The New Kid Chronicles

The Decision

I was already feeling pretty down from the day when I started walking home so I decided that I was going to make myself feel better by getting my siblings a bag of sweets each from the shop. Plus I really needed some tangy red laces - weird craving, I know, that's just what I really wanted.

When I got to the shop I picked out the sweets and called my mum to see if she needed anything. As I was on the phone, two boys from the year above me walked onto the aisle and saw me. They started walking towards me. I moved back when I felt they were too close but they just kept pushing further and further towards me until I was stuck against the wall and I couldn't get past them. My mum was still on the phone at this point so I couldn't say anything because then she'd get worried.

As soon as my mum was off the phone, I tried again to push my way through them and they started accusing me of trying to start a fight with them. They also started going on about my drawings, saying they were rubbish and that I should stop and they were asking me if I was transgender (this was because I have short hair and wear trousers rather than skirts). In that moment, I felt like the smallest person in the world, helpless, like a spider being washed down a drainpipe, unable to save myself from drowning.

I ended up shoving my way through them and running to pay for the sweets as quickly as possible then speeding out of the shop and out of sight, around to the estate just behind so they couldn't come after me. My mum picked me up from there and I told her everything. She said she could come with me to talk to a teacher at school if I wanted her to but I said it wouldn't work. We had been talking to the school for about six months and things were just getting worse for me. Plus this time it wasn't actually in school so it would have been way more complicated than anything before.

My mum works at a different school to me and we'd played with the idea of me moving a while ago but I was dubious. She mentioned it on that night though and it just felt like the only thing to do. So she went into her work the next day and spoke to some people and figured it out so that I could have my first day there in three days!! I was completely terrified but I knew it was going to be better to have a fresh start than to continue suffering.

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The moral to this part of the story is don't ask the new kid why they moved to your school. You might think you're being nice and just making conversation but it can be really painful for people to think about their past and why they left it behind. Every time I get asked this I just say that it's because of my mum working at the new school but I know others probably aren't as lucky to have such a simple explanation. Being at a new school is a fresh start where you can escape whatever happened at the old one. Don't talk to the new kid in your class about why they left their old school. Sometimes it leads to more bad than good.