Front Line

Front Line - Chapter 13 - Year 11

Front Line

Chapter Thirteen – Year 11

  No one looked forward to going back to school anymore, it was more of an annual ritual to have a good summer and the day before going back, regret where you’re going to. At the time I felt it was just me who felt that way, of course I only stuck to my few friends so I didn’t know enough people to know how they felt. But from what my small gaggle told me, they felt the same. The only upside of going back to what I now called hell, was that I got to see my friends that I only saw a few times during summer.

  I was most excited in seeing my best friend, Kaci, I forgot to mention her previously. We had been on and off friends because I was more attached to the small group but I flitted back from them to her and her friend Kim. I only got to see her once maybe twice, her mother was rather strict and controlling in what her daughter did. I liked her mum don’t get me wrong, it’s just she was more smothering than I thought my mother was.

  On the day of the first day of term, the first person I met at the gates was my close friend David, he looked different now that he joined me in in the ‘Grey brigade’, just meaning that he was now in the grey jumper I had been in for a whole year previously. We walked into the area known as ‘Student Support’, a place where kids that were either shunned by society or had a disability of some sort, used to gather so that they had people like them and people like me and David who weren’t afraid to be around them.

  Kaci came in with Kim, they were pretty much inseparable despite me and Kaci being the ones who were best mates, I think Kaci now considered Kim her best mate as well as me but me being ignorant as I was didn’t see that. More like I refused to. I chatted with her for a bit before the bell went for morning registration, I always walked with my other friend who was in the same block as me as her tutor group was now in the same building as mine, a classroom next to me, which was very handy.

  My class had moved rooms as my teacher had been made head of Maths so naturally she got upgraded to a bigger room, the guy I had spent a whole year crushing on was still in my class and much to my luck he only sat a couple rows behind me. He sat with a girl I had though he liked but she was only his friend, thank God. I still sat next to Fay at the front of the room, so he could hopefully look at me as well as we could easily get out without being caught up in the rush from the class behind us.

  This year brought in new schemes the headmaster thought would be useful, such as ‘mentoring’, a teacher would be assigned to multiple students to monitor their progress and mentor them if they need help. I wasn’t overly fond of my tutor, she was my tutor, maths teacher and most unfortunately for me she was now my mentor. She was so full of herself, now that she was head of Maths it made that even worse, I certainly wasn’t going to let her ego get in the way of my education to make her look good.

  Everything was pretty much stayed the same as last year, seen as it was a two year GCSE experience, same classrooms, same teachers. On one particular day Kirsten and I had IT class together, we devised a plan to have a bit of fun with the guy I had been crushing on, as Kirsten was actually his friend the plan seemed fool proof. We made a Facebook account with a fake name, and we added a few people, including Jamie, the guy I crushed on. We planned to ask him questions and mess around with him, only for a bit of fun, Kirsten then asked me after this first time of doing it for me to carry it on alone. I said yes as I still wanted to see how it went, so that’s what I did.

  One day not long after creating this account, I then decided to ask him what he thought about this girl ‘Layla’ knew. I wanted to know what he thought about me without me asking him myself, it didn’t end well. I asked him outright what he thought of me, he said that I was annoying. That was enough to set my waterworks off, all I had been told about myself from others was nothing but bad or negative, nothing good. After finishing crying, I remember asking him why and after that he caught on. He guessed it was me, I didn’t think it through enough. I deleted the profile, then dreading the next time I had to go into class.

  That day sadly came soon enough, I walked in and he was already there with his friend Sarah and my tutor, thinking that there was something wrong with me, asked what was wrong. At that point I was mad at Jamie for toying with me, missing the fact that it was me who shouldn’t have done what I did, I was mad at him for letting me carry on with it for so long. I remember having a major go at Jamie as I walked to my seat, my tutor speechless at my outburst, after that moment of me losing my cool, I never spoke of it to anyone. It took a lot of willpower for me to carry on but that’s just what I did.

  Sadly, several things this year went wrong for me. The fiasco with Jamie happened not long before Christmas, then after coming back in January the following year a major argument with David over the app KIK caused us to not talk or be friends for at least the next three months. I spent my time alone and wandering around, Kaci was spending more and more time away from me with Kim and things were heading for disaster.

 After a successful exam season, passing my GCSE final grades with flying colours, came summer. Now, normally summer heralded a run of back-to-back memorable events you’ll never forget, it did just that for me, except they were memorable for all the wrong reasons. Kaci knew that I wanted to learn how to play the electric guitar, so she said I could have the one she didn’t want, for free. My parents collected it and after a few weeks of talking back and forth on MSN and Facebook, her mother messaged me as I wanted to go see a movie with Kaci, saying that she couldn’t always go off to the movies and that she had more important things to do. Adding to that with the DVD I gave to Kaci as a gift was not necessary and that the gift Kaci gave me, the guitar, was worth more than the DVD so she wanted it back.

  First of all, Kaci gave me that guitar not as a gift back for my getting her the DVD, I gave her that DVD because I wanted to, not to get something back. Second, her mum was speaking for her, probably telling Kaci lies so that she’ll believe her mother in this matter instead of the person actually involved, me. Then to top it all off, her mother told me that I asked Kaci for the money for the DVD when I didn’t, I’m guessing either that was made up by her or Kaci said it herself, either way that and her mother told me to only remain friend with her in school. So not only did I have to give her back the guitar, I was blocked on Facebook and her mother ruined my summer and mine and Kaci’s friendship. I was not looking forward to the start of Year 12 the following September.