A young girl, barely three months new in a fourteen-year-old’s world stood at the end of her laneway, backpack shouldered, waiting to start her first day as a high school student. Her just below shoulder length brown hair blew in the soft breeze as her bright eyes shone with determination. Bring it on, they seemed to mutter, I can handle anything you dish out! I’m not the little girl I used to be! In this life I will triumph!

Smiling happily she boarded the large bus and took a seat second from the front on the right so that she could watch her farmhouse disappear from view.

Yeah, you just watch me world! My name is Emiline and I’m on a mission!

The school was large, two stories but with lots of windows. Emiline followed the direction most were heading and watched the students already familiar with Middle County Collegiate High School spray ‘9’ on the new comer’s cheeks and foreheads. Trying out her invisibility defence she managed to slip by without being noticed until she was just outside the doors. Obediently allowing them to mark her as a freshman she continued into the brightly lit school; an improvement from the dreary weather outside. Unsure exactly where to go she turned down the corridor to the left trying desperately to slow the rapid beating of her heart and calm the clenching in her stomach.

Come on girl, don’t get uptight, it’s going to be fine!

Peering at the classroom numbers she came to her homeroom, French 201. Entering through the metal door her mind ran over the turn of her luck, having all her most loathed subjects first semester. Talk about a welcoming to next chapter of my life! Coming to the same conclusion she did every time she choose a seat in a new classroom she seated herself in the back row closest to the windows. You were never cornered or that often asked to answer questions not to mention the fact that when times got boring or tough you could gaze out the through the glass and remember that there was something to look forward to.

Rummaging quietly in her bag she pulled the binder she intended to use for this class out and set it on her desk along with pencil case a friend of her mom had given them. Yah, she was set! Now to strike out and talk to someone!

Nah ha, Emiline thought, a smile tugging on the corners of her mouth, who will be my first victim?

Glancing over to her left she saw a girl with blond hair taking the desk in the row beside her. Pretty would have been the word for her. With blue eye shadow that brought out the blue-grey of her irises and her black turtle neck which pronounced her bust and dark blue jeans with three inch high shoes she was a little intimidating to the causal Emiline who felt very formal in her blue T-shirt and black pants, not a speck of makeup on her. The girl’s expression was one of deep determination and her eyes were firm. Perhaps she was as nervous as Emiline but she sure hid it well!

Well, here goes nothing… Emiline leaned forward and gathered her voice as she opened her mouth to speak.

“Hi,” the first word was a bit of a croak but audible, “my name is Emiline, what’s yours?”

The girl turned her head and gave Emiline a piercing, questioning look, as if she were asking herself, ‘who on Earth is this girl? Weird.’ Nonetheless she answered forcefully. “Aurelia, nice to meet you.”

“And you,” Emiline smiled but quickly turned to face the chalkboard. She had just made a total fool of herself right?

The day seemed to pass in a hazy flash. After receiving a yearly planner and instructions to acquire four dollars for a lock she went to science. Her classes consisted of introductions, year layouts, seating arrangements….the usual. Lunch was spent in the bathroom writing her latest story, ‘Beneath the Surface’, which she intended to finish any day now and reading her planner. Then she went to gym class and following that Math where she had the pleasure of receiving homework. Joy to the world! --! But that was only the beginning!

Her nerves had been strung all day with the suppressed stress of new surroundings and people so it came as no surprise that when she missed the bus she went over the edge. Deciding the buses hadn’t arrived yet she sat herself beside the school wall and began her Math homework. It did seem strange that not many other kids were waiting with her but she shrugged it off, until she spotted the buses pulling out onto the street.

Oh my God! Emiline exclaimed inwardly, I was on the wrong side of the school!

Stuffing her books in her bag she ran to the front doors, watching helplessly as they turned the intersection corner and disappeared.

God, and she began to cry.

“Stop crying you coward,” she muttered but it didn’t help. Clearing her throat and trying desperately to recover her shattered composure she asked a red-haired girl who was sitting by the door about the buses. Yep, she’d been right, wrong side. Feeling defeated and alone she walked back into the school and into the office.

“I….I’ve missed my bus. May I call my grandma, please?” Oh nice going girl, you be lucky if she could even tell you were talking! But the woman at the desk, who looked at Emiline with a smile that didn’t at all reach her eyes and rather gave her the impression the woman pitied her let her make the phone call (after a little trouble with number pressing). If she could have been to just sink through the floor and never be heard from again. But, that, of course, was impossible.