Natasha`s move back from Connecticut to England had not been an easy one. Now she´s
being challenged to make friends in her new school. Can she let go of
her troubled past and really ever feel safe with others? A short teen
fiction story set in 1980`s where cassette tapes were the norm and
liking or friend-ing were more tricky than just hitting an icon. Natasha looked around the small hall draped with orange, brown and cream seventies style curtains. Everyone had been asked to find a place to sit on the floor, in lines. Being in her normal school day defense mode, she looked around the crowded hall with beady eagle eyes. Her previous school had been a day in day out battle. Little girl cat fights that seemed to border on gang-like behaviour. Get tough or get beaten seemed to be the motto. Natasha spotted a auburn haired girl with a sensible hair cut and skin as pale as snow. Confidently Natasha strode up to the timid girl, but just as she was about to plonk herself down and start introducing herself loudly, an extremely tall girl with blonde, frizzy hair, spots and already wearing a bra, sat herself down cross-legged on the floor and started chatting. Natasha cowered away, yet still close enough to listen in to their conversation.
"I think they are putting us into classes" the giant girl whispered secretly.
"Great" Natasha thought. "How am I supposed to be the boss with this giant around."
It
wasn't easy for Natasha to think outside this survival mode. Having
entered primary school late due to living in Connecticut, everything had
been just perfect before landing in what she saw as a mini hell. In
Connecticut at school, there had been apples, peanut butter and celery
every snack time. She would play in the forest round the back of her
house with her best friend Joy and enjoy pool parties with her big
brother and friends late into September. Arriving back to England
seemed like some kind of prolonged prison sentence where a damp air of
disappointment seemed to linger on. So much so, that Natasha had made
up a story that on her 9th birthday she would wake up find the nightmare
of coming back to England was just that, only a dream. She would be
back at in Connecticut running free through forest, eating Reeces Pieces
at snack time and playing with Joy. No such luck. Her 9th birthday
came and went and she was still in damp England. Things had changed
though. That summer they had finally moved house what had seemed like
far away from that horrid little school where Natasha always found
herself either in fights or cliques that were suffocating. In fact they
had just moved 7 miles away, but was enough for Natasha to feel a sense
of relief that summer that the very thing that had been chasing her,
had decided take a summer vacation, leaving her to enjoy a new bedroom,
full of books, cushions and sunlight. After playing endlessly with her
cat in the garden, climbing the tree with a rope ladder and helping her parents take
things of of hundreds of boxes, Natasha would fall asleep to the sound
of Lord of the Rings playing on a cassette tape in her adjacent brother's
room. The rough, concrete playgrounds of school seemed a million miles
away, until September. The familiar smells of floor polish and feeling
the cotton grey skirt against her skin, Natasha felt herself putting up
her shield once more and feeling determined not be the victim again.
"I
think they´re putting us in the same class. " The giant whispered
loudly to her auburn friend. "I asked them to. I told them we had spent
the whole past five years in the last school together."
"Wonderful.
Sisterly solidarity." Natasha thought apprehensively "The giant's
probably going to corner me at the earliest opportunity. I better make
friends with them, before it's too late".
Natasha sat herself down next to the girl with snow white skin, reached
her arm over her and held out a sweaty hand to the giant girl. "I´m
Natasha. You can call me Tasha. But not Natty, or Nat" She paused to
see the giant frowning back at her. "Or keep it as Natasha if you like"
She found her voice quivering a bit as she flashed a nervous smile in
the giants disgruntled direction.
"Hello" The giant girl
answered indifferently and continued chatting intimately until the
teachers boomed our names and class numbers.
After putting away
her outdoor shoes, she looked around at the desks arranged two by two.
The giant and auburn girl had already snuggled next to each other and
there was only one space left next to a slight brown, haired girl
staring at her pencil case.
"I suppose I better make my home next
to plain Jane" Natasha thought feeling more alone than when she had
arrived back from America.
As a tanned, young teacher with strong
but kind features took us through the school rules and the first reading
dictation. Natasha tried to focus but kept crossing out her words as
they hit the page. Her neighbour, with long brown hair as straight as a
pole, silently pushed an eraser next to her and gently touched her arm
that was shielding her work. Natasha swung her head round hastily, to
see so called 'plain Jane' gently smiling back at her. Suddenly Natasha
noticed her brightly coloured top and olive skin.
Two weeks
later Emma had given her the eraser and in return Natasha had given her a
pen from New York with the big apple embossed upon it. Emma wrote with it
everyday and the jagged edges of Natasha's primary school could only be
seen behind her in the distance as if she was sat in the back seat of
her family´s car driving away to a destination beyond harm's reach.
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