The Fifth Academy - Fantasy Direction / #Wattys2018

Anew (by Anny)

The rain, drizzling and nasty, has been pouring all night. Everything around was wet and sparkling: cars, roads, low two-stored brick buildings, cats and even the birds. Don't ask me about this place. I know neither its name nor location, just some dull unremarkable little suburb area with alike houses, one main square and a few shops.

Teenagers lazily come in groups to the main entrance of the only local middle school, a new three-story building with pretty well-maintained flowerbeds and freshly coloured low hedgerow.

It was September, the first day after the weekend. No one wanted to sit in the stuffy classroom and listen to the long lectures. A cup of hot tea and nice sleep till it stops raining was everyone's dream.

The teenagers, especially the girls, gathered into groups or in pairs, complaining loudly about the weather, spoiled makeup and unruly wet hair. The boys were chatting loudly about a recent football match, and from time to time, the splashing, giggling girls with the fresh water-droplets from their umbrellas. The town was small and all kids knew each other's names, favourite desserts and movies since childhood. No strangers, no new faces in the classrooms. But today was different...

One slender uncertain figure was approaching the school gate very slowly and shyly. Ann Jonson, very plain, dark-haired girl with big ugly glasses and wide green umbrella. She would be the only new student today and would go through the same routine for the nineteenth time. First, name, hobby then at the end some lie about where she had come from. And oh, that was, of course, me.

Wide bright classrooms and long lections were almost the same in every school, but teachers and students were always different. My life was starting anew, like a new clean sheet of notebook paper. Welcome loneliness and a strange unfamiliar world. I got used to not getting attached to people or places. Parting with both didn't hurt me anymore.

Have you ever had the feeling that you are different and not at all from this world? This place? This time even? That all your moods, actions and words are only a strange mask, which keeps you hidden from this common and boring reality? I have been living with this creepy suspicion for sixteen years. So this usual rainy day promised to be as dull and grey as any other murky day. But suddenly, there was a change in how the wind was blowing and it was unusually strong.

Although, one thing was totally out of place and didn't fit in the dull grey landscape, new bright-yellow advertising banner that hung over the gates of the school and silently shouted with huge red letters "Welcome the finalists of the international music competition VOICE SOLE XI!"

It had no meaning for me, my ears were trampled by bears, and I had no ear for music at all. No talent, nothing special, I was just the most average of all average girls in the world. But the signboard was written in English. That means it's the official language here and everybody would speak it, meaning that I also had to.

"Hey kid, what's that stick? Or a pipe?" cried a tall, chubby teenager with brown untidy hair, he clenched in his hands something dark thin and elongated, "Look, guys! This is a pipe! A tobacco pipe! Have you been smoking on school grounds, greener? Huh?" The appreciative audience laughed and cheered loudly.

"What?" I whispered nervously. "Greener? Newbie? Oh, no! Does that name get used on every newcomer?"

The husky-guy continued teasing a thin, short boy with rather long silver hair that almost reached his slender shoulders. The unlucky fellow wore old battered clothes, which were slightly big for him. No doubt, he had come from a very poor family or maybe even from some local orphanage.

"Hold on, Teddy!" said another masculine voice, high and somehow powerful. "Give me that silly toy!" It was a tall slender boy with cold blue-grey eyes and tidy ink-black hair. His fancy, dark-metallic, very expensive looking suit yelled 'rich and powerful parents'. This boy was as handsome as he was calculated and cruel. Beside him stood a girl with alike grey eyes, but more blue and careless. She made a face and almost dropped a huge white umbrella; it didn't seem very easy to hold it all the time. But the beauty stubbornly held it anyway because of the large inscription "The international music competition VOICE SOLE XI". She was probably one of several finalists, who studied at this school.