By The Sidelines

R

Alice marched through the crowd, weaving in and out as people separated for her. She looked left and right before making another turn and carried on walking. She held her head proud and high as if she wasn't a new girl to the school. Her school, Wayvier Secondary School.

People by their lockers watched the blonde girl walking confidently to the gang of boys surrounding a specific locker and wished her luck. But Alice did not need their luck.

For she was a girl on a mission.

And her mission was me.

"Rosina!" Alice cried out and I looked up from my locker and jumped. Alice tackled me at once into a hug. She had not seen me for ages before yesterday and was glad that there was at least one person to help through the changes that had happened to the school while she was gone. She did not want to feel like a new girl in an old school.

She did not need to worry. Her shouts did not go unnoticed. Alice did not know of my unfortunate luck of having a specific group of boys' locker by me.

"How are you?" She asked innocently.

Alice did not feel the gazes of the boys beside me, whose attention were on her. She did not notice that their leader dismantled himself from the grasp of his girlfriend, who looked dismayed at his short span of attention on her, till he was breathing down our backs.

" I feel quite well, Alice Variet," Daniel answered. Alice scowled up at her nemesis in his flaming glory. She noted that he had not changed a single bit, wih his short brown hair still carefully brushed to make him look perfect and his brown eyes sparkling with amusement.

"I was not asking you, Daniel Preten," Alice retaliated, pushing him so that  he was no longer breathing down our backs. She linked her arm wih mine as she said, "I was talking to my best friend here."

Daniel gave a chuckle. "Oh how you wound me." He held his hand to heart and pretended to stagger backwards. "I thought we were best friends."

"Well we're not!" Alice snapped. "What are you doing here anyway Daniel?"

He shrugged, "Considering that you haven't been back for ages, I was going to offer to take you round seeing as we are 'best friends'."

Alice brushed him off," I said that we're not. And anyway Rosina here already promised to show me around."

And with that she grabbed me and we walked away from Daniel and his friends in a random direction. Soon Alice realised that we had to split up for our seperate classes.

For the first two periods, Alice spent her time trying to find her bearings around the school once again. She greeted and caught up wih old teachers, people who used to teach her or simply knew her from her record of getting great marks in exams.

Alice held her hands together, her lips pressed together as she thought of her younger self. Her reputation would need to change. She didn't want to be known as the girl, who had the perfect grades, the girl who spent all her time studying, anymore but something more.

At first break, she mentioned this to me.

"I want the teachers to still see me as  the 'perfect' girl they had known before. I don't want to get into trouble with my mum or my stepdad." Alice scowled as the thought of her stepfather came into her mind. "But I don't want to be instantly labelled by the other kids as teacher pet. I mean that would make me sad."

I said nothing.

" And in my previous school, I used to get teased because of how I acted like I did when I was younger," Alice took a deep breath."I had to change myself and I didn't like it. What do you think I should do?"