Touch the Sky

Parent Pressure

My alarm sounded through my ears and I woke up immediately, eager to get ready for the day. It was my first official day at Saint Helena Academy!

I had given myself thirty minutes to get ready, since I didn't want to be late, so it was seven thirty when I got out of bed.

'Turn that thing off,' I heard Cheryl grumble from the other side of the room, so I turned off my alarm.

Walking over to my wardrobe, I grabbed my school uniform. It was a burgundy red colour, with a plaid skirt and a blazer that would be way too big on me (my dad had convinced me that I would 'grow into it').

Once I was changed, I brushed my teeth and my hair, throwing it up into a pony tail with little pieces of hair either side of my face.

I naturally had quite curly hair, so it always looked messy no matter what I did with it.

Checking the clock, I realised that it was only ten minutes until lessons started, and Cheryl still wasn't up. However, I didn't want to wake her because I knew she'd be mad at me, so I just sat on my bed and read Stephen King's book 'Misery' for the umpteenth time.

A few minutes later, Cheryl's alarm went off. It was seven fifty five, and class started at eight. She immediately jumped out of bed and got dressed at a record speed. She then brushed her teeth and grabbed her hair brush and headed out of the door, and I followed her.

'You cut that a bit close, didn't you?' I asked. It was now two minutes until class started.

'I've been doing this long enough to know that I need exactly three minutes to get ready,' she told me, still doing up her tie.

I shrugged it off and speed walked to my first lesson of the day: maths.

We arrived in the nick of time. There were two seats on the far side of the big room, so we sat there, Cheryl was next to the window and I was on the inside.

'Hello, my name is Doctor Adams,' a younger man said from the front of the classroom. I guessed that he was about twenty five.

Maths was never my favourite subject, so my mind began to drift. However, it was soon brought back by the teacher, when he actually started talking about something other than English.

'I was born and raised in South Africa,' he told us, as he glanced over to the South African flag that he'd hung up on the wall, 'and when I turned eighteen, I decided to come and study in America.'

I was always interested in people who were born in foreign countries. They seemed to have many stories to tell.

The rest of the lesson whizzed by, there wasn't too much maths involved, or so Doctor Adams made it seem. I'd never understood it until that lesson, when everything we learnt about seemed to click into place, like when you finally find a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

By the time maths was over, it was the start of homeroom, so Cheryl and I headed to the back of the school where our homeroom was.

Mrs Houston (the teacher who I saw when I first arrived and I couldn't quite describe), was the homeroom teacher for rooms one E to five E.

There were about fifteen people in our homeroom, since some rooms had two people and some had three. Betty and Veronica were the only people I knew in there, so Cheryl and I sat down on the same row as them.

After thirty long minutes, homeroom was over. I had a feeling that that would be my least favourite part of the day. I really didn't like Mrs Houston.

Cheryl and I had a free period next, so we went to see her horse. For the most part, we had the same timetable, so I was happy to have someone I knew in most of my classes.
'I have a private riding lesson now, do you want to come and watch?' She asked me as we walked outside and began heading down the gravel pathway.