Letting Reality Begin

Chapter Eight - Never Trust The Forecast

“Your grades have to improve by Christmas, Danielle – otherwise, I’m afraid to say, your scholarship will be withdrawn. This is the last chance you get. Do you understand?”

Danielle’s grip on the arms of the chair tightened as she gave a weak, small nod. “Yes, Miss. I understand,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She had thought that her first day back to school had been bad after she had spent the whole day with a crowd of conceited Year Sevens. Now it was her second day in school and this was definitely worse. School hadn’t even started yet.

“I’m glad we’ve come to an understanding. You’ve got a lot of potential, Danielle, but at the moment your results are showing it,” said Mrs Pollard, the head of sixth form. She tapped her fingers on the grand oak desk as she inspected Danielle’s distraught expression. “Now run along. I’ve got things to do.”

Danielle silently grabbed her bag and headed out of the office, glad to be away from Mrs Pollard. She breathed deeply, trying to hold back the tears that were now threatening in her eyes. She couldn’t believe it. The school was threatening to withdraw her scholarship. That meant that she would be leaving Heather Franklin for good this time and she’d have find another sixth form to continue her A-Levels.

As much as she hated Heather Franklin for various reasons, she loved it too. She had spent her whole high school life here and she couldn’t imagine life without the damn school. The education was way better than any she could find elsewhere and her friends were here. She needed this scholarship.

Before her GCSEs everything had been fine. Better than fine even. She hadn’t been on scholarship because her family could afford the tuition fees. It was shortly after her GCSEs that everything started to go wrong and her family could no long pay for her schooling after she finished Year Eleven. After long negotiations, the school offered to fund half of her schooling so that she could carry on into sixth form, but only because she had almost aced her GCSEs.

But when she entered Lower Sixth, everything that had happened during her GCSEs started to catch up with. She had blocked everything out to concentrate on her exams, but she couldn’t stop the flood of memories coming back. And as a result of that, her perfects grades started to slip from A Stars to As. Anywhere else, As would’ve been perfectly acceptable – great, in fact – but this was Heather Franklin. Heather Franklin only wanted the best and As weren’t good enough. She had known it was going to happen all along – having her scholarship withdrawn – but she didn’t think it would happen so soon.

She walked down the empty corridors of the sixth form block, keeping her head down. Was it too much to ask to up her grades? Maybe she should just go back and tell Mrs Pollard to withdraw her scholarship already. It would save the hassle of transferring schools during the middle of the year.

When she arrived at her form room, she was ten minutes early. She was surprised to find that Misty, Hayley and Scarlette were already there, sitting on the tables. “Hey Dani” greeted Misty, as Danielle sat down in a seat besides her. Seats were much more comfortable than tables. After all, seats were actually made for people to sit on them. “Where were you? We were waiting for you in the common room.”

“Oh sorry. I had to go see a teacher about something,” explained Danielle, vaguely. At least she wasn’t completely lying. “I didn’t realize you were waiting for me.”

“It’s alright,” said Misty. She looked at Danielle with sympathy and concern. “Are you alright? You’ve seemed different since we came back to school.”

Danielle shrugged, avoiding her gaze. “I’m fine, Mist. Maybe it’s just because I haven’t seen you much this year. I’ve been sort of busy.”