*ORIGINAL FICTION* Gentle schoolgirl Sarah Wright hates all types of fighting, combat or self-defence. When the slight 15-year-old is forced by her mum to go to wrestling classes, in an effort to toughen her up, she's taken to pieces on the mat by a...
Sarah Wright rolled her eyes as her mum Martina attempted to drop her off at the Dalston School of Wrestling in East London.
"Just give it a try, then. I've driven you here, after all. And you're booked in for the class," Martina insisted.
"Yeah, I don't remember you asking my consent for that part. Surely there is some law against that?", Sarah hissed back.
The schoolgirl wasn't happy. In an effort to make the 15-year-old "toughen up a bit" and be less of a victim, her mum was sending her for wrestling classes. Whether she liked it or not.
Sarah, an unusually gentle teenager with exceptional musical talent, had been bullied in school fairly consistently since she was about nine years old, but she felt she had it under control, mostly.
Secondary school had been tough so far, but it wasn't like she had no friends - well, maybe not her own age, but she did have friends. They were just younger than her.
She didn't like to think about how she was bullied too much - she had more important things to do, like becoming the best violinist she could be. One day, she hoped to play in the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Sarah just didn't see how becoming some kind of fighter was going to help her in life, especially when she had so little interest in it. She hated fighting in all its forms. She didn't even like boys who were into fighting; she studiously avoided them.
She never wanted to know how to use her body to hurt someone, or even to defend herself particularly. What was the need for that? She especially hated how everyone her age appeared to be so obsessed with physical strength and who could "take" who.
Maybe that's why she preferred the company of younger girls: her best friend in school was 13.
Sarah's mum didn't seem to understand that whenever she was challenged to a fight in school, she just walked away and that was that. Sarah felt that was a perfectly viable life plan for dealing with any physical threats that may arise.
The bullying she suffered in school was highly sneaky and generally focused around humiliating her. It wasn't like people were hitting her or anything - and often, she didn't even know which of her classmates were doing these things to her. How are you supposed to fight back against that?
She'd done a good job of keeping the situation a secret from her mother - until the bullies started stealing and/or vandalising her belongings - instead of just taking them off her temporarily.
That first time she had arrived home with no shoes, and her schoolbag soaked through from having been thrown in the showers, her mum had been livid.
Sarah looked so pathetic that day, and Martina didn't want any daughter of hers put into that position.
Martina had wanted to march up to the school and discuss it with the headteacher, but Sarah had begged her not to do anything about it.
"It won't happen again," Sarah had insisted.
Of course, things like that had kept happening. And when Sarah arrived home minus her school skirt one day, Martina gave her a choice: either we go to the school about this, or you learn some method to defend yourself.
Sarah made it clear to her mum that she was against both suggestions, and stormed off.
But she didn't reckon on her mum's determination to follow through on her promises - and now here she was being herded into a wrestling school. The very last place in the entire world she wanted to be.
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