Me, Myself, and Him

Primary Concerns

I started primary school a year later. I was one of the oldest in the class. I went to Lembon Primary school, a rubbish school on the estate where my parents lived. It was quite a bad estate with a terrible reputation, but that didn't matter, as we wouldn't be there for long.

It wasn't my fault. Kinda.

I had wanted to play with the red stilts. Red had become my favourite colour. I didn't understand why, but looking back, I think it was to do with that particular pair of stilts. There was this one other kid, a girl with long blonde pigtails and bright blue eyes. I can't remeber her name for the life of me. I had nabbed the stilts first, and was strutting my way around the sand pit, when she tried to push me off. I had a brilliant sense of balance, so I just walked off behind the bike shed.

She followed me. It was the most secluded part of the school. Yet again, she tried to push me off, but I just laughed at her.

I suppose that's when the change to my character started. I stopped acting like the innocent little girl, and more the devilish little boy. I thought it was funny that she didn't have enough strength to push me off. She got really tearful, and started slapping me, but I kept laughing. It didn't hurt in the slightest. She wasn't packing and strength into it. Eventually, she collapsed in the dirt, tired and crying. I shrugged.

"My stilts."  I walked off.

At the end of lunch, a teacher came over to me.

"So and so (as I said before, the name is a blank in my memory) has just told me you pushed her over and took her stilts."

I stood there in disbelief. I would laugh at weak people, but I wasn't that nasty. The brat had tried to take them from me!

"I didn't do it Miss. She tried to do it to me, but it didn't work, so she fell in the mud." The teacher sighed.

"You shouldn't tell lies." I suddenly exploded, the burning sensation returning for the first time in a year. My hair turned red, but this time, you could tell my gender had switched.

The whole class went quiet and stared at me. I was growling. The pinafore I was wearing really didn't match my boyish appearance.

"I'M TELLING THE TRUTH! SHE'S A LIAR!" I shouted. The windows cracked as the sheer force of my voice, now also boyish, echoed around the room.  Miss put her hands up in surrender.

"It's okay Elexis. Just calm down." I shook my head, angry tears in my eyes. If there is something I still hate to this day, it's being called a liar.

"Not until you believe me." The girl stepped forward, and pointed a podgey finger at me.

"She pushed me into the dirt Miss. She's naughty."

That was the last straw.

I picked up a chair, and with the most power I had put behind anything I did, threw it at the girl.

The teacher got in the way to try and stop it hitting her, so it wasn't my fault that Miss got hurt.

We had to move. Dad and Mum were told of my change of voice and appearence, and the strength I held. We were forced out of the town, and I was labelled the 'Devil child.'

I got kicked out of some of my other Primary schools for the same issue, and each time we had to move. Holt Moor Primary, I lasted nine months. Rattets, I lasted two and a half years.

I found it ironic that the only Primary school I managed to keep my temper in was a Catholic school, as I was labelled 'Devil child.' My parents had begged no one report me to the police or the media.

By this point, they had guessed something was wrong. Dad had asked witnesses about my 'angry spells' as he called them, and eventually, he had asked me something I never expected him to figure out.

"Elexis, at the park that day, that noise was you, wasn't it?" I turned to him. I was seven when he asked me. That day at the park had never left my memory. I nodded.

"A group of teenagers tried to snatch me. I screamed, and then lots of mud came up from the ground." He stared at me and nodded.

A year later, my parents were divorced, and I was living with Mum. Dad had wanted me tested, to see how dangerous I was, but mum wanted nothing of the sort. She was convinced I was normal, and wouldn't let anybody tell her otherwise.

Meanwhile, my personality changed dramatically. I refused to wear the dresses and skirts she had bought for me, I was uninterested in celebrities, male or otherwise, make-up was at the bottom of my concern, and I liked nothing more than going to school, and coming home with ripped, muddy trousers and shoes that were falling to bits because I had been playing football with the boys.

The boys in Primary school, St. Teresa's mainly, always accepted me as one of them once they got passed my outward appearance. I wasn't able to make conversation with the girls. They would talk about the boys they fancied and dresses and princesses and complete rubbish in my opinion.

Then, it got to the stage in school where it's like mating time at the zoo, and the only relationship I was interested in at that age was one of a girl and her football team.