The New Girl

They lull you into false comfort, these normal occurrences.

Day One

 

In the back of a small classroom sits a girl. It is warm in this classroom, which is strange considering the building is over two hundred years old. It has been repainted and refurbished dozens upon dozens of times, yet the exposed piping running along the ceiling is decidedly from another century.

Despite the odd warmth, the girl is trembling. It is most noticeable in her legs, which she figures would feel like gelatin if she attempted to stand up. Her heart beats quickly as she stares at the clock – seven thirty. Ten minutes until class begins. The first class she has ever taken at this high school.

The only other person in the room with the girl is the overweight English teacher, who is sipping his coffee and looking over papers at his desk to her right. All the other students are standing in the open courtyard, talking to one another. A few minutes earlier, the girl avoided this mass and headed straight for the Tower building, too frightened by the countless unfamiliar faces to attempt to make friends just yet. She has moved here from the next town over, but the only ones she knows here are girls who also attend her church. And even then, they are barely acquaintances.

Ten minutes pass quickly with the girl’s racing thoughts, and soon the bell rings. It’s a strange, nasal buzzing sound, different from the actual bell sound at her old school. She has resolved herself not to speak of her old school, so she will not mention this. She was always annoyed by the new students who were only ever able to see things through the veil of “their old school.” It seemed like they were still stuck in the past, and she has put the past thoroughly behind her. She tries to put the thought of her old school out of her mind completely.

The sound of footsteps suddenly becomes a deep outside rumbling, and then students are pouring into the class, recognizing and greeting one another. The girl feels lost in this sea of people who have grown up with one another, who know every one of the school’s inside jokes.

“Hey, Danielle!” someone says, jarring the girl out of her meditations. It’s one of the teens from her church. April, she thinks: a girl, thick but not particularly fat, with long dark hair that rivals Danielle’s in curliness.

“Hey,” the new girl, Danielle, replies. She smiles politely. It’s nice to at least be recognized; she relaxes a tiny bit.

The buzzing bell rings again, and the teacher gets up from his desk and walks into the midst of the rough semi-circle of desks. “Good morning, class,” he greets everyone.

“Good morning,” the students reply hesitantly.

“I’m Mr. Miller Morris Mason Malone. You can call me Mr. Malone, or M4,” he tells everyone, grinning. A lot of the students smile in response, and one of the girls giggles.

“What were your parents thinking when they named you?” a boy in the back asks.

“That I was too awesome for a single name, so they had to give me several more in order for it to be fitting,” the teacher states matter-of-factly.

This gets more smiles and giggles from the students. They are beginning to feel more comfortable, Danielle included.

There are a lot of random words on the board, like Scooby Doo and German/Germany and 776. “You may have noticed these,” Mr. Malone says, gesturing to them. “Each of these words or phrases represents something about me in its most condensed form. In order for you to get to know me better, I’m going to call on one of you, and you’ll choose one of these words or phrases for me to explain.” He calls on Danielle first, and everyone turns to look.

“Um…Scooby Doo,” she chooses, feeling awkward.

“Ah,” Mr. Malone says, turning and erasing her choice. “I have an obsession with Scooby Doo. I have seen every episode, every movie, every Scooby Doo-related media ever published. When I told this to some other students, they thought they could stump me. They would give me a hint, like, say, ‘Scooby Doo is stuck in a fish barrel,’ and then I would outline the plot, who the monster was, etcetera on the board. There’s a channel that plays Scooby Doo reruns from eight to nine o’clock every night, so if you ever think to yourself ‘Gee, I wonder what Mr. Malone is doing,’ and it happens to be between eight and nine PM, you’ll know.” He grins, and so do the students.

More students are called upon, and more words and phrases are chosen. German/Germany turns out to be that Mr. Malone loves all things German, has been to Germany several times, and can speak German fluently. For 776, the story is that he had once climbed the Danube Tower, the tallest free-standing structure in Austria. It has 776 steps, but the stairs are extremely narrow, and tourists have to use the same set of stairs to go both up and down; consequently, there are usually a lot of people passing one another on these narrow stairs. He says that going down the steps was actually harder for him than going up, because his legs felt like rubber from all the climbing and all he could imagine was tripping, falling, and taking out about forty tourists in his bowling-ball-esque tumble down the stairs. This story, along with a few others he tells, gets a decent amount of laughs from the students. They are alright with this teacher; he is already one of the ‘cool’ ones in their books.

After Mr. Malone erases the board entirely, he hands out a packet of questions. They ask things like, “Would you rip the wings off of a butterfly for $500,000?” and “If you could make up a holiday, what would it be and when would it be?” and “What would you do with 5,000 roses if they were given to you?” Then, he asks the students to get up and ask their peers the questions, writing down their names along with their answers. It’s designed so that they can get to know each other. Danielle feels thankful for the activity; at least now she might have something to talk about besides school and the weather.

Danielle gets up and starts collecting answers, unable to answer some of the questions like “What world record would you break, if you could break any?” because there are too many choices to ponder. She does say that if she had a stretch limo for a night, she would go to New York City, and she would give the 5,000 roses to people who needed to smile, and she wouldn’t rip off the wings of a butterfly for $500,000…although she’s not so sure about that last one. A lot of good can be done with $500,000.

She meets Seth, a boy who says he would make Homeless Person Day on December 13^th, and Justine, a girl who Danielle wonders about being friends with. Everyone else she interacts with gets his or her answers and leaves quickly.

The students go back to their desks at Mr. Malone’s command, and begin sharing their answers. The bell buzzes before they can finish, and everyone begins to pack up.

Danielle is the last one left in the classroom once the students clear out. “Is the auditorium in the Basen building?” she asks Mr. Malone.

“No, it’s in the Halder building,” he answers. He points behind her. “You just go straight that way, and you’ll find it.”

“Okay, thanks,” Danielle replies. She exits the door and heads in the direction the teacher pointed her. At this point, campus is swarming with students headed in every direction. The sun is shining on the dew-wet grass, lifting a lovely smell into the air. Danielle takes a moment to breathe deeply, smiling, before she proceeds to the Halder building. She has been waiting for this for months. Everything is new, nothing is what she is expecting.

Upon entering the Halder building, she finds a group of students clustered by double doors made of metal. “Auditorium?” she asks.

“Yep,” one of the girls answers quickly, then promptly looks away.

Soon, someone from inside opens the door for them and lets them in. Danielle finds a seat in the third row from the front. The place is massive, darkly lit, and definitely a theater. She recognizes the structure from her old school’s auditorium – but no, she shouldn’t think of that place.

As she sits, she notices the backs of a lot of the chairs have plaques on them. “Donated by Michael Moala,” they say, or “Donated by the Keats family.”

The teacher, a woman who is overweight (but less so than Mr. Malone) and has long, straight, dyed blond hair, is sitting on stage, typing things on her laptop. She doesn’t take much notice of the students for now. A girl sits down in the seat next to Danielle, and they smile at each other, but there is nothing to talk about for the time being.

Eventually, the teacher finishes whatever it is that she’s doing on her laptop, and begins to call attendance. When she calls Sarah, the girl in question throws up her hands and yells, “Here!” Her friends, sitting on either side of her, seem to be amused by this.

“Someone’s excited,” the girl next to Danielle comments.

Danielle turns and smiles. “Yeah,” she says.

“You new here?”

“Yeah. Just transferred.”

“Oh. What grade?”

“I’m a junior.”

The girl raises her eyebrows. “Oh, really? Wow. I’m a freshman.”

Danielle grins. “I’m Danielle Green, by the way,” she introduces herself, offering her hand.

“Chloe Dalton,” the freshman girl replies, shaking Danielle’s hand.

“Nice to meet you.” Danielle releases Chloe’s hand.

“Nice to meet you too.”

The teacher finishes attendance then, and launches into a rather uninteresting introduction to the class. Danielle leans back in her blessedly comfortable theater chair and waits it out, thinking of how she is only one person and definitely not in the spotlight, as she had expected, a hundred or even fifty percent of the time. She is very obviously insignificant in the face of the gigantic student body.

She snaps out of her wandering thoughts when the teacher calls the class up onto the stage for an unknown reason. When she stands up, she notices that Chloe is now several inches below her. “Wow, you’re short,” she blurts.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Chloe responds, her voice heavy with the weight of having heard the same observation over and over.

“That’s okay, I like short people,” Danielle quickly adds while they walk up to the stage. “They’re fun-sized.”

Chloe grins. “I have a shirt that says ‘I’m not short, I’m fun-sized.’”

“Really? I saw that shirt in a store the other day,” Danielle replies, smiling.

The teacher organizes the students into a circle once everyone is on stage, including herself into it once it is fully formed.

“It’s like circle time in kindergarten,” Danielle comments quietly.

Chloe smiles, although she doesn’t really know what Danielle is talking about.

“Okay, class. We’re going to play a game so that I can better remember your names, because I’m horrible at remembering them otherwise.” This is about the fourth time she’s mentioned that she’s bad at remembering names. “In order to play, we’re going to make alliterations out of our names. Does anyone know what alliteration is?”

Some kid raises his hand and answers. “It’s like when two words start with the same letter.”

“Right. So, I would be Monstrous Ms. Grey, for example,” the teacher says, making claw motions with her hands in the process.

Oh jeez, Danielle thinks.

“And – you, what’s your name?” Ms. Grey asks.

“Al,” the large guy to her right answers.

“Right. So if it was your turn, you could make up something like…Amazing Al,” she says, pointing both thumbs at herself as she does so. “And then you would have to come up with an action to go along with it.”

Oh jeez, Danielle thinks again.

Ms. Grey moves down the line. “You’re Blake, right?” she asks the boy beside Al, apparently remembering his name from attendance.

“Yeah,” the boy answers. Danielle remembers noticing this guy, mostly because he looked a bit like someone she had crushed on (along with the majority of the female population) at her old school. She would have shunned this connection, but it would have been impossible for her not to make it. He looks younger, though, and his voice is much higher, so any initial interest is warded away by the plausibility that he is a freshman.

“So you could be…Blake the Ball-Kicker,” Ms. Grey suggests, kicking her foot. “And when we reached Blake, he would have to say ‘You’re Monstrous Ms. Grey, you’re Amazing Al, and I’m Blake the Ball-Kicker.’ Everyone understand the rules, for the most part?”

No one answers outright, but an awkward murmuring of the tentatively affirmative variety passes through the group.

“Alright, I’ll start. I’m Monstrous Ms. Grey,” the teacher says, doing her claw-motion again.

“I’m Amazing–” Al tries.

“No, first, who am I?” Ms. Grey interrupts.

Al remembers. “You’re Monstrous Ms. Grey, and I’m Amazing Al,” he says, unenthusiastically doing the motions.

The spotlight shifts to Blake. “Um…” he says. “You’re Monstrous Ms. Grey…” He claws awkwardly, and then pauses. “You’re Amazing Al,” he continues, doing the motions a second late. “And I’m…uh, I don’t know. Blake the Bok Choy.” He kicks with his foot, apparently unable to come up with anything else.

“What is a Bok Choy?” Ms. Grey asks.

“It’s, um, a type of Chinese cabbage,” Blake explains, looking self-conscious. Some of the students laugh; with, not at, at least.

“Okay, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to put you on the spot,” Ms. Grey quickly apologizes, smiling.

The game continues down the line. There’s Spontaneous Sarah, Milkshake Mandy, Excellent Ellen, Electric Eva, Baffled Brianna, and Crazy Chloe. When it gets to Danielle, she has a bit of difficulty remembering every name and move. She ends with, “And I’m Dangerous Danielle,” crossing her forearms and trying not to feel moronic.

And then the game stops right after Danielle, on the basis that all the names and moves are getting too hard to remember. Ms. Grey sends the students back to their seats.

“Dangerous Danielle?” Chloe asks on the way.

Danielle shrugs. “Couldn’t think of anything else.”

The teacher passes out half-pieces of paper, an assignment written on them. Danielle ignores the teacher to read the paper.

 

My Brown Bag

 

Your first assignment will be “My Brown Bag”, a homework project that shouldn’t be too time consuming but will assist me in getting to know YOU! I will model my own bag, but now that you are responsible for bringing in your own bag tomorrow Wednesday August 27^th, 2008 to share with the class. Please include the following:

 

*The name (nickname or otherwise) that you like to regularly addresses by, written on the bag

 

*A picture of yourself

 

*A weird or unique thing about you (that no own knows!)

 

Objects that will symbolize at least 5 of the following things:

 

·         Likes

·         Family

·         Pets

·         Pet peeves

·         Favorite places

·         Hobbies

·         Favorite Subjects

·         Qualities about you!

 

It’s apparent that the teacher didn’t proofread the page before she printed it. That you like to regularly addresses by? Seriously? Danielle thinks. The misplaced “that” before “you are responsible” also irks her, and the date is wrong by more than a year. It’s September 1^st, 2009.

Danielle looks up and begins paying attention when Ms. Grey is in the middle of presenting her own bag. “This is the weird thing about me,” Ms. Grey says, holding a pair of socks. “I cannot stand shoes.” Danielle briefly notes that Ms. Grey is wearing flip-flops. “Because of that, I can’t stand the colder months, and sometimes I go as far as bringing flip-flops with me so I can change into them once I get to class. But unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll be able to do that this year, because I’ll be switching buildings for a couple of classes.” She pauses. “Anyway, I hate wearing shoes, but if I do have to wear them, I’ll almost always have mismatched socks.”

“Hey, I’m wearing mismatched socks right now,” Chloe says, putting her feet up against the seat in front of her to show Danielle.

Danielle smiles. “I’ve got to get more interesting socks. I only have white ones at the moment.” She stops paying attention to the teacher, instead looking at Chloe. She notes her pink backpack, pink shirt, pink shoes… “You like the color pink, don’t you?”

“Yeah, it’s a pretty cool color,” Chloe answers.

“Not my favorite,” Danielle says, shrugging.

As Danielle begins to zone out again, a strange sound catches her attention. It’s coming from the ceiling. She glances upwards – is someone up there? She stares for a long time, and the sound happens a few times more, but it’s much too infrequent for someone to be moving around. She dismisses it, seeing as neither the students nor Ms. Grey seem to be paying it any attention. Maybe the auditorium always makes these sounds.

The bell rings unexpectedly, and the students get up in a mad rush to leave. Danielle follows the mass of students out of one of the doors. “See you later,” she says to Chloe when they part ways.

“Bye,” Chloe replies, and is gone.

Danielle actually has to take out her schedule to find her next class. It says Chemistry in room B214, so she figures that it must be in the Basen building. She heads toward it, only to find the flow of traffic impeded by the large number of students trying to enter and exit the building. When she enters, she picks the most obvious hallway; it has numbers in the 100s, so she begins looking around for stairs. Memories of nightmares she has had of getting lost and showing up to class more than half an hour late flash through her mind when she can’t find them at first. She switches directions several times before she manages to find the stairs, at the end of an inconspicuous hallway on the left. Even after she goes up them, it takes her a while to find the right room. Luckily, she had first lunch, which means she isn’t late; she’s just missing out on time she could have used to eat. Another two girls – one tall, blond, and beautiful; the other big, plain-featured and dark-haired – arrive at the same time as her, putting their bags on random chairs. Danielle follows suit, and then turns to the teacher. “Where’s the cafeteria?” she asks.

“Well…Erika, can you show this young lady where the cafeteria is?” the teacher asks of the blond girl.

“Sure,” Erika replies. The three students walk out of class before they begin talking. “It’s this way,” Erika says, pointing. “I’m Erika, by the way, and this is Heidi.” She gestures at the dark-haired girl, who waves.

“Hi,” Heidi greets.

“Hey,” Danielle says to them both.

“I’m a senior – actually, we both are,” Erika says, smiling pleasantly.

Danielle smiles back. “I’m a junior.” She’s surprised by the fact that she doesn’t feel anxious or intimidated. The day has calmed her down in terms of social interaction.

“Did you just transfer here?” Erika asks.

“Yeah.”

“Where from?”

“Tawdry High.”

“Oh, I know a couple kids from there. Do you know Denise Dalton?”

It takes Danielle a moment to respond, wondering about the fact that the girl mentioned has the same last name as Chloe. “Um… the name sounds familiar.”

They have arrived at the cafeteria at this point. “We’re going to go in and find some seats,” Erika states, gesturing at the large doors opening into the cafeteria.

“Where do you actually buy food?” Danielle asks.

“Over there,” Erika says, pointing again, this time at an open door to their left. A line is coming out of it and growing by the second.

“I’ll meet you inside,” Danielle says, waving, and then joins the lunch line.

Some kid in front of her keeps putting up his hood. It attracts the notice of his friend, who tells him, “Dude, no hoods in school.”

“Aye dee eff kay,” the hooded kid responds, and it takes Danielle a moment to realize that he’s actually talking in text speak, in real life. Her response is a mix of intense amusement and a vague feeling of dear God what is the world coming to. She also notes that he said k instead of c. What, did he not kare?

Once surrounded by food, Danielle feels a bit overwhelmed by all the choices. There’s coffee, and bagels, and unhealthy breakfast-looking foods drizzled in sugary paste, and a chilled compartment filled with sandwiches and drinks, and an ice cream box, and two hot lunch options at separate counters, and a rack of the day’s desert, and another chilled compartment with sandwiches, and a case of other various drinks. She ends up choosing a sandwich labeled “Italian Sandwich,” along with a Silk soy milk, which she remembers loving as a child.

She goes over to Erika’s table, but the seats around her are filled.

Erika looks around, noting the problem. “Here, pull up a chair,” she says, half-dragging one from a nearby table.

Danielle pulls it the rest of the way and sits down.

Erika begins introducing Danielle to girls at the table. She doesn’t remember many names, except the previously mentioned Heidi and a girl with blond, wavy hair named Linda. Linda appears to have something wrong with her upper lip, and she has a very small downturned nose, but Danielle thinks she’s beautiful.

After introductions, Danielle turns to her food. She fusses with the strange straw on the soy milk for a minute.

“No, here, you have to pull it this way,” Erika instructs, pulling the straw so that it’s twice its original length and locked that way.

Danielle smiles sheepishly, feeling idiotic. “Thanks.” She sticks the straw through what seems to be flimsy tinfoil on the top of the drink, and takes a sip. “Oh God, I love this stuff,” she raves.

“Really? I only like the chocolate kind. Vanilla is just too…” Erika shrugs.

“I love vanilla.” She looks up. “Oh,” she says, her breath leaving her. “Such a beautiful…view.” The walls of two sides of the cafeteria are made of up large, floor-length windows, and past them the horizon extends maybe fifty miles outward. She can see houses and valleys and open fields and so many forests.

“Yeah, it’s great on a clear day,” Erika responds, and Danielle wonders how much farther the view can go.

She looks down after a moment, and then opens her sandwich packaging. The sandwich is thick, so she tries to squish it down to a size that can fit inside her small mouth before taking a bite. She makes it work, although it’s awkward. The sandwich is pretty good, containing things like pastrami and cheese and lettuce.

“So, do you like Westhill Academy food?” Erika asks after several minutes of eating.

“Oh yes,” Danielle responds enthusiastically.

Erika smiles. Then she wraps up the waste from her lunch. “I’ve got to go print something out for one of my classes,” she says. “I’ll see you in class.”

This leaves Danielle surrounded by students she doesn’t know. Heidi is on her right, and has expressed no interest in speaking to her beyond the initial “Hi.” A girl named Tory, who has very black hair and an olive skin tone although her features appear to be Caucasian, sits down in the seat abandoned by Erika and begins talking to Heidi. They both ignore Danielle, and she spends the rest of lunch eating in silence.

At some invisible signal, the majority of students stand up and begin leaving. Danielle rushes to finish her sandwich, and then gives up and tosses the last small chunk in the garbage. She follows Heidi back to class.

The Chemistry class turns out to have only ten students. The teacher for this class is older than Danielle’s other teachers. She has graying, curly brown hair with a widow’s peak, and she’s also thinner, looking normal and healthy for her age. She introduces herself as Mrs. Peyton, and then starts giving an overview of the course.

Danielle’s lack of sleep is beginning to catch up with her; she only got four and a half hours last night. She nods off without meaning to for a few minutes.

When she comes back to reality, Mrs. Peyton has changed the subject. “We have reason to believe that matter is actually just energy behaving a certain way for a short time,” she says.

Danielle stares out the window, into the parking lot. The sun is finally completely up.

“…and most people assume that dark matter and antimatter are the same, although that isn’t necessarily true.”

Danielle raises her hand, curious. Mrs. Peyton calls on her. “What exactly is antimatter?”

“Antimatter is matter, but the particles in its atoms have the opposite charge. Electrons have a positive charge, for instance,” Mrs. Peyton answers.

“So, then, what’s dark matter?”

“Dark matter is matter we can’t see with telescopes, but we know is there because of its gravitational effects.”

“And what you said before about matter just being energy acting a certain way…isn’t it true that matter is just energy, going, like, really fast?” Mrs. Peyton looks at Danielle oddly, and Danielle suddenly notices that several students in the class have been staring at her. She tries to keep the embarrassed blush off of her face. “I mean…because I saw this thing where it said if matter tries to go faster than the speed of light, it won’t be able to, and it’ll instead just get heavier,” she continues, recalling from some documentary on relativity that she’d watched with her parents when she was younger.

Mrs. Peyton shrugs. “Where did you hear that?”

“Just…on this…never mind,” Danielle mutters, her face a bright red now.

The teacher continues talking, taking the focus off of Danielle, and gradually she feels less embarrassed.

When class ends, Danielle follows Erika out.

“You’re really smart,” Erika comments.

“Oh, thanks,” Danielle replies, smiling, even though her discussion with the teacher in class made her feel the most awkward and dumb that she has all day.

“You going to be a scientist when you grow up?”

“No,” Danielle answers. “I’m going to be an author, actually,” she states, fully certain.

“Going to write science fiction books, then?”

Danielle shrugs. “Nah, stuff more like realistic fiction or fantasy.”

“Oh,” Erika responds, clearly baffled. “Well, my class is this way.”

“Alright. I’ll see you later,” Danielle says, and heads toward the Halder building.

Her Spanish class room number is 114, and the only options that lead to hallways are a set of stairs that go up and a set that go down. She chooses the one leading down, and then follows her instincts, managing to find the room pretty quickly.

The class is almost full. She finds a seat near the back, and then April from church recognizes her and waves. Danielle smiles and waves back.

There’s also another girl from Danielle’s church in this class, the smart, pretty, nice, seemingly perfect but sometimes very obviously broken brunette that had basically been the leader of the kids in her Confirmation class years ago. Danielle is pretty sure that the girl, whose name is Kaitlyn, recognizes her, but she doesn’t say hello.

The teacher, a woman with shoulder-length black hair who epitomizes the phrase “pleasantly plump,” immediately launches into an introduction to the class, in Spanish. Danielle is surprised to realize that she can tell the woman has an American accent; the words she speaks are not thick and quipped like the Spanish she’s used to, but thin, soft, and whispery. She struggles to understand, and has to raise her hand a few times to ask what a word is. When someone else asks something, no one reacts. However, when Danielle asks something, everyone around her turns to stare. She tries to ignore it, but feels mildly angry. It seems like they are judging her.

The class looks to be the most boring yet. Danielle begins to nod off again, and stares at the clock whenever she’s mostly awake. She hears enough to take down the homework, but spends most of her time wishing she could go home already. She has almost always been comfortable, no matter where she is, regardless of whether the place is familiar or not. She has been five thousand miles from home, in Hawaii, and she felt comfortable there. She has been to the Cayman Islands, to Florida, to California. But none of those places made her feel as isolated as she feels here, just six miles from her old town. This place, so similar to what she already knows, is unnerving in how alien it seems.

When the bell finally rings, Danielle packs up her things and goes outside, into the courtyard. She runs for the bus at the very front of the line. “Are you going to Rawsul Road?”

The bus driver blinks at her “These are the Bloomingfield busses,” she says.

“Oh. Where are the Westhill busses?”

“They’ll be here in maybe fifteen minutes,” the bus driver replies.

“Okay, thanks.” Danielle goes to stand by a large oak, thinking it odd that Westhill busses arrive so late, seeing as it is Westhill Academy.

The Bloomingfield busses leave after a few minutes. After fifteen minutes of anxious waiting, the Westhill busses arrive, true to the bus driver’s word. But Danielle can’t find her bus number from the morning, and panics, randomly choosing bus #10. “Are you going to Rawsul Road?” she asks the guy driving.

“Well, I don’t normally, but I know where that is – are you on this bus?”

“I don’t know,” Danielle confesses.

“Have a seat, I’ll take you to where you’re going,” the bus driver says, smiling.

“Thank you,” Danielle replies, smiling back, and then heads for the back of the bus.

Suddenly, Danielle sees Chloe. “Hey!” Chloe greets, waving.

Danielle waves back, looking for a way to sit near her, but the seats surrounding her are filled and she’s with someone else. She settles into an empty one closer to the front and pulls out her iPod, instantly unaware of anything but music.

The bus driver takes them to the middle school, where they park and wait while middle-schoolers get on and fill the front seats. Is this going to happen every day? Danielle wonders, dreading the thought.

Ten minutes later, Danielle gets dropped off at her new street, where she walks, singing along to her music, to her new house.

This is going to be her new life. She’s not so sure that she likes it.

Reviews

[Ryan Yates]

Hi, i read the 3 chapters, i like some of the dialogue and the idea behind it all.

here are a few of my thoughts on it so far.

1. I don't think it starts in the right place. She is in the classroom then you jump back to her walking through the courtyard. i think just start at the gate. maybe she can catch the eye of someone she recognises, maybe not sure where she knows the face from. that way you can describe her emotions as she passes the people. maybe something about a slight relief making it to the room and her seat. you could also describe the scenery while she is walking through it.

2. when the teacher chooses her, there should be more suspense and terror at being chosen. maybe her words don't come out right or she stutters. this is a chance for the reader to learn about her. is she cool and calm, does she panic, is she shy. this could be where she is shown as not confident and she learns through the chapters of the book to be confident and speak out more and make herself heard.

3. i think you can do without this line 'They are alight with this teacher; he is already one of the ‘cool’ ones in their books.' you have already shown this fact so it is better to not state it directly after. there are a few other bits like this you should take a look at too.

4. a feel the story slows up a little in the first chapter. maybe the disappearance should occur on her first day so the reader is straight into the action. also she would have no time to adjust to the new school before a huge problem appears. maybe she knows something and no one believes her which alienates her from potential friends.

5. i feel you need to make it a little more quick paced (thriller style). leave us with a question at the end of each chapter or give her a new problem to solve. everything seems a little too easy for her. be mean to her. maybe get her to do something that gets her in trouble but she knows its the right thing.

6. I think you are concentrating a little too much on the 'school stuff' and this isn't the most interesting part. It seems that the primary theme is the girl starting school and there is a lot of detail about classes etc. i feel your primary theme should be the missing boy as this is the interesting point of the story.

I hope this helps

I am writing too, hopefully you can take a look at my writing and give me some feedback too.