am not a clever one, but I’m not daft either. I’m not particularly trendy, but my mum says I’m fine as I am. Sometimes she says “remember the ugly duckling that turned into a swan”, and I think she is trying to be nice but it just means I’m ugly right now... if you see what I mean.
I would really like to dress up in my uniform, but I don’t know how to do it, so I turn up day in, day out looking the same. I’d quite like to do my hair differently, but I’m not quite confident enough.
I always have my jotters and I always do my homework. I come into the classroom and sit down and get out my books. I always have a rubber (of course) and I always smile when the teacher looks at me.
I sometimes wish I had something to say, and I quite envy the cheeky ones who come in loudly and get a better, bigger smile than I do.
When the lessons begin, I listen up. My dad says I have to do well at school so I can go to university. I don’t expect I will, though, but I’d like to do childcare at college and, actually, you have to be good to do that. I really like children and babysit for my neighbours.
I hate the boys, but especially Dean who never works. Never brings jotters.
Always answers back and swears at the teachers. And then they stop everything to get another teacher and he still refuses to go and then they get the big assistant head and he goes then, but he only goes because he gets to sit in his room and listen in to everything. And by then everyone is shouting.
I hate most of the girls, especially Keeley because she is the biggest tart and she never stops talking. And then she says “Bovvered? Am I bovvered?”
and everyone laughs and the teacher gets mad again, and sometimes I get no work done at all if Dean and Keeley get going.
And it is so boring. It is so bloody boring, sitting there through it all.
Period after period, day after day. We never get decent lessons because the teachers spend all their time with the really bad ones, and the clever ones are OK because they can do it.
Anyway. One day, and one day soon, I am going to stand up and begin to scream. Just one big, long scream, that will be so loud and so long they hear me right up and down the corridor.
And when I finally run out of breath, which will be quite a while because this scream has been building up for quite a while, I’m going to tell the teachers that it’s my turn to get the attention. That I’m tired of not being taught, tired of sitting doing nothing while the bad ones get all the attention, and that if they don’t start giving me exactly what I deserve, I’ll begin to behave just like Keeley.
But do you know, I don’t think they’d even notice.
