School, Prejudice and Survival

Chapter 4, Part 1

Chapter 4                    My Best Friends

The warm summer sun beats down on my face, illuminating my hair and making me squint. The air feels fresh and clean, the way it always does in summer.                                                                                           The science building guides me down a footpath into the main playground at Oak Academy, where students both young and old cluster in their groups, trying to survive the day. I take an easy breath, waking myself up from a long weekend of skating and sleeping. This is much better than sitting at home. Scarlett, on the other hand, isn't happy.                                                                                                           "...if she expects me to smile and pretend nothing has happened, I swear I'm gonna slap a bitch!" She rants, not realising that I zoned out. I laugh at this, making my sister glare at me in the morning sun. "We both know that would never happen. Hey, come on Scar," I say when she huffs, "You talk a big game, but you would over analyse the whole situation and chicken out."                                                     "How would you know?!" she explodes, stopping halfway along the path.                                                        "One, I'm your sister, and two, I wasn't saying it was a bad thing!" I laugh, diffusing her anger and walking away.

Along the first floor of the lower building are various students of all ages in clusters against the walls. Bright-eyed year sevens who are still terrified of the size of the Academy, bored looking year eights who have nothing important happening in their life, many year nines, stressed looking year tens and year elevens throwing things through the air. Perfect morning, in my opinion.                                                 It doesn't take me long to reach Carly and Kai halfway down the packed corridor. Disappointment hits me when I see that Naomi isn't with them, I love talking to her about her training and answering her questions about mine. Still, her brown hair is nowhere to be found.                                                                 "Hey Indie! How are you?" Kai asks me, sweet as ever, whilst Carly throws her arms around me.            "I'm good thanks!" I lie "What about you?"                                                                                                               "Good good. We were just talking ab..."                                                                                                                            "Guess what?!" Carly interrupts. "I'm getting another hamster tonight!" She exclaims, clapping her hands.                                                                                                                                                                                           "Aw! That's awesome! What's the name this time?" I ask, curious. Carly got a hamster a few years back, and being the weirdo she is, she named it Hamper. Yeah. It was from a title of a book she never read. She loved that thing like it was her child. Everytime I went to hers she would have made new toys for him to play with, and one of her favourite pictures is of me and her in our junior school uniforms, the hamster sitting on my shoulder proudly. That picture still sits above her bed, framed by the words 'best friends'. I remember when she emailed me and our other friends telling us that Hamper was gone. Her love for that hamster made me cry, sending an apology email back full of all the love I could manage without the genius invention of emojis. In year seven, she got a second hamster and -exitedly- called him Theodore (after a chipmunk in a movie). She loved Theo just as much, and made me cry again when he died a few years back. I am extremely curious to see what ridiculous name this hamster gets saddled with.

After saying a goodbye to Kai, me and Carly walk slowly toward our form room. We are still chatting as we walk inside and take our seats in the back corner, so we can do our homework without being detected. With the crap weekend I have had, worrying about Matt and not being able to sleep, I couldn't bring myself to pick up a pen and concentrate on anything productive. Carly just plain couldn't be bothered.                                                                                                                                                                    I pull out my orange maths book and glare at it. Me and maths have a love-hate relationship, depending on whether I can use a calculator or not. I open my green booklet full of questions we have been working on recently, and let my pen glide across the page. I never found maths too hard, I just only like it in certain forms. Like counting how much money my favourite energy drinks cost.                   I feel bad for Carly, who is writing out a page long paragraph for English, knowing that she has no idea what she is saying or whether it makes any sense. English has been a struggle for her, ever since we started school at age four.                                                                                                                                                              I pay no attention to Mr Anderson, the I.T teacher we have for form. It's too early anyway, and nobody seems to be listening to him either. The year seven and eight girls who have sat in the row in front of us eventually turn around, and the six of us talk about random things that don't really matter.

RS was uneventful, except for when Chrissie got into a fight with the teacher for suggesting that we focus on the scientific theories for the origin of the universe. We need both sides of the argument for our upcoming assessment, but Chrissie refused. It was pretty funny actually.                                            Science was fun, even if we got nothing done. I sat with Carly, Kai and Naomi since Annie, Kathy, Ellie and Emelia had already taken up one table. They offered to work as a five, but I didn't mind. I tend to spend science with the other three anyway, to keep numbers balanced. I found myself admiring Naomi's hair throughout the lecture, as it is always more interesting than what I should be doing. There's about ten different shades of brown there! We then spent a lot of time talking and drawing a fancy title for a revision poster on physics. I'm screwed in science, but at least it's fun.

By the time break comes around, I have woken up completely. I walk with Annie towards the exit of the lower building, chatting about strange things as always, until we turn a corner and I am frozen in place.                                                                                                                                                                                             There is something happening in that corner, something bad. I walk ahead of Annie, towards the group of tall year twelve and thirteen boys who are laughing at something in the corner. When I see something that makes my heart stop. Rage wells inside me, and I intended to go over there and slap them all myself, but then Mr Hart steps into the corridor and the boys run.                                                           Mr Hart didn't even notice, but being the deputy head of a large academy gives you an aura of authority that students always run from.

My mind goes blank and the walls close in. I can't breathe. Then, like a spring, my mind fills with emotion and a need to protect, and I run to where my best friend lies on the floor, struggling to move. He has been hurt. And hurt bad. Outside the window, thunder rumbles and rain begins to stream down. Pathetic fallacy. Pathetic bastards.

I will make them pay. I will make them all pay. Nobody hurts Matt.