Elena tries not to be upset; she's trying to push her tears back inside to keep herself together. She goes outside to an area that is closed off from the CCTV cameras, we see her tossing her bag almost directly at the camera to show her frustration.
She wants to feel normal, seen, and heard, but people just won’t listen. She kicks her bag repeatedly. She wants to rest her head up against something as soft as a toy but toys aren’t allowed in schools and are seen as embarrassing so she weaves her hands through her hair and places her back against the wall and slides down it.
She takes a look around and then buries her head in her knees and starts crying. The bell rings a few minutes later. She gets up and makes her way to the sports hall for P.E.
A whistle is blown 3 times in the girl's changing rooms
Ladies, your teacher is unwell today, so you will have Mr Williams as your temp teacher for today's session.
Elena feels herself shaking first, the questions not making sense in maths.
Then nobody notices her hands up to ask a question.
Then nobody bothered to notice the fact that she'd gotten her stuff from her desk and left the room for the rest of the lesson.
Why hadn’t anyone noticed she'd left the room?
Why wasn’t the teacher and the teaching assistants more aware of the fact that she had left?
Elena set up a plan as she was changing into her P.E. kit. She would try to go outside and then when everyone else was on the field she would go back inside the changing rooms and wait out the lesson to see if she could find out if people were really oblivious to her appearance.
The clock is seen at the time 1:10pm as Elena is running back into the sports hall
Elena sits on the floor in the sports hall before lying down to try and feel less stressed out. It made her feel safe doing this. Surely, someone will notice she’s not in her session, right?
It gets to 1:55pm, and her classmates are running into the changing rooms.
Elena is seen asking a random girl in her class if anybody had noticed her missing. She replies “what you weren’t in class right now, did you have a really bad period or something?" Elena doesn’t know how to respond to this, so she goes along with it and says ohh yeah, it's really bad this month, don’t suppose you’ve got a spare pad i can use? The girl hides the pad inside her hand and puts it inside Elena’s bag. Elena, thanks the girl.
Was she really this invisible?
YOU ARE READING
Bound Together
Dla nastolatkówAbout a neurodivergent teenager in a mainstream school. Based on the authors own personal experiences and journey to becoming who she is. This book is about helping young women and teenagers understand why they might think they could potentially be...
