Saving Nicole

1.1 - the first day

School was like the zoo, in a way. I would be the hedgehog, or some other impossibly tiny animal. Most of the other teachers were zebras. They were all different, just like no two zebras have the exact same stripes. Up close, they were all different, but from a distance they were the exact same.
Some of these students were freaking giraffes - had the average teenagers height gotten higher since I'd left school? Oh, and that kid was an elephant. Grace Elizabeth Riley! I scolded myself in my head. That is so rude, and his weight could be some kind of medical condition. That was out of line.
I saw the odd mouse; a student creeping along side everyone else, desperately trying to keep out of people's way and not get cornered by the ferocious cats.

School was like the zoo, a place where the wild animals are kept orderly, sorted into categories.

"Excuse me?"I asked the lady who had been sitting next to me in the meeting. She looked down at me. She wasn't looking down her nose at me, but I was so short that almost everyone had to look down to actually see me. "Hello! I'm Grace Riley, the new English and Creative Writing teacher. Would you happen to know where room twenty three is? I'm new here," I explained.

"Yeah, I can take you if you want. I take home room in room twenty four, right next to you," she said.

"Great, thank you so much! I'm afraid my sense of direction isn't very good, and this map is only confusing me more," I said with a small laugh as I held up the map I had been given at the front office.

"Oh, the maps? You should probably chuck that out. Every summer, they change around a few rooms, and they stopped updating the maps a while ago. They swapped the library building with the VCE study centre. Oh! Where are my manners? It's nice to meet you, I'm Kathy Atkins, a math teacher here," she said, holding out her hand for me to shake it, and I did. I couldn't help noticing her neatly manicured nails. My own are awful and stubby. I bite them. I've tried so many times to stop, but I can't. I chew them when I'm nervous or stressed. 

"There's been quite a bit of excitement about your arrival," Kathy continued on " you've been greatly needed in the English department for a while. Off the record, I think Jeff Hawk was the only English teacher at this school that knew how to teach, but he left halfway through last year after his wife... passed."

My hand flew to my mouth. "Oh, how awful! I hope he's doing okay."

Katy nodded. "I think he's doing alright."

We trekked up the stairs in silence, towards rooms twenty three and twenty four. I might be really fit by the end of the year, hiking up and down these stairs a few times a day.

"Well, here's room twenty three!" Katy said as we came to a stop outside a glass sliding door. The school wasn't one big building, like my high school. It was set out in blocks and buildings, which meant you had to go outside to get to other classrooms. Crap if it was raining. But today was beautiful, the sun peeping out from behind the clouds. Teasing us with its warmth. "There's still a few minutes before the bell," Kathy said. "Who's in your form assembly?"

I pulled out the list of students names I had been given in the office from the folder I had tucked under my arm. The names meant nothing to me - I didn't know whether these students were well behaved or had bad reputations or what.

Kathy plucked the paper out of my hand, nearly giving me a paper cut in the process, and skimmed over the list. She gave a small nod.

"Well, you have a mostly alright class. Harriet Finlay, she's a lovely girl. Smart and funny. Although watch out for Nicole Whyte - I think it was rather cruel of them to assign her to a new teacher. We call her the 'horror student'".

I nodded, but on the inside I was shocked. The 'horror student'? I'm sure she couldn't be that bad, and anyway. Surely a teacher calling a student that was a form of bullying

"Right, well. Thanks for showing me around, Kathy." I slid open the door, and stepped into the room.

"You're welcome. See you around, Grace!"

The class was a small one, and I was able to pick out Nicole straight away. She looked sulky, and had a piercing in her nose. Technically, I should tell her to take it out, but I didn't really want to seem like an uptight old bag on my first day. Tomorrow, the nose ring is coming out, but for today, I didn't notice it.

Nicole turned to face me, and raised one eyebrow, her perfectly shaped eyebrow arching high above her liquid silver eyes. Usually, I'd raise my own freshly shaped eyebrow back, hold my ground, but something in her shocking coloured eyes said 'just don't'. They weren't contacts, not that it would be possible for the strange shiny light grey colour of Nicole's eyes to be manmade anyway. It was a colour that could only be found in the wild.

The bell for first class went not long after after I had taken the roll and introduced myself, and got each of the students to introduce themselves. I asked them to say their name, where they were from, and an interesting fact about themselves. Not the most exciting thing ever, I know, and I always hated it when my teachers made us do it. However, I had to remember their names somehow, and if I could associate some kind of fact with a name, it'd be easier. I was crap at associating names with faces.

I was right; the girl with the liquid grey eyes and the nose piercing was Nicole. She'd introduced herself as 'Nicole, I'm from here, Australia, because I'm not exciting enough to travel, and I don't have an interesting fact about myself. Dosta je rekao, which is Croatian for enough said, by the way.'

First class, I had a group of year sevens for English. I was glad that I was starting with year sevens, who would probably be freaking out too much about starting high school, to be difficult and muck around. Hopefully.

Again, I introduced myself, and we went around the classroom, each student saying their name, where they were from, and an interesting fact. I told them not to expect me to remember names straight away, because I was crap at it. There was a few nervous giggles, which is when I remembered they were fresh out of primary school and probably weren't used to teachers swearing, even if it was only 'crap'.

"Okay, people!" I said, after I'd finished marking the roll. "Let's kick of the year with some much needed classroom decorating," I paused to gesture at the very bland walls. "Do a little poster slash collage thingy about yourself. There's A3 paper at the back of the room, and some markers and pencils and stickers. Make it really colourful, okay? This room is hella boring. You can put whatever you want on it, as long as it represents you. Draw a picture! Write a story or poem! Talk a friend who can draw into drawing you! On second thought, don't do the last one! You have to do it yourself!"

No one moved, and I immediately doubted my own impressive-ness. I had thought that sounded like fun?

"You can start," I said, and everyone immediately got to work.

Disregard my previous self doubt.