Sisters, promises, time

Chapter 1- New build; Old friend?

Laying on the rickety, tattered hammock that me and my best friend, Isla, made in the park when we were six, I waited for her to meet me so that we could walk to school together. My blazer and my school bag were tossed on the grass, it was scorching hot, and where a lake once flowed like a silver ribbon, is now a dusty trail of dry earth. It was the 9th of June. The beginning of summer, but it felt like September. That's because our school had just gotten rebuilt and we're returning for the first time in 3 months. Finally, our school won't look like a construction site, and we won't be sick of the sounds of drilling and crashing when we are trying to do our work. Me and Isla are nearly fifteen, and we've been to St. Edward's school since we were Eleven, and we can tell you, that school really needed the rebuild. I'm a little bit nervous though, as it's changing. Some teachers are leaving, and many new ones are joining, the same with students, I'm glad Mrs Bleu, my art teacher is staying. in year Seven, she promised us that she'd never leave until we left year eleven.

After 10 minutes, I finally see Isla, but there is someone else walking alongside her and they are both giggling and chatting the way we used to. I hop off of the hammock, and grab my blazer and my backpack, waiting for Isla and the other girl to catch up, it took about 5 minutes for them to do that because they kept stopping to take a selfie, and to jokingly slap each other, mucking about like when me and Isla were in year eight.
They finally caught up with me. "Hey guys!" I said, "what's up?" Isla responded, and the other girl ran her fingers through her thick, dyed red hair and stared at me as if I'd stolen her best friend. "Let's all walk together!" I suggested, and the other girl said "alright," as Isla obediently followed behind us.
"Taylor, this is Ebony, my best friend of 11 years."

I'm Ebony,
well not many people actually call me that. I'm often referred to as "The short girl," Well, they're not wrong. I am 5'2 in year 10. I swear I haven't grown since I was twelve years old. Everyone thinks that Isla towers over them, but when I stand next to her, I feel like a little ant.  She protects me like I'm her precious kitten and we've been best friends since we were four. Nobody else really likes me at school, but I don't mind because I have Isla, Mrs Bleu, and my singing class after school on Tuesdays, so what else could I want?

My two older brothers adore me, although, like everyone else, they think I'm strange, and mother likes my bratty little sister, 12- year-old Jade a lot more than me, probably because she is a lot more intelligent than me and has gorgeous blonde hair and emerald green eyes, she's the only person in my family ever to have blonde hair, or green eyes, and when you look at her, you can't see anyone else in her; not mother, not my brothers, Alfie and John, or me, she's just herself, the perfect little pretty princess of the family. Ok, fine maybe I am a bit jealous of her, but it's not my fault that I was born with plain straight brown hair.

Isla and Taylor left the park, and carried on walking to school, but I stopped because I saw a girl, she was a little shorter than me, and she looked really scared, she was by herself. She had ginger hair, freckles and blue eyes, the same eye colour as mine, she looked a bit like me, although I have light-brown hair. She was carrying a pink book bag, and was wearing the same school uniform as me. She looked at me with big, innocent eyes and began to cry. "What's wrong?" I asked the girl.
"I can't find my friends." She wailed whilst wiping a tear from her rosy cheek.
"When was the last time you saw them?"
"A few minutes ago, but they whispered something to each other and ran away from me, but I'm not allowed to walk to school by myself, I'm scared, I don't know the way."
"I'll walk with you to school, and they are not your friends."
"Thank you!!"

Me and the little girl walked to school together, we spoke and we laughed. I found out that her name was Orla Smith, and that she was in year Eight. This was her first time ever coming to school because she'd been homeschooled, up until recently when she finally convinced her parents to let her join real school so that she could pick her GCSEs.
We finally approached the big gates, and Orla's face filled with fear again, "it's ok Orla." I said softly, as we followed behind a huge group of students into a playground. I spotted Isla and Taylor sitting on a bench in the distance, me and Taylor made eye-contact, then she pointed at Orla, then laughter erupted between her and Isla. Isla was supposed to be my best friend, but to be completely honest, I didn't care anymore. I wanted to make sure Orla feels happy and safe during this huge new change in her life.
A big, loud bell rang and Orla exclaimed "What's that noise! What's happening?" I explained to her that the bell means the start of the school day, and that we should line up for period one. Orla had maths. I looked for the maths classroom, and walked her there, "Have a good day, you can always come and find me during break and lunch," I said to her, as she hugged me, smiled and ran to follow her class into maths.

I finally arrived at English, and was met by many other students, I already knew some of them, but others I'd never seen. There was a new teacher. Settle down, year 10." Said her unfamiliar voice as I padded into the classroom. I sat down in my usual seat, from before April, and quietly pulled a pen out of my blazer pocket, and began to write the date and title in my English book. My heart began racing as I heard the angry rattling of keys and footsteps coming closer and closer to me. What could I have possibly done wrong this time? I don't even know this teacher yet. I mean, if she was coming to point at my half-empty, sparse, messy old English book, and yell that I have the mental capacity of an ant, I wouldn't be surprised. Besides, ants are pretty smart for such small creatures. Maybe a petite, lousy autistic girl like me might have the tiniest spark of potential. I might not be good at English literature, maths, science, history, or anything else I learn at school, but I'm great at other things. You see, if you saw me when I was singing my heart out on stage, you would think I'm a completely different girl. I have anxiety, and I get very overwhelmed by loud noises, but on stage it feeIs like all of my problems have been snatched away from me, and thrown outside for later. I also love drawing, and I love writing my own stories, I could go so into detail about every little tiny crack on the moon's surface, being inhabited by aliens and sparkling waters, if only we did more creative writing. Well I mean, last time we did creative writing, was in year 7 with Mr Brown. He ended up running away in floods of tears after reading Isla's story. We tried to remind him that it was fiction but he was having none of it. 3 years later, Isla refuses to forgive herself. We never saw the poor old guy again.

..."Are we awnsering the starter task?"
"Yes Miss," I replied.
"Good." Said the teacher as she trudged away from me, the sun's reflection poured out through the window, and onto her beautiful long, shiny hair. I didn't know why or how, but I felt a fire of envy and dislike begin to burn inside of me. Why can't my hair shine like hers? And why does she have to come to me. I know I don't stay on task and have an attention span of a baby goldfish but I can't help that. There's just so much inside my mind that runs around non-stop.
"Pens down everyone."
I didn't want to annoy her again, so did what she told and tried to listen to her,
"My names Miss Cloud, And I'm going to be your English teacher for the rest of the year. I have a few expectations, such as listening when I'm speaking, being polite and using manners and no leaving the classroom except in emergencies."
'Not again.' I thought as all of those times where I was trapped inside a loud, chaotic cage of a room whilst every little noise inside my classroom fuelled up a fire inside my mind, that had began to spread throughout my whole body, until I couldn't breathe came flooding back.

"Excuse me, little girl in the corner can you sit still please?"

"LITTLE GIRL? LIT-TLE GIRL." I thought as I tried my hardest to sit as still as I could, even though it felt like I was being held down against the sweaty plastic of the chair, and I could barely move an inch in fear of being told off again. I know I'm 14 years old and 5'2, but surely I'm not that little. I'd only spent 30 mins with this teacher, but I'd already had a bad feeling about her. She handed out an extract and told us all to annotate it. I did as I was told, got out my bright highlighters, and began highlighting. It was a pretty story about two lovers who got married even though their families were at fued. I'm pretty sure it was called Romeo and Julia, something along the lines of that anyway. I highlighted random words because I didn't know what to do, and was too scared to ask this teacher,  I then got a little distracted and drew a few smiley faces and stickmen around my paper. I was actually quite proud of that drawing.

The bell went. While packing away my things into my green backpack, my heart began racing as I remembered that I'd forgotten to do my history homework. As everyone rushed out of the door to go to maths, I put my backpack on, and left as the teacher gathered her things and got up.

I had two more lessons, maths and French. Still as boring as they were before. They have not changed since I was last in school before it was rebuilt.