Our journey through the lockers is a stressful and surreal one. We are new faces in a crowd of familiar ones and everybody else's journey through the lockers all revolves around us. We get a real variety of looks. Some of our old friends who think we've moved schools look at us strangely, as if they can't figure out where they've seen us before. The other nerds just look at us trying to be cool. Is isn't working out for them. The jocks look at us if we're either potential members for the AFL team or potential threats which I have to admit feels good. What feels even better though is the stares of the girls in the room. I think our transformations have been successful and I instantly regret ever doubting my beyond brilliant plan. Among the jocks is Scotty and he walks towards us for the second time today.
“Hey,”he says with a smile, “Do you guys play ball?”I have to admit, any physical activity for used to end up with asthma attacks and us just lying on the floor, but since I started working out I've definitely gotten fitter.
“Yeah a bit,”Jem says in a non-committed kind of way and I nod to agree with him. Michael Newton, the captain of the team joins into the conversation.
“Well you definitely have the body for it!”He exclaims to us. We laugh a little to stop the situation from becoming awkward and thank God, he continues to speak. “If you don't play footy, what other sport do you play?”I know that Jeremy has played cricket since he was five and I expect him to tell them, but when I look at him he's kind of in shock.
“Jem's been playing cricket ever since he was born pretty much, but I don't play sport. I stick to the gym.”This is all true, and I'm relieved that I probably don't need to lie again fort the rest of the day. Jeremy has finally snapped back into reality. I give him a look of concern and he just smiles and nods. He's ok. Precisely as Michael gives as a nod of acceptance, the bell rings. They acknowledge us a goodbye and we check our timetables. We're going to be late on our first day. We still need to find our locker and put our stuff in there before we can even think of going to Maths. It takes us way longer than expected to find our lockers as they were on the other side of the locker room. Mrs. Victor must be a new teacher because neither of us had heard of her before. All we could pray for was that she was understanding enough to let us off on our very first day of school.
“Excuses like that wont work in this classroom.”Mrs. Victor snaps. She is old. She is wrinkly and she smells of cheap perfume. So much it fills up the entire room and we are both barely able to breathe.
“We're both really sorry”Jem says convincingly, “It's just it's our first day and we got a little lost. We told you the locker part and that's what made us this late.”Awesome. This is like nerdy with a twist of cool. All calm and presentable. I'm proud and the Wicked Witch of the West has melted. She even moves kids around to find room for us to sit next to each other so we'd be 'comfortable' on our very first class. She apologises, gives us the work needed to be done and sits on her desk.
“Yeesh,”I whisper, “how can she be a mother?”and then Jem replies,
“and a grandmother?”We both shudder and then laugh. We are instantly regretting it though when we hear,
“Am I going to regret this decision I've made boys?”The witch has come back to life. We shake our heads, do our work and pass notes all through the double period. It was pretty torturous I have to admit and she was a crappy teacher. Nobody could understand her because she talked too softly – unless you were talking then she was loud enough for the other side of Australia to hear, nobody could work properly because they were trying too hard to breathe from their mouth and not their nose – I never actually realised how hard that is! I mean you just assume you can do it because you breathe every second of every day but I found myself sniffing in the poison numerous times. And most of all nobody could fully concentrate because there was new meat in the room. Or in other words, we were in the room. A few girls were smiling at us while the boys sitting next to them glared and for the first time that day I felt in danger. Not like someone was going to pull a knife out on me but I was afraid. I officially felt like 'the new kid'. I'd never been a new kid before. I'd been at this school my whole life. I look at Jeremy and his expression mirrors mine. We had assumed that because we were so familiar with this school, we'd we comfortable. We had never thought of how we'd still be the new kids even with our new looks. We had assumed we'd be instantly accepted. I guess that's what happens when you have two months of school holidays. You tend to forget how cliquey high school is. It's really just like the movies.
