Strangers to the World

New Town, New Life

BANG! Benjamin Adams, the new boy, the birthday boy, the "Foster Freak" (as we was referred to at his old school his last family had him, back up north in York) collapsed. His first day at Oakhill School and the poor boy collapsed. It was all too much, it was his 16th birthday and he had just finished his fourth lesson, Maths. He left the room with his the guy he was shadowing, Tommy, they had headed for the stairs to head down to the cafeteria and once they got to the stairs, BANG! Ben, as he preferred to be called, blacked out and fell.

Tommy saw him as he edged forwards and tried to catch him, he grabbed hold of him alright but Ben was 6 foot 2 and rather well built as we played his fair share of Rugby whereas Tommy was only 5 foot 8 and was not as interested in Rugby but more Football so Ben outweighed Tommy and they tumbled together down the stairs.

A few guys at the bottom of the stairs tried to catch them at the bottom but all they did was cushion the fall, they all hit the bottom and Ben remained unconscious. Everyone else was fine, a few cuts and bruises but not Ben.

Ben was burning up. The nurse was alerted instantly and she rushed to the rescue. The nurse and the nearest teacher rolled Ben onto a stretcher and got him to the Medical Room as quickly as they could. Ben was waking up, slowly but surely. He began to make small, quiet noises, scrunching his eyes but refusing to open them. He couldn't.

Once they got him to the room they moved his carefully and cautiously onto the bed and tried to diagnose the problem.

New people, new school, new foster family, new city. The school knew he had moved all the way from York to London, they thought it was all too much for him, so much stress on one person. The called the new foster family, Paula and Brad Richardson, a very upper-middle class couple that could not conceive their own child due to medical reasons so they decided to foster children until they are 18 and when they heard that Ben, ran away from his home and stay at a nearby care home so many times that his parents actually put him in the system, they jumped at the chance to adopt him. Brad wasn't working that day because he is a CEO of a major corporation and only has to go in for meetings so he went to pick up Ben without hesitation. Ben was home within half an hour. Exhausted he went to bed and did not wake until the next day.

The next day was cold, bearing in mind that the school year was only a couple weeks in and autumn had settled-in, it was cold. It felt like winter was on its way.

Ben awoke on time for school and underwent what was to become the usual routine: wake up, have breakfast, shower, clean his teeth, put on his uniform and go to school.

He teachers all knew the events that befell the previous day and they were really careful with him, they all wanted to make sure he was okay but they all wanted to avoid talking about the collapse, everyone knew what had happened but it went unspoken off.

Every school has their bully and at this school, well it was unlike any other school Ben had attended, so many posh pupils, everyone came from very well off backgrounds and his slip up did not go unnoticed.

"Hey is that the guy that collapsed yesterday?" is all Ben heard all day. Tommy no longer had to have Ben shadow him around but Tommy felt bad for him, all day he was the subject of conversation around school, people mocking him, reminding him of what a day he had. Everyone tormenting him.

Ben had been in fights before and this one particular boy, Bradley, had no idea what was coming his way.

Ben had been tormented, picked on and verbally abused all day. He had begun to have enough, Tommy stuck up for him as much as he could but he could only do so much.

Tommy was the only one who knew Ben and what his old home was like! It was such a huge transition and it was perhaps too much for poor Ben, the move included but he wanted to start his new school on the first day so it wasn't as scary as people had to get used to the whole campus again so it would have been easier for him to sneak in relatively unnoticed.

"You're weak little son of a bitch! You can't even get down a flight of stairs without collapsing!"

"You say that again... You say that again and I swear to God you will regret it!"

"You're weak little son of a bitch! You can't even get down a flight of stairs without collapsing!" A another pupil, tall - about 6 foot 4 and very well built, repeated himself.

Ben absolutely lost it. He was tired, stressed, slightly scared but more than anything he was pissed off.

Ben clenched his fist and swung for a left hook for the leaning tower that is Bradley who called him a bitch. Bradley went down like "a sack of spuds" but got back up just as quickly and hit Ben right back! Ben stumbled back and hit his head on a fire extinguisher. Ben was so worked up that you could see his skin start to glow a faint red colour.

A small hissing sound started to fill the corridor and Tommy who tried to help up Ben was the first to comment on the hissing

"Wha... What is that sound?" Tommy looked around Ben and his, once again, unconscious body to find out where the sound was coming from...

"FUUCCCKKKKK!!! EVERYONE GET BACK" Tommy screams as he tries to get Ben away from the fire extinguisher! A teacher grabbed the fire extinguisher and threw it from the corridor and into an empty classroom.

BANG!

Two days, two big bangs... The fire extinguisher had exploded for what had seemed like an unknown cause, no one knew what had happened, not Bradley or even Ben but Tommy, Tommy didn't know what happened with the extinguisher but what he did know is that after touching Ben, his hands blistered and the fire extinguisher exploded, perhaps from an abnormally high pressure...

All he could think about was - "What? What had happened to Ben and why were my hands like they were?"