The Silent Deceivers

Chapter 11

Bridgewater Secondary

 

It was my first day back at school after the death of my parents. Since I had been at Oakley for two weeks they thought it would be best to get me out of the house and because i was now at Oakley I had been enrolled at Bridgewater Secondary School. I had started three weeks before the end of the summer term so that I could adjust to the change. It was extremely difficult. I was the new kid again. Everybody was staring at me and avoiding me but that was fine because I was avoiding them. There was no Abby, no Grace. I was entirely alone in an unfamiliar place. Everybody was avoiding me except David. He was constantly waving at me and talking to me in the corridor. I think he wanted a friend, someone to prove Aden and his gang wrong but I couldn’t be that friend. Not at that moment. I didn’t have the power to keep someone else afloat when I was struggling to keep myself from drowning. He was being a great friend and that was great to know but the last thing I wanted was rumours to start, I really didn’t need that. I tried to distance myself from him as much as possible at school but outside school we would be fine. We would text and Skype, if I had the energy to respond. Everything was becoming so much effort.

That first day my mind was all over the place. I would choose the seat by the window and just stare into the outside word. Thoughts racing. The hum of the tapes and the voices of the teachers where just background noise to the whispers that were circling the classroom. I lifted my eyes from the outside world and turned to my new peers. As I turned the eyes staring at me darted away and the whispering ceased. I smiled, I expected all of this. I turned back to the window and as I did the whispering commenced again. I didn’t care. They knew nothing about me or my life. Absolutely nothing.

Let them. Let them.

I got a few hellos but other than that I was left entirely alone. What no-body realized is that they gave me exactly what I wanted….. nothing. No sympathy, no attention, absolutely nothing. In a way I was happy because I could let my thoughts fly free without being interrupted. I wasn’t exactly helping myself fit in was I?

It carried on in that manner for the first few days and then I finally began to relax. People began to give me a chance and include me in conversations. I gained courage after I began to talk to Hannah; she sat next to me in maths and we were partners in a biology experiment. She was an aspiring journalist like me. She brought me out of my shell and I would consider her my friend but we weren’t going to become besties. I don’t know why. The voice in my head was telling me “No. Just no. Don’t trust her.”  I was making progress. I held conversations with Hannah and other students when they asked about me and my interests.

 I tried so hard to put on a happy front but I wasn’t in a good place I was still drowning in a sea of grief. I was amazed at how I was hiding it so well. I’d never been able to bottle up my emotions before. I thought nobody could tell what I was going through, but I was wrong. I was hiding in the girl’s bathroom one Thursday skipping PE and in the middle of resisting the urge to cut myself when Roxy walked in. You remember Roxy right? The twelve year old girl who is actually fifteen. The girl who is a member of Aden’s gang. The gang that bullies David. I had tried to remain as far away from all of the gang members but Roxy was in all of my classes and as you know she sometimes lives at Oakley Care Home so it had been extremely difficult. At Oakley she hadn’t spoken to me since she had made it clear that she didn’t want me there but at school she had begun to act friendly towards me and even smiled at me when we passed in the corridor. It was seriously creeping me out. She stopped dead in the doorway as the pair of scissors I was holding clattered to the floor. I stood there in shock before I quickly blurted out “It wasn’t what it looked like. Swear it.”