*****Chapter 3*****

-New School-

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

I woke to the sound of my 6:00am alarm telling me that it was a Monday yet again. Great. Today is the day that I start a new school. I was to be attending Paget High School which I researched using Google with my phones handy internet connection. The images on the web made the school look so…old and, well, neglected. It was tatty and messy looking; I didn't deserve to be in this hell hole. But like the old phrase goes:

'Don't judge a book by its cover'.

My snooze alarm went off (which it does every ten minutes) to signal me to get ready for school which also disrupted my thoughts. I opened my eyes to see a little light seeping through the blinds at the window. My eyes burned from lack of sleep and I was absolutely dreading going to school.

I decided that it was about time to get out of bed, so I got out from under my huge light blue solid color duvet cover (which my mother gave me before she past away) and stood on my lovely, thick cream carpet. I was still for a few seconds taking in the coldness of the air before I made my way towards the built-in, walk-in wardrobe that was opposite the bed and read the note that was stuck on the frosted sliding doors. It read:

"Don't forget to change your alarm time on your clock because school does not start until ten to nine in England. I would have done it for you but I don't know how. I did change, however, the actual time according to my phone. Good luck on your first day of school.

Dad."

'Well, thanks for the warning Dad!'

I slide open the frosted glass doors and walked into my wardrobe. I didn't think that I had enough clothes to fill a walk-in wardrobe when my dad mentioned it, but it was full to the rim. It was then that I realised that I didn't recognise anything surrounding me. The first thing that I noticed was the dress hanging on the right hand side of me. The material was red silk with a slit down the left side and there was white silk showing through it. Silver beads were surrounding the tip of the in a kind of firework style. Also hanging on the coat hanger was a silk red bolero, the same red as the dress material. The reason that that particular piece of clothing caught my attention was because I don't wear dresses. The last time I wore a dress was at my mother's funeral three years ago. Ever since then, dresses were a no-go, apart from at weddings and funerals.

I looked around the wardrobe to try and find something to wear when I spotted a pile of clothes which consisted of black trousers, a black sweater, a white shirt (with shoulder length sleeves) and a blue and white tie. There were 2 pieces of ivory paper with posh writing on it. This note said:

"Hi Ava,

We hope you like the clothes. We wanted to buy you something to welcome you to the area so we thought we'd get you some fashionable English clothes. Again, we hope you like them!

The Mathews.

X

P.S.- Ella will meet you out-side your house at twenty to nine."

The other note said:

"This is your school uniform. If you need any help with the tie then just ask me.

See you in the morning,

Ella"

I was momentarily frozen to the spot. A uniform?!?

Wow. I suddenly realised that buying me all of the clothes must have cost Ella's family a fortune! I would definitely have to find a way to repay them. But how? A quick glance at the clock told me that it was 6:30, so I put on the horrendous uniform (NOT including the tie) and walked sleepily down the stairs, towards the kitchen and made myself a bacon and egg sandwich. By the time I had finished eating it was seven o'clock, so I put on channel three on the T.V. and a programme called 'GMTV' was currently on air. After half an hour, I decided to get my bag ready, but that only took five minutes, so I went outside early locking the door behind me. I didn't realise how cold it would be so I went back inside to get my new winter jacket (even though it was summer). I was a little late getting back outside because I couldn't choose a jacket in the piles that I now have. In the end, I put on a thick, grey snow jacket with silk lining the inside and a fur hood, also grey. Ella was waiting patiently next to a silver Land Rover when she waved at me. I ran to her until I was about a foot away.

"My brother gives me a lift to school when the weathers not great. Is that alright with you?"

"Yeah. That's fine." was all I could get out of my chattering teeth, but Ella didn't seem cold at all, and she was only wearing her school sweater!She opened the door for me and I climbed up into the car and sat down on the heated seat. The sudden change in temperature made me shiver, shiver in pure delight.

"Hi. I'm Shane. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Like-wise." You could see his enormous muscles through his black, short-sleeved top. He was probably about seventeen or eighteen with pale white skin the same shade as Kyle's. He looked like a giant teddy bear. He had short, dark brown hair and golden eyes which had some tiny red specks in them.

I made up my mind to ask them about the clothes that they had bought me and how much it cost all together.

"Over to you, Ella."

"Thanks Shane, but I don't think I needed to be told that." She then turned towards me. "Well," she started, "Everything was designer and there's two of everything, so I'm guessing it was somewhere around………………..4 mill." My mouth dropped in shock.

"4 million???" I could only speak in a whisper but they managed to hear me.

"Yeah. But that's in pounds so it's only 2 million in dollars." She spoke so casually, like losing four million pounds was nothing.

We reached school in no time at all. It looked the same as it did in the pictures, maybe a few more things here and there, but near enough exactly the same. There were quite a few people there already as it was almost five to nine. Seven people started walking towards the car and when Ella saw my worried and confused expression, she told me that they were other members if her family. She also explained that the reason they didn't look alike in any way was because they were all adopted. We parked in the almost full parking lot and climbed down from the car.

I was bombarded by 'Hello''s and 'Welcome to England''s. I need to get away quickly before I faint.

"Let her get some air!" Two people shouted at precisely same time. A boy and a girl. It was like they read my mind. I mouthed the words 'thank you' to my two saviours and they smiled kindly in reply. The bell rang and people started walking off to (I think) they're first lesson. Luckily, Ella stayed with me and led me to the reception. The receptionist sitting at the desk looked up at me and I smiled in return.

"Hello, I'm Ava Greene. I'm new here."

"Ok. Here is your school planner were you write in all of your homework and things and this is your lesson plan. You have all of your lessons with Ella Black due to persistent requests." Her gaze turned towards Ella and she just smiled sweetly, though I think it was in annoyance rather than happiness.

"Thanks."

Having got everything I needed for the day, I walked with Ella to the room labelled 'T 7' and into room full of people. I felt my face colour rise significantly when I felt all of the eyes on me. I was towards the male teacher, who was probably around twenty-five, and handed him my note saying that I was late. He welcomed me to the school a said that I could sit at the back of the class next to Ella.

"Do you want me to fill in your planner for you?" She whispered to me because the teacher, who Ella told me was called Mr. Peters, was doing the register

"Please." I whispered back. She took the planner from the desk and wrote my name and form on the front, folded all of the homework pages in half apart from this week's page so that I could get to it quicker, wrote all of my lessons in a blue page near the back of the book and also put all of birthdays that she knew in the calendar of the next page. All of this only took five minutes, ten at the most, which amazed me. A bell went at nine o'clock and the teacher told everyone that there was no assembly which every person cheered about apart from me, but I guess that was because I didn't know what the assembly's where like. After twenty minutes of Ella walking me through what was actually in my wardrobe, another bell went and I was dragged to my feet. I followed her to 1st period, which was English, and handed my note to the female teacher who was called Mrs. Cooke. I soon figured out that we were learning about Shakespeare, a topic that I am really quite good at. The rest of the lessons went quite well, apart from Maths because although I'm in top set, I'm not actually very good at it.

At lunch, which we had after 3rd period History, I officially met the rest of the Mathews family. Each one of them had a partner within the family, but I didn't think that that was 'wrong' because they weren't technically related. There were five boys, all pale skinned apart from one, and five girls, including Ella. The boys were called Jack, Logan, Charlie, Tristan and surprisingly, Kyle, and the girls were Charlotte, Evelyn, Lucy, Hope and, of course, Ella. However, because there were quite a few names to remember and I had I bad memory anyway, I couldn't remember who was who, so I only used there names when someone else said them.

At the end of school, we all met back up in the parking lot, but as it was better weather than it was in the morning, Ella and I walking back. Kyle walked with us insisting that it would be safer. Although I though that it was nonsense, I kind of admired him for wanting to look after his sister.

We got onto our street about ten minutes after leaving school. We all said good-bye and I walked the rest of the way to my house, preparing myself with the questions that my dad was bound to ask.