If you told me this time last year that I would be at a new school, with new friends, and only one friend from my old school, I would have said you were nuts. Absolutely insane. And I think it still hasn’t hit me. It’s like I’m running backwards and I can’t help looking at the past as though it’s still happening, even though my new life is going on around me. The worst part is I can see there’s nothing there for me, and no matter how much I dream I was back in year 8 with all my friends (who now coincidently are the biggest bunch of backstabbers I know) I know in my heart it would just happen again. I’m sitting at the dining table trying to swallow down some toast my mum insisted I should eat. I don’t feel like eating. It feels like I’m trying to stuff cardboard down my throat but I do it anyway because I know mums watching. My stomach is full of dread. I never used to have a stomach full of dread before I went to school. I used to be energetic and ready to get to school and gossip with my friends about what we did last night or who we talked to on the bus this morning or fight with my maths teacher about the answers to the questions or get inspired by my wacky English teacher. Or go and sit with the boys and watch them trying to impress us with there wrestling moves. But I have to stop myself thinking those thoughts. That time is behind me. So I get into the car and sigh and pledge to myself to forget the past.  My pledge didn’t work. We had to drop my brother off at my old school where he is school captain this year. How I desperately wanted to go out with him but I knew as soon as I did I would want to come back in. So I waved him goodbye and before I knew it I was at my new school. It’s weird that no matter how many people are at a school they can always pick a new kid a mile away. I think it’s just that look you have, and it doesn’t matter how hard you try to not have it, to fit in with everyone else’s styles and smiling faces, you still have it. It’s like a new book. There may be a second hand book that looks exactly like it, has the same display on the front and everything, but it still has and old sort of feel.  Anyway, after going to office and being mistaken for a year 7 about a million times I went to the gym where I was told the year nines where supposed to go. And I nearly had a heart attack. The year nines alone almost equalled the whole of my old school. I was starting to feel dizzy. There were just too many people. Everywhere you looked, there were people. They looked different too. The girls all seemed to have that perfect hair that you see in magazines and on shows like the OC and the boys just seemed taller and older then the ones at my old school. I feel out of place. I don’t want to be here. I want to go back home and give my mum a hug and cry my feelings out till I don’t have to feel anymore. But most of all…I want to go back. I sat myself down onto the floor next to a group of the most normal looking girls there. By normal I mean did not have superwomen hairdo’s or makeup as think as a soap opera star. I felt like the whole world was looking at me and I was starting to feel very uncomfortable with the attention. What were they thinking? What were they saying? I didn’t know. Mum says I am negative and always think the worst. ‘Everything is going to be fine. Trust me. Be positive,’ she’d tell me reading my thoughts as always.  ‘I am being positive,’ I’d always reply in frustration. It upset me because I didn’t want to upset my mum by not making a million friends and loving the school on the first day.  The teachers started calling out classes and where they had to go. When my name was called I got up and found that the normal girls were getting up too. They smiled at me and I smiled back. I guess they were trying to suss me out, but then again, I was doing the same.  ‘You’re new aren’t you?’ asked one of the normal girls. Stupid question, don’t you think? But there was no way I was going to say so. God knows how they’d react. ‘Yeah’  ‘Want to sit with us?’ Oh my god, oh my god. This was what I wanted. This was my chance, and I wasn’t going to let it slip through my fingers.  ‘Sure,’ I said, and followed the out of the gym. ———————————————————————————————————

Two weeks have passed since my first awkward day. And I’m not going to lie to you, I did cry when I got home. But it wasn’t depressed or sad tears. They were confused emotion tears, with awkwardness and weirdness and relief and insure and sure all rolled into one. I must admit I still have a that feeling in my stomach before each school day, but it’s not nearly as bad  I think it’s just because I’m still learning so much and I have no idea what each day will bring. I’m still hanging around the ‘normal girls,’ otherwise known as Rebecca, Danielle and Lucy and they seem nice enough. I don’t know if we’ll ever be as close as my old friends were, but then again, they might be even better. I’m just trying to make it one day at a time and I think that if I keep on doing that, I might actually get used to this place. But I guess only time will tell. I’m not going to give up without a fight.