Chapter One

First Day of School

Maria burst through the doors of her new high school, clutching her book bag to her chest and ran down the hallway, her old boots clattering on the shiny floor. The building was far bigger and grander than she'd expected, and it took three very long corridors before shereached the Headteacher's Office. Catching her breath, she knocked briskly on the large, intimidating wooden door.

A small woman's head with a pair of glasses at the end of her nose popped out.

"Yes?" she inquired snootily.

"Hello. I'm from the Convent, I'm the new student. It's a pleasure to meet you Headmistress." Maria responded quickly, nervous and excited.

"I'm the secretary." The woman replied coldly, looking down her nose at Maria. "Wait here please."

"Oh," Maria began, but the woman had already slammed the door.

Feeling somewhat of an anticlimax, Maria went to sit on the hard wooden bench opposite the door, but she felt anxious and couldn't sit still.

Something caught her attention in a doorway next to the Headteacher's Office. It was an enormous glass awards cabinet filled with shelves of glittering engraved plaques, trophies, medallions and shields, and next to each one a framed black and white photograph of its owner. Maria rose from her seat and followed her curiosity through the open doorway into the room. She was mezmorized by the prestige and opulence of the cabinet's contents and approached it, putting her hands on the glass to get a better look. When she did, she found that one of the doors swung slightly; it was not locked.

Following her impulse without thinking about it, Maria opened the cabinet and took out the largest, shiniest award from the center. She was excited to have the opportunity to be at this school, where children were sent from across Austria, and even from Germany and Switzerland, to receive the finest education money could buy. For the first time in her life she had been given a taste of opportunity. She had never seen anything so rich and splendid as this trophy in all her life, let alone been near it. It was heavy and vibrant in her hands. She read the engraving:

National Youth Championship Games

Rowing Team, Captain: Georg Von Trapp.

She was no rower, but Maria had always had a powerful imagination and dreamt as a child of becoming a famous opera singer or pianist or novelist or stage actress. Holding the trophy high above her head, she let the wonder take over and imagined now that she was receiving the award for the best singer in all of Austria.

"Thank you! Thank you!" She bowed and brandished the trophy high and proud, beaming at her imaginary audience giving her an imaginary standing ovation.

"What are you doing?"

The voice startled her and she spun around quickly, almost dropping the trophy. She came face to face with a boy, about her age perhaps a little older. He was very handsome; he had dark way hair that fell roguishly into his bright blue eyes, that seemed to twinkle even as they glared at her, and she could see through his impeccably smart uniform that he was in excellent physical shape. He was standing very stiff, frowning at her as if she were crazy, and as his eyes travelled quickly up and down her, she felt she was being appraised and was suddenly conscious of her shabby dress and messy hair, which she usually paid no mind to.

"I…Nothing…I'm new here. My name is Maria"

"That", he pointed at the object in her hand "Is mine."

"Oh. So you must be Georg." She offered her hand to shake his. He looked at it and instead took the trophy out of her other hand.

"I don't know how things were at your previous school, Maria, but here we don't play with things that don't belong to us."

Maria couldn't quite work this boy out. He seemed in earnest, but that would make him the most deathly serious person she'd ever met, even worse than Sister Bertha, and the twinkle in his eye, though perhaps he didn't realise it, betrayed his true nature, she thought.

"Well I'll remember that in future, Captain Von Trapp, sir" Maria did a mock salute and laughed to herself. She thought for a moment he was laughing too, like a tiny twitch which he suppressed, which then manifested itself as shock and outrage. As he opened his mouth to say something, the secretary appeared behind them.

"The Headmaster will see you now." She said. Then, noticing the scene before her, added, "And what are you two doing in here? Georg Von Trapp. I would have expected better of you, give me that." She snatched the trophy from him and replaced it in the cabinet, closing the door and locking it with a key from her pocket.

"Back to class, boy, at once!" she scolded.

Georg turned on his heel, throwing Maria a moody look which was part furious, part injured. She didn't understand why (she hadn't met many boys before) but the look hit her somewhere in the region of the heart, and she felt it all the way through her meeting with the Headmaster and all the way down the four corridors that took her to her first class.