Children Of The Crucible

Gwen

Gwen's PoV

Snowflake stretched out on my bed, looking at me in a way that made it impossible not to stroke her. I reached for my phone so I could take a picture of her, wanting to capture how cute she looked, purring on my duvet. I took a couple and sent one to my best friend, Stevie, who absolutely adores Snowflake. She always says how much she wants a cat, but she doesn't think that her budgie would be very pleased.

We have known each other practically since we were born, seeing as our mums are best friends. Whenever they would meet up, which was a lot, me and Stevie would play together while they chatted over their pot of tea.

In a way, she is the complete opposite of me. I'm super girly, into make-up and beauty and all that stuff, whereas she is much more of a tomboy. She doesn't know the first thing about make-up and fashion, and would rather play football or badminton or virtually any other sport you can think of. She's active. But nevertheless, despite our completely different personalities, we are best friends, and I don't think we have ever had a fight.

A few minutes passed before I got a message back from Stevie. 'Aww she's so adorable. What are you up to?'

'Not much, James just left. I'm trying to tidy up the popcorn littered on my carpet. How about you?' I replied.

She didn't reply for another few minutes. She always does this: I reply instantaneously to her texts, but she goes to do something else before she can read my reply. It gets irritating sometimes, especially when I want her opinion on something, like what colour of eye shadow I should wear. Not that she ever gave me a straight answer, always saying that it is up to me.

Finally, a text back. 'Not a lot. I'm trying to think of what to get my sister for her birthday. Any suggestions? I'm terrible at coming up with ideas for presents.'

That was a tough one. I tried to think of what her sister liked. I don't know her that well, apart from the fact that she's a bit of a bookworm, but it's always impossible to know which books someone has and hasn't read.

'Not sure, why don't you get her something to do with Harry Potter?'

'Yeah I could. She's a Ravenclaw so I'll try and find her a Ravenclaw pillow or bag or something like that. Thanks, you're always brilliant at coming up with ideas. How did the physics test go by the way, I heard it was nasty?'

I sighed. I really hated physics. It's such a boring class and I don't understand anything. The teacher just tells us the textbook page and leaves us to it and doesn't give us any help if we don't understand something. So much fun.

'It was pretty crap. We hadn't been taught half the stuff in it, and what we had been taught was just confusing. I just guessed most of the answers, even though I had actually studied.'

'That sounds pretty rough. I feel like we hardly get taught anything at school. Well, actually, French is a bit of an exception. They help you with your pronunciation and stuff, plus they are constantly giving out homework to "make sure we remember all the words" or something like that. Mais ça devient vraiment ennuyeux après un moment. (But it gets really boring after a while.)'

'Haha, well it sounds like you are paying attention in French class. I just muck around in German. The teacher doesn't really give us proper work, so it's not like I could actually learn anything anyway. She just puts all the vocabulary on the board and leaves us to copy it out. She doesn't even check to see if we have learned it.'

'Yeah, but maybe you should try and pay some sort of attention. What if you suddenly decide you want to work in Germany but you can't because you never paid attention in class.'

I rolled my eyes at this. I seriously doubted I would want to move to Germany but I guess she did have a point. She was always super good in school, constantly top of every single one of her classes. She actually enjoys it, especially P.E- she's on the school football, hockey and basketball team. It baffles me how she manages to find the time for school, homework and studying, as well as all her sporting activities.

'Lol good point, but if I'm honest I think my chances of wanting to move to Germany are pretty slim. I think I'll stick to messing about until I properly decide. Oh, how did the football game go yesterday? I heard the other school you were playing against have a really good team.'

'Haha fair enough. The football match wasn't actually that bad- we did lose, but only by one goal so I guess that's pretty good considering all the other schools they have played against so far have lost by at least five.'

'Aw sorry u didn't win, but at least ur clearly better than most schools. And if the team keeps heading the way it is, I'd say you would be able to beat them the next time you play them.'

'Yeah, I really hope so. It was annoying losing to them, but at least we gave it our all. I've gotta go now, but I'll talk to you later. See you soon!'

'Ok, see you soon!'

I put my phone down on my bedside table and continued picking up little bits of popcorn from my carpet. I know it's hard to see what you're doing when it's dark but I didn't think we would have made this much of a mess. I cleaned it up as best as I could but it got tedious after a while so I gave up, making a mental note to vacuum tomorrow. I checked my phone once more, and plugged it in, noticing the weirdly low percentage the battery was at. My phone's battery honestly annoys me so much. You could be using my phone for a solid four hours and the battery drains maybe 10%. Then you could look at the scroll through your notifications for a minute and the battery drains like 50%. It's beyond me why it does that. I placed it on the floor next to the plug and climbed into bed.

It took me ages to get to sleep, especially with my cat laying across my feet, making it impossible for me to move. I eventually got comfy and went to sleep, lulled by the light rain outside against my window.