Six Feet Under The Stars // ON HIATUS

1. Starting Day

No-one ask me, no-one even think asking me why I had decided to start a new college for my last year: the year where I turned, the year before I went to university.

It was a warm September morning, the third I think. I was looking down at the cracks in the pavement and the orange leaves as I dragged my feet along to the big building that I was soon going to have to call 'my school', 'my college', 'my sixth form'. None of them sounded any better than the last. I had always been bad at first days, and I thought about how everyone would know each other already and I'd have to meld in awkardly. I wanted to be sick.

I looked at my feet encased in the navy blue converses I had decided to wear. I could only make one first impression, and I was concerned about this. One first impression. I was wearing skinny jeans that were slightly rolled up at the bottom because they were too long and a checked button up red shirt. Around my neck were headphones, in case I needed to escape an awkward situation by listening to music.

Forward thinking. I wrongly prided myself on that, because I was exhausted from having stayed up the last night to finish off a film marathon (why?). My hair I had washed that morning, and it was swept up in a ponytail. I nearly always wore my hair down, but not today. My seventeen year old brain was convinced that I would be instantly more popular if it was up. I don't know why. My blue backpack was slung over one shoulder, never both.

I could see the school building now, the red brick almost glowing in the light. It looked so much happier than it should, I thought. Counting my footsteps. Oh hell. I only did this when I was scared. No, stop it. Stop it stop it stop it.

I finally took the steps into the gates and walked across the courtyard. I knew I had English first period, my timetable had been emailed to me a couple of days before. The English block, or the block where I had English was apparently Block 2. I looked at the building closer, seeing it split up. Block 2 - it was labelled. I walked in, signed in and went down a few corridors to the room I was timetabled to be in.

Five minutes early. I was always early, and even though five minutes wasn't a big deal it annoyed me slightly. I peeked through the window in the door. There was a girl stting there, chewing her pen. She looked OK.

I pushed the door open. She immediately looked up at me from the pad of lined paper. "Hi," she flicked her eyes up and looked back down at her work immediately. "You've done the summer assignment, right?"

"Yup," I said quickly, "Can I sit here?" I motioned to the chair next to her.

"Sure. But I've got five minutes to plan and write this 2000 word essay," she scribbled something down on her paper. I sat silently and awkwardly for about a minute until she slammed her pen down. "I'm not doing this," she said, "I'll make up some excuse." She seemed completely relaxed around me.

"So you're new here?" she asked. "Oh, and I'm Badge by the way. Don't laugh."

"I wasn't going to," I smiled at her. "I'm Clara."

"Clara," she repeated. "I don't have any friends that do this class," she said, as in way of making coversation. I nodded: "OK."

"So what are you doing subject-wise?" she asked, fixing her inquisitive brown eyes on me.

"English, History and R.S," I said. She let out a long stream of air from her mouth. "Whoah, lots of essays then. I'm doing English, Art and Maths."

"Good subjects,"I said, because there wasn't much more I could have said. Badge looked at me apprehensively: "No they are not. Oh, I better warn you, the R.S. teacher is VERY cute," she grinned mischeivously.

We had only known each other a few minutes but she was already talking to me like we were the best of friends. "Thanks for the heads up," I grinned back at her, feeling I wouldn't need my headphones after all. That thought cheered me.