Life Swap

Tests

Mrs Blackstone's daughter was in year ten, it turned out, which made her fifteen, and a big girl at Deepdene to anyone in year seven, regardless of the size issue. My shadows did not like her much, but I was learning to ignore those remnants of the real Olivia, because they were not reliable. Not in my admittedly limited, and really rather impossibly muddled, experience. Kelly actually really valued her older friends at Redstone. I knew a couple of year tens who lived in my street, who I had known ever since I was a toddler, and one big girl in year eleven, and that helped a lot with problems, sometimes. But Felicity was obviously not the sort of girl who was going to just threaten Samantha Fitzgerald on my behalf, because she was not the type, although she certainly seemed genuinely concerned about the situation. Breaktime only lasted fifteen minutes and she acted quickly to calm things down with us, promising the twins that she would help, and asking them to let her talk to me on our own for a bit. She took hold of my hand, and got me walking around the edge of the playground where it was quieter, away from everyone else. Everyone seemed to hold Olivia's hand, I had noticed, because I was such a little girl, and that seemed to really annoy the angry shadows. But I did not mind, not at that moment, because I needed some help, and some reassurance.

"I could tell mum...but I really don't think it would help...do you?" She said, after we had been walking for a minute. Felicity was wearing the same uniform as me, with her dark brown hair arranged in a braid, with school ribbons. It made her look younger than fifteen, I thought to myself, but she seemed quite mature. Kelly could do mature, in normal circumstances, but I was not feeling that in Olivia's body. I felt so little and out of my depth, so when she started to talk, I listened, trying to calm myself down, trying to cope. "I mean...you've said mean things to all of the girls in your class before...haven't you?"

I did not know what to say to that, of course. I had no idea what Olivia had said to anyone at Deepdene. But I knew that she did not have any friends, so I could guess the landscape. In five terms, she had made no friends, which either meant she was not trying to get along with anyone or that the other girls were simply rejecting her. I mean, it was not that big a school. My class of twenty girls was year seven, all of it, right there. Redstone had six classes in each year, so well over one hundred and eighty pupils. But if your peer group was just twenty, and you were the new girl, I could see how hard that might be. Olivia had been transferred to the school the twins had been at since they were three years old, in the nursery. Most of the girls in her class had probably been together for eight years already. And Olivia did not want to be there. I could see how that might have played out for her, and I was suffering the consequences.

"I think you should tell Auntie Caroline...she will know what to do, without making things any worse...but if I tell my mum, she will have to do something about it here at school, because she is a teacher, and that might not help you in the long run?" Felicity suggested, which made sense. Every school says that it has a zero-tolerance attitude to bullying but that was nonsense in real terms, because the teachers could not be everywhere. No one liked a telltale. If things got really nasty, someone had to say something about it, but kids always picked on other kids and no adult could ever really stop it altogether. In the end, the best way to deal with it was to ignore it, and move on, which was exactly the advice Felicity gave me. "I know you had a really terrible day yesterday...but everyone also knows what you did...and the teachers can't stop girls saying mean things...they can't be everywhere...you just have to show bullies that it doesn't bother you...and then they stop? And nothing ever seems to bother you that much usually, does it, Olivia? Until today?"

"I am making a fresh start," I told her, pathetically. It was silly. Samantha had not said very much, even if it was nasty, and it was hardly a brutal murder threat. And I had messed my pull-up in a very public way, after messing up their big day out, so that was bound to attract some comments. Kelly would have struggled to laugh messing herself off at Redstone, even if it was a medical condition, so the other kids were bound to tease. But deep inside Olivia, I was on an emotional rollercoaster, still trying to work out what was actually happening to me and what I could do about it, if anything at all, and I felt so helpless. I just could not cope with it. My brain was just swirling over everything in a constant whirl of anxiety and naked terror.