Hello everybody, I wrote this story as a creative writing piece for English at school, and thought I might as well post it on here. Feel free to comment and critique. Sorry the cover isn't up to usual Wattpad standard, it's my first go at making a cover myself. Thank you! Enjoy :)
Hello person reading this. My name is Oliver Watson Campbell, I am 14 years old, and this is a story about me. My English teacher says that I should not start my story like this, because it is called an 'info dump', which is a bad thing, but I don't think it is. I am just telling you some facts, and I like facts. I do not like stories that start in obscure ways. I do seem to be getting off topic, let me tell you a bit more about myself. As I said before, I am 14 years old.
I was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, though I moved here to Australia when I was 5. I have Asperger Syndrome, which is a form of Autism. Many people think that because I have Asperger's that I am stupid, but I am not stupid. I am very smart. I can memorise things very easily, and I am doing math problems 2 grades higher than my own. I used to go to Halinda School, which is for special needs education, but I do not go there anymore. Today was my first day at a 'proper' school, and it was very scary.
My mother decided that Halinda School was not challenging enough for me, so she enrolled me in the local High School. I left for school at 8:15am, and my mother drove me to my new school. The drive took 18 minutes and approximately 52 seconds, and all that time I was chewing on my nails. We walked the 87 steps from mother's car parked on the street to the school office, which was made of red bricks. When I get nervous, I count things, it helps me be less nervous. I also observe things that other people normally don't notice.
Like how I noticed that there were around 29 students on the playground when we walked in, and 13 of them were female, and two people were holding hands like they were in love, and one person was doing his homework, and 5 people were playing a small game of basketball, and then I couldn't observe any more things because we had reached the office and we had to go inside. My heart was beating very fast, and my hands were sweating. When I reached out to turn the doorknob of the office, my hands were very slippery and wet.
New things are scary. I don't know how to describe the feeling I get when I do new things, but I will try. It is the feeling one would get aboard the deck of the Titanic, seeing the iceberg looming into view, yet knowing that nothing can be done about it. It’s a feeling of absolute and utter hopelessness. I feel like that a lot. It’s like when you think about how the universe began. I do that a lot, too. When I get older, I want to be the scientist that finds out exactly why the universe was made.
I want to know exactly why the big bang occurred. I do not believe in a God, that concept is illogical, but I believe that there is something, or someone out there that caused the world to start, even if it was by accident. As if someone bumped a switch over in an intergalactic laboratory. This story is getting rather off topic, I am sorry. I need to get back to what I was saying before. You may be wondering why I am writing this. I am writing this because I feel as if I need to express my feelings.
My first day of proper school was so very different to anything that I had experienced before. At Halinda School, I never made any friends, because all the other students were so different to me, and they all seemed to enjoy things that I didn’t. At Halinda School, the classes were small, and students got a lot of one-on-one time with the teachers. Compared to this, my new school is chaos. I was given a timetable and asked to go to ‘homeroom’ for the start of the day. That room was not anything like a home. It was a battleground.
My homeroom, 9C, is a small classroom, and it has 21 other students in it, excluding me. When I came into Homeroom for the first time, the teacher pulled me up to the front of the class as soon as I walked in. The other students were whispering to each other and talking behind their hands. They all looked at me like I was an outsider, which I was, but in a weird way. They looked at me like I was contagious. Except for one boy, in the corner, who didn’t even seem to notice me. He looked strangely familiar.
After the teacher introduced me to the class, I went and took my place in the only spare seat in the class, next to the familiar boy. He was furiously scribbling on a piece of paper next to him. He was working with a big long equation, but I could understand it. I took a deep breath and leaned over to him. It was nerve-racking
“Is that an equation for the spaghettification of a larger-than-earth object being sucked into a black hole at a distance of 3.73 light years away?” I asked him, my voice quivering. I was never good at making friends. He looked up at me with a strange expression.
“Yes, it is… Why do you ask?” He replied, curiosity in his voice.
“It’s just, your work seems to be about discerning the end of the universe, and I am trying to find out about the beginning of the universe.” I pulled out my sketchbook from my bag and showed him my equations and diagrams.
The boy stuck out his hand for me to shake; I declined because I don’t like germs.
“My name is Malcom Phillips,” he said to me, “I think we will become good friends.”
