Divided (Book #1 in the Divided Series)

Chapter 1 - School sucks - Tara POV

(What I imagine Tara's hairstyle to be.)

I stood in front of my locker, watching my year mates swirl around me, performing their back to school greeting, mostly at ear splitting levels. I turned away from it all, stuffing my bag into my locker, before going outside, hoping to escape the noise. It wasn't even properly the start of school yet; the bell hadn't even gone. Couldn't they have waited?

"TARA!" I hear a scream, and brace myself for the impact I know is coming.

My friend Nicola hurls herself towards me, almost knocking me to the ground with her hug.

"Hey Nicola." I manage to get out, as her arms snake around me and do their best to force all the air from my lungs. "Can't breathe here."

"Sorry!" She cries, letting go of me and taking a step back. "How were your holidays?"

"Pretty good." I shrug, "Probably not as good as yours though." I grin at her, "How was Spain?"

"Spain," she breathes, "Was amazing! We went everywhere! It was so exciting, and I got to travel around by myself for a few days, but returning back to the hotel at night, and mum and dad were super cool with it. We even went for dinner in Paris on our way home!" She says, spreading her arms out and spinning around. "I had so much fun. The only bad thing was probably that attack on the Royal Family. It kind of ruined the mood. That's why we went to Paris for a few days before coming home. Paris smells horrible, but I can at least say I've been there!" She ran in to hug me again.

"Did you take lots of photo's like you promised?" I asked, holding her at arm's length to protect my ribs.

"Yes, you photo fanatic." She laughed, "Come over tonight and I'll show them to you."

"Awesome!" We high fived.

While Nicola raced inside to say hello to everyone else, I waited outside for my other two friends to show up, knowing that they would both be running almost late, because they both liked to sleep for as long as possible in the mornings.

When they finally did arrive, Nicola had been inside, and said hello to everyone, she assured me, and had come back outside with me to wait, constantly checking her phone for the time.

"They've got three minutes!" She declared, checking her phone yet again to how fine they were cutting it today. We'd almost made it a ritual.

Despite living four street apart, one of us on each of the four streets, there two, who lived in the closest two streets, were the last ones here, of our little group anyway.

"Here they are." I said, pointing to the walking around the corner to the school gate, watching as Andrea and Katie came around the corner. "With two minutes to spare." I muttered, checking my own phone.

"Hey guys." Andrea said, drawing level with us and walking with us into the school grounds properly. "How were the holiday's?"

"Amazing!" Nicola squealed, "We went to Spain, and travelled around there, and to Paris!" She kept going as Andrea and I traded eye rolls, and Katie tried not to laugh. Out of the three of us, Nicola was the outgoing one. I was the bookish one, preferring the quiet life inside a library. Andrea was the one into sports, and all Katie ever wanted to do was be a scientist. We somehow managed to get along well together, despite my lack of interest in spots, and hopelessness at anything to do with a science outside of knowledge in Biology, and the other were not that much into books like I was. Katie went for medical journals if anything, with a small part of fiction tossed in there.

When we arrived in the locker bay, the noise level hadn't decreased, despite the fact we were supposed to be heading to assembly. If anything, it had become noisier in here.

I groaned, my friends smirking at me as I did. They knew I hated the first few days back at school, simply because they were always so noisy. They seemed to revel in my discomfort, much to my disgust, so I simply ignored them as well as everyone else, while I waited for them to put their things in their lockers, and heading towards the oval for assembly.

While we didn't have a huge number of students at our school, we also didn't have a room big enough to hold everyone at once, either. So, assemblies were often held on the oval, with the students trying not to get grass stains all over their uniforms when we sat down.

Being in year ten now, we had moved up a spot on the grass, and my friends and I hurried to get a good seat, somewhere towards the edge of the crowd that was following us, so we could be the first ones to leave. It didn't look like it was going to rain today, but we had been caught out before, and wanted to be at the edge of the crowd to avoid the rush if it suddenly started to rain during the speeches, that we were sure were coming, and even just to avoid the rush when everyone started heading towards our assigned homerooms, which we were about to find out.