The Switch Test
Chapter 1 - True to myself
Note: This book is similar to Forgotten by Cat Patrick
(who is a very good author), because it tells the life story of a girl lost on her own
with her very own problems. Much like the main character in Forgotten.
I'd never taken a moment to contemplate what life was like for people other than myself. I'd always had what I wanted. Nothing more, nothing less. Never wondered what their life would be like. I didn't want to because no living soul on earth was as good as me, nobody as perfect. So thinking about somebody else's life rather than my own just wouldn't have been a pleasant experience for me. I hoped that I would never have to think about a poor person or a slightly lower-class person in my entire life. If I knew how very wrong I was!
At 8:00 I arrived at Coat of Arms School. I wondered why I was ever applied at the place. It was so unlike my parents - well, my father. I always looked up to him. A successful businessman working in a top office. My mother was as smart and successful as my father but she never wanted me to follow the route my father had always wanted for me. To be at the top and working for a huge company, at the top of the academic achievement records. She wanted me to live a normal life with just the same opportunities as students with less wealth and achievment as us. So in an attempt to change my mind as to who I wanted to be she sent me here. Unfortunately her plan had no effect on me.
I walked into the classroom and was greeted the same as always. With complete and utter silence. Just the way I liked it. I told myself that nobody was good enough to talk to me, but really that was just to make myself feel that it was my decision that I didn't have friends. Really it wasn't. My body was divided into two walls. The outer wall was the wealth and the spoilt part of me, the part everyone sees. But there was a smaller inside wall, one that even I didn't ask to come out. One that held the tuths about me and what I really felt when greeted with silence and only having study books as friends. This was the part of me I didn't show to anyone. And nobody was to know about it, that was one of my strange rules that once made cannot be broken.
I didn't say a word as normal. My bag, which was a rectangular shaped school bag, more like a black satchel actually, was pushed off my shoulder and onto the square shaped and very dull, boring and grey desk. Grey is an interesting colour. It's not been looked into very much. Imagine green, I'm sure there would be a larger amount who would have thought of light green. But with grey I'm not sure which shade of grey you would think of first. But thinking about it some more I realise it was probably the light grey, the same colour as my table. You're going to have to get used to my endless talking its what happens when you have a wealthy family and when you have too much information in your head. You have to think about every little thing around you and because you are so smart it only takes a snap to remember.
I stepped over to my desk, inside my two feelings were proud and sad. But I was only sad on the inside, I wouldn't show that, I didn't believe I physically could, for all I'd been through. If I was using a similie to desciribe my life i would say "As dead and cold as a stone." Like that film, 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers,' where they suck all your emotions and soul from your living body. My life had hardly any emotion on the outside, just like a stone.
The only sound from my mouth would be to answer my name in the register. I was too proud to talk to other people or the teachers. Or so I liked to believe.
First lesson, Geography. The teacher talked about Svalbard and what amazing things lived there. You would think that I got picked on to answer questions, but seeing as I got 100% in all my tests the teachers didn't seem to mind. Jennifer Miles twiddled her curly hair, in the same way she always did when she was nervous. I sort of took this as a sign and looked around the room for any strange sightings. But I decided that it was just that I was staring at her for more than I probably should. Next time I just had to take a quick glance, then I would be sure it wasn't me she was nervous about.
When the bell sounded I made no movement but inside inside I jumped as it interuppted my thoughts. It seemed that Jennifer felt the same way. We were both thinking deeply, only about totally different things. Not thinking about other peoples lives, is not strictly true, I mean, I really didn't want to think about their lives, or what they were thinking, but recently I hadn't been capable to stop myself letting in on my classmates thoughts. I was quite a good thinker - when I was little I always thought I could read peoples minds. But soon practising that was banished by a certain person called 'My dad.' Sometimes I think he was a bad parent for me, stopping me practice even the little skill I found fun. But I suppose looking back he was only trying to do what was best for me, what he had believed was right. I shouldn't blame it on anyone.
It was just one of those days when my inner wall tried to come out and kept telling me to look into other peoples thoughts, to do what had been banished from my life for years now. But it was getting harder to ward off. I had to be like my father, that was my highest rule.
In lunch I spotted Jessica Owens eating with two of her friends. It disgusted me what she was living, her mother and father wanted to be divorced but they didn't have enough money to live on their own so they had to stay together with Jessica in a small flat. I know this because I had to listen to it in my P.S.H.E lesson. For some reason she wasn't afraid to tell the whole class her family problems. But from what I had already heard I really didn't want to learn anymore about her horrible family.
P.S.H.E is a strange lesson. You talk about life choices and who you wanted to be. The one leson i paid attention in, but unfortunately paying attention resulted in listening to other peoples family choices as well. Not pleasant for me. My choices in life were pretty different to everybody elses, for example with work and housing when I became an adult. I wanted to be a buisness woman, others wanted to be a vet, doctors and authors and all kinds of different helpers. That was the difference, I didn't want a job that involved saving and helping people. And i have never known why I had never been interested in helping people, I guess I got the hard attitude from my father.
Jessica had a hard life but she had friends and some of her world she loved. The opposite of me. I didn't love my world, I went along with it. It wasn't my choice, I didnt make choices. Choices weren't mine to make, they just weren't mine. So as the scgool day went by I continued my stone-impersonations and from someone elses point of view It must have looked like I was the walking dead.