I’m not sure if this is just me, or if it is a thing that everyone does, but as my voice gets louder, it gets higher. As soon as I shouted what I wanted everybody to hear, and they all stared at me as if I was mad. One of them- the boy that always waited on the wrong side of the door- shouted back in the beginning of an argument. The others completely ignored me and went on arguing with each other. At one point, I was thinking really hard, things going round and round my head, with people teasing me about my high voice, I was concentrating so hard so that everything but the current talk- which happened to be about lunch- flew out of my head. Suddenly, a word entered, that went round and round my head, multiplying and adding to each other.
Meatballs.
“I’M MEANT TO BE WINNING YOU THIS THING AND THE ONLY THING GOING ROUND MY HEAD RIGHT NOW IS MEATBALLS!!!” I shouted. Everyone suddenly shut up. I stared at them, and Sudhira made a vital point which let us complete the puzzle. Everyone high-fived as if it was totally them, not Sudhira, who had completed the puzzle. I sighed. This kind of selfishness just happened in life, didn’t it?
We got the next puzzle from a passing puzzle-holder, and did it painfully slowly. The group were getting increasingly annoyed at my not-solving-them-all-the-puzzles-in-three-seconds-flat, though I did have a good idea that nobody would listen to. I had an idea, and shouted it out for the world to hear.
“MEATBALLS!!!” I shouted, and the group went silent, ready for me to explain my idea.
Fifty minutes and a lot more meatballs later, I was thoroughly hated by my group, and the bell went. One-two-three-four-five-SIX times. Lunch time. I ran out of the door, grabbed my early lunch pass out of my pocket, and went to lunch. I wondered what would be for lunch. Meatballs, I thought.
It wasn’t meatballs for lunch. It was spicy curry, as it usually was on Tuesdays. I showed my early lunch pass to the teacher guarding the queue, and he let me in. The noise of the lunch hall leaked from the tables next door into here, and there was the faint noise of people illegally going on their phones. I looked at the floor. This was the first time I’d been to Strings, and I didn’t know what to expect.
I ate my lunch and got to the music department in the nick of time, before getting my violin and sitting on the back row. The other violin in Year 7 sat down next to me. Music was handed round, people chatted, and we got started.
I couldn’t play it. I was sight-reading stuff and it was too hard for me to sight-read, I would have to learn this stuff. A year 8 in front of me turned around and welcomed us. She walked with me down to the changing rooms after we’d finished, me being thoroughly rattled and confused by 45 minutes of playing stuff I couldn’t play. I changed for games and crossed the road on my own, thinking thoughts all the while.
The thing I needed at this point was two lessons’ worth of standing in the freezing cold of a hockey pitch as a defender. True, I’m not a standing-around really lame defender, I’m an active defender who tackles people too much and is way too good at hitting the ball for her own good, but the pitch was still freezing and one of the few girls that was taller than me whacked my thumb with her own hockey stick- it would throb for ages afterwards. I also couldn’t see as well as I could have done, I’ve never worn my glasses for games and some of my vision was blurred, so I couldn’t see what was happening at the other end of the pitch, not being able to identify which girl was on which team. However, these two lessons of torture ended up in only me being very cold, and no actual damage, which I wouldn’t have expected anyway, but my left thumb was still hurting stupidly, and I was pretending when I said it was okay. I got changed back into school clothes, put my glasses back on my face, and trudged up the hill.
I wonder why my school has been built on a hill. Maybe it’s to torture those poor students that have to walk up it after two hours of torture… I imagine fantasy, but sometimes the real reason is as basic as that.