Front Line

Front Line - Chapter 9 - Year 7

Front Line

Chapter 9 – Year 7

   Before this year even began, seen as it was a whole new environment and route to the new environment, we decided in the summertime around a week before to plan the quickest route what with my brother still being in primary school. It wasn’t all that far away from my primary school or my home, so I knew the way home now if I ever had to walk back should I chose to. The school I was now about to attend was allocated right on top of a steep road in a tightly-packed rural area, nestled between fields and houses it both looked out of place and in sync with the surrounding area.

   My uniform was obviously different for this new school, it was out with the childish anything anyone could afford in sale at George, Asda, and in with the new equally as awful big and baggy jumpers and polo shirts. I looked like someone had picked a ripe cherry tomato, no matter which way you tried to tame the jumper, you still looked like you were carrying some extra baggage with you. Combine that with flair-like black trousers and flat black shoes, I looked like a walking example of what NOT to wear, absolutely awful.

  The first day of this new school felt like it came all too soon, I wished that summer would never end, then again what child didn’t think the same? We were told in a letter to gather on the front lawn outside the reception at 8:30am, there when I was walked into the grounds by my mother, my father waited in the car, I could see a smattering of red jumpers with their parents. It looked like a flock of sheep except for these sheep were red and were about to be thrown to the slaughter not that of a knife, but education. I was more than shy than I was in primary school so I was hesitant to go and talk to anyone, my mother on the other hand encouraged me to go and speak to this girl who was on her own, and I think her name was Beth.

  Beth wasn’t the slimmest girl, but from what I can remember of her she was a nice enough girl. She and I promised to stay together that day, and indeed for as long as possible seen as neither of us had come up into this year with any of our old friends. We sat in the massive hall ready for our induction assembly, back then it was nothing but a degraded wooden-panelled, badly-damaged floored hall where it was used for pretty much everything by the looks of it. I remember feeling that I never wanted to come back, I didn’t like the feeling of the place from day one but being shy I chose not to say anything but to stick it out.

  My friendship with Beth lasted no more than two weeks, a month at best. One day I remember her not turning up at our meeting spot at the pathway between two of the ‘blocks’ as they called the many buildings within the campus. Not long after that day I learned that she had moved to another school, she never even said goodbye to me, her only friend. Now I really was all alone, all the girls in my year hated me and the bullying resumed once more. I would be repeatedly tripped up, slapped, hit, pinched, called names, had my physical appearance degraded and such other things alike. I thought primary school was bad, but nothing prepared me for the brutality of the teenage girl.

  I spent the majority of that first year on break and lunch times walking around the school on my own, exploring places all by myself since I had not a single friend. Some people say they have no friends when they may have a few, just for sympathy and attention, but I literally had NO friends. I had three other people I my year that came up from my primary school but all three were ones that bullied and hated me, so walking around on my own seemed the best way to pass the time. Except for on a Thursday break time before R.E (Religious Education) class where I helped my teacher set out everything for the following lesson, for that at the end of the year at the annual P.R.I.D.E awards, I earned the Pam Hinde award for Endeavour.

  The first year wasn’t all that bad despite my not enjoying it very much, I was a big fan of what used to be the called the P.K.Extra suite, a suite full of computers for the whole school to use. I would sometimes go in there when there was room and play game on King.com, the suite only opened that September when I had joined the school but it was already a very popular place to be. That wasn’t the only place I liked to go, when I was feeling brave enough I would go to the back room of Block 3, the maths block, to a place called Youthbase. That to me seemed like a place for what people would call ‘social rejects’ would go to gain social confidence because they were shunted by their peers or society in general, so me basically.

  Education at this school around the time I joined wasn’t great, I was often an ‘in between’ kid where I could either be in Set 1 (the highest set) or Set 2 or any set with an above or below group, so they often stuck me in random sets or ones too high for my ability. Teachers changed like I change my underwear, one minute I would have a teacher I was comfortable with and the next we would be bombarded with a series of substitutes. No one teacher ever stayed for too long, mostly because back then most kids were little terrors and would bully the teacher into leaving, not that I was one of them I was a ‘goody two-shoes’ type.

  Around the time the end of term came in July, I was more than thankful that it was over. What with the teachers telling my parents at parent’s evenings that they were worried about my being lonely, the bullying, the crap classes and lack of social interaction, summer seemed like paradise more so than it ever did before. I would enjoy this time greatly before having to go back to hell as I would now call it until I would eventually leave.