You Can Run To Me

Eleven

Greenfields College held an annual "Group Functioning Day" in the main hall for the first-year students. It took place, unsurprisingly, on one day each year. The year of Nat's arrival to the school, the governing body decided it would be best to host it at the start of December, for reasons unbeknown to probably the very governing body who set the date.

As the (rather awful) name suggests, the day was full of teamwork activities, designed to 'aid the students in developing skills essential for the workplace'. Namely the ability to put up with the annoying people that would inevitably grow up to be their bosses and customers. No doubt, it was an essential skill to learn, but few students were ever going to develop that skill from a dumb activity day.

The real pitfall of the thing was its planner, Julian Howell, a professor of Biology. It was the fifth year in a row that he had been lumped with it, and as a consequence he had settled down into an easy routine for it. To prevent noisome tensions arising from clashing personalities, he would just let them all choose who they went with, letting the friendship groups go together. It made the whole thing pretty much pointless. There didn't have to cope with anyone they didn't like except the ones who were left over and needed a group to go in.

Natalie woke up on the Friday morning of the event with an initially inexplicable sense of dread. Inexplicable, that is, until she remembered that it was the enrichment day today. She had no idea who she would be with (not knowing, of course, about Julian's feeble grouping system) and she had been slightly anxious all week about ending up with a bunch of mean strangers.

Natalie got up slowly, and then slightly faster when she noticed the time. As much as she didn't want to go, she had to, and it really wouldn't be any good if she was late. What if there weren't pre-selected groups and she came late and everyone had chosen their groups and she was forced to join a group that didn't want her. It would be seven hours of hell.

As it was, Nat arrived five minutes later than they were supposed to have gotten there, and subsequently was exceeded in lateness by only one other person (Thomas Thomas). Fortunately, she hadn't missed much. All that had happened so far was Julian Howell blathering on about the importance of working together despite any differences there might be. When Nat (and shortly after her, Thomas) came in, he paused and stared them down, causing everyone sat in the hall to curiously crane their necks towards Natalie. Natalie tried to ignore them and sat down in one of the very few free seats in the room, right at the back of the room. It took a couple of minutes for the last few people to stop staring at the back door and Nat.

Natalie tried to concentrate on the professor's speech. It was something about 'learning to eradicate prejudice' and 'involving to adapt for your old modern environment'. That last snippet didn't make much sense, but she could hardly rewind to make sure she hadn't misheard. She supposed she didn't care anyway. There were more important things that she wanted to hear, such as who she would have to work with today.

After another five minutes of dry drivel Julian finally moved onto the instructions. He told the students to organize their chairs into rings of six. Natalie hurried to move her chair into a circle. She was fairly sure that this was how he was sorting out he groups, so she tried to find her friends' familiar faces in the crowd. If she was wrong? Well, if she was wrong then she'd probably end up in a rubbish group no matter where she put her chair, so it was worth the risk.

She scanned the faces frantically; she was almost at her wit's end when she finally spotted Rachel's long auburn hair through the throng. She hastened towards it, wielding her chair like a battering ram. People dodged out of her way reluctantly but still quickly enough. Nat plonked her chair down in the already part-formed circle and claimed her place in their group.