A Girl Called Whisper

One

The rabid screeching of my rooster-imitation phone alarm blasts through my ears and I suffer what I imagine is the equivalent of a mild heart attack. I hit snooze clumsily and pull the covers up over my head with a groan.

Mondays are the worst.

Getting up early is the worst.

It's one of my least favourite activities. On the scale of Activities-Cooper-Least-Enjoys-Partaking-In, waking up early comes somewhere between mixed-gender PE classes and holding in a dump you really need to take because you're somewhere inappropriate.

I wish I was a vampire, so I didn't have to sleep. I know vampires aren't real, but for the sake of poetic license, hear me out. I know everybody loves the feeling you get when you slip into your 'warm and inviting' bed at night. You supposedly relax, sigh with relief that the long day is over and fall into a deep and comforting sleep. Well, not me. When I go to bed my head tends to spin around in cycles and ideas and I get stressed out even more than usual because I have nothing else to focus on. It starts small, like thinking about whether something I said earlier sounded stupid, and then it quickly spirals out of control until my gut's clenching and I'm thinking about something dumb I think I remember saying in 2006. It always feels like the silence is screaming at me.

Then I wake up in the morning, sweaty, tired and unrested, faced with another long and crappy day that I'll probably stress about the next night.

I would happily never sleep again if I never had to wake again either. I suppose that's a paradox.

Eventually, Mum bursts into my room.

"Cooper? For goodness sakes, Cooper. Get out of that damn bed and sort yourself out. You'll miss the bus!" Her voice is a cross between a foghorn and a screaming cat. I wince.

She bats at the duvet as though trying to wack me out of the bed and then she scuttles back out again, muttering under her breath. With a sigh, I get out of bed and start to get ready.

I always know to start getting ready when Mum comes to yell at me. This is because she generally waits until approximately 8.20am before coming to wake me up herself, fuelled by the fear that she will miss the start of The Morning Show to drive me into school if I miss the bus.

By 8.20am I have twenty minutes to get showered, dressed, and eat my breakfast before having to leave for the bus. I can shower in five, dress in ten and eat in five. I have perfected the routine down to the last second.

I like to invest a little more time into dressing because it takes me longer to plan my outfit. I like to concentrate when deciding what to wear because I feel better during the day if I know I'm 'fitting in.'

There are three types of kids at my school who get the most shit: the ones who are socially inept, the ones who look socially inept, and the ones who are both.

I have accepted the fact that I struggle more than most people in social situations. Probably because I like to avoid them altogether. I have an extensive vocabulary (which I do try to dumb down in all fairness,) and an unaccommodating distrust of my fellow classmates. These personality factors make me a tasty target for bullying; a juicy young deer thrown amidst a ravenous pack of well-dressed and poorly-spoken wolves.

Dressing to blend in and avoid attracting unwanted attention makes me feel more at ease. It seems to work, too.

It's a pretty simple algorithm really: I take into account what seems to be trending, make sure I'm wearing it, and keep myself to my damn self. The current 'cool trend' are these mini backpacks from the sports store in town. They look ridiculous and aren't even large enough to be practical for school, but everyone else was getting them, so I got one too. And I saw a kid with a briefcase-style book bag getting food thrown at him yesterday in the canteen, so it just goes to show really. (I have, of course, taken into account that there are a plethora of reasons that John Everist may have been the target of the food-throwing, his bag being only one potential motive. However, all things considered, who am I to take my chances and own a sensible school bag? Rather him than me; it's a dog-eat-dog world out there.)