school building and headed back to the resident halls, dark clouds threatened overhead. The sky rumbled angrily as silence before a raging storm loomed in the air.
I slipped into my dorm room in lazy steps, where the rest of them were already changed out of their uniforms. Kelly and Olivia exchanged a silent look while Sophia tossed me a snicker. Somehow, my form mates were also convinced that I had purposely snitched and tried to climb up the ladder.
As if I cared a damn what they thought of me.
As I approached the side of my bed, something caught my attention. A pink post-it note was stuck on the small desk while some of my things were strewn around. It looked like someone had gone through my things.
“Who has been through my things?” I asked girls as they casually shrugged their shoulders and avoided.
I grabbed the pink paper and saw the words scribbled in capital letters: KARMA IS A BITCH.
And underneath the paper lay the broken pieces of my mother’s pendant. Someone had taken sharp scissors through the chain while a heavy object crushed the Celtic Knot.
It was broken and destroyed.
Almost *irreparable*.
A sharp invisible pain shot through me at the sight of the destruction. My trembling fingers clutched the pieces tightly and fisted, almost to the point the metal pierced into my skin, but I didn’t care.
The Celtic Knot pendant was priceless to me, one that even Father Sullivan didn’t snatch away.
“No, no, no!” I almost screamed like a madwoman, blinded by anger and an acute sense of loss.
“Who the fuck came here?” I screamed at the girls, almost hyperventilating.
“Listen, don’t create a scene,” snapped Olivia. “Mind your own fucking business.”
“Fuck you,” I shouted back. “Fuck you all.”
I took one last look at the pink paper, and I knew who did this.
There was only ***one*** girl in this school who had seen me wearing this pendant before and knew the history behind it.
*And I swore with every drop of wrath in my blood that I will tear up her pretty face for even daring to touch what’s mine*.
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