The Life and Laughs of Lexi Dresden

Alexandra Dresden was back. Her suitcases had been thrown haphazardly onto a bed, which was her definition of bagsy-ing the best one, the best one being by the window. Why a small window that was supposed to open (but didn’t) made a bed the best one, no one will ever know. But it did. Anyway, she was the first of the dorm-sisters to arrive back at Victoria House, the largest dorm at Harringtons Academy For Girls. The house felt very empty with just her in it. Well. She wasn’t exactly alone. The enthusiastic (in a bad way) housemistress was also around. However, whereas Alexandra’s parents had been forced to bring her back early, it was blindingly obvious that Miss Hillbrooke had come back early because she had no other way to occupy her life and so had decided to while away the hours of loneliness by arranging her numerous cat ornaments and stacking her voluminous pants in colour order in her top drawer. Well, this is what Alexandra assumed she would be doing. What else did housemistresses do other than housemistressy sort of things? She probably still used doilies. But it wasn’t like Alexandra was ever going to take the time to find out. If she started showing an interest in Miss Hillbrooke all sorts of rumours would spark up and no one wants to start a school year with such unsanitary suspicions hanging over your head. She slumped down onto her bed (Alexandra obviously. Not Miss Hillbrooke - no one wants to know what she was doing. Putting her shoes in order of ugliness in her wardrobe probably) with a loud sigh, leaning casually on one of her suitcases. Stupid parents. They were the reason she was miserably alone right now. They’d had some sort of benefit thing to go to in London and so they had to drop her off at midday. Her parents had apologised profusely. ‘Lexi darling, I’m sorry!’ her mother had said, swivelling around in the front seat of their car. ‘No one else could give you a lift and we really can’t miss this function. It’s for charity.’ Her mother had looked at her imploringly, wanting to see some sign of forgiveness. Lexi had continued to sulk in the back seat. Even though she’d understood that this was the only way of getting her to school, she was still annoyed. She had refrained from mentioning the fact that this wouldn’t even be an issue if they would let her go to the local comprehensive school, but no. It was all ‘you won’t get a good job,’ ‘you’ll be a smoking, drinking drug addict,’ and ‘you’ll be pregnant before you’ve got your GCSE’s!’ Just because the local paper had done a survey of the school and found that one in five of the girls who went there ended up pregnant before they were sixteen. Lexi however, had argued that the paper was unreliable as it printed conspiracy stories, such as one saying that the Queen had died of bird flu several years ago and that she had been replaced by a look-a-like. But anyway! Enough dwelling on miserable things. It’ll only make you miserable-er. Lexi decided that she should cheer herself up the way she always did. By eating A LOT. She padded into Victoria House’s kitchen and started rooting around in the cupboards. Typical. Miss Hillbrooke was apparently too absorbed with organising her pants drawer and hadn’t yet got around to stocking up on food. Fortunately, Lexi had some food stashed away in her suitcase. She wandered back into her room, unzipped one of them and began heaving most of her belongings onto the floor, finally snatching a yoghurt bar from the assortment of clothes and snacks. Now, although Lexi didn’t like choosing the healthy option, she couldn’t deny the fact that these strawberry yoghurt bars were delicious. All sweet with chewy bits of strawberry in the middle. And the best bit was finishing the first bar, and discovering that there was still a second bar to eat! As she was chomping away she gazed around the room, her eyes landing on the large, inbuilt wardrobe. Now would definitely be the time to put her stuff in there, before her roomies arrived and started taking up all the space. Her two roommates were great. They were absolutely the best, tip-top friends you could wish for; hilarious, hilarious and hilarious again! Obviously they did more than just make her laugh, but it had to be said, they were very funny. She finished her snack and looked from the wardrobe to her stuff. She’d just have a packet of crisps to give her the energy to unpack. Then she would definitely get right on it.