The Infant

The Infant Chapter 10

~~~~~Chapter 10: Scratch that!~~~~~

I stare, staring at the big scratch I have on my arm. I take a step back and collapse on my bed. I sit on my bed, looking at the piece of paper now. This is really starting to get scary. I get dressed in my uniform, go down stairs and make myself breakfast. Everyone was still sleeping, but then dad came downstairs, and greeted good morning. "So, starting to get excited about school?" he asked, with a smile on his face. "Well, I really don't know what to expect." I reply. Dad starts making coffee while I sit down, eating my cereal. I quickly munch away, since there is nothing to talk about, I start to feel awkward, so I say "Dad, do you know anything about the infant?" Dad just doesn't say a word for a minute, just his head down, trying to perfect his coffee. "Dad?" I ask, for his attention. He looks up, with his cup of coffee in his hand. "What?" he asks, cluelessly. Gosh, he wasn't even paying attention. I just walk to the sink, put my bowl in and sit back down. I repeat and ask if he knew anything about the infant. He just says yes.

I look at him. "Well, what do you know about the infant then?" I ask, curiously. Then Amy comes down and starts shouting out "Good morning, good morning!" I started getting annoyed with the interruption. "Morning, how was your sleep?" Dad asks Amy. Amy sits down with us, and has her eyes adjusted to puppy eyes. "Well, I actually had dream." She says, cute that she misses out words in her sentences. "What was it about?" I ask, having more curiosity in me. "Well, I saw baby, very pretty, but she sad, she was crying,"she says. "It made me sad too, but then baby smiled, and looked bad, and dream ended."she finishes, and I just sit there with my eyes wide. Totally left speechless. Ok...that just made me so...Ow! My scratch! My scratch starts throbbing in pain, I look at my scratch to find that it has turned black, not like a scab, it just looks black, and not too deep. It starts easing on the pain, but it looks horrible, there are these sort of black veins surrounding the scratch, and it looks horribly gross. I stare at it. My dad finds it curious that I am staring down. "Marie, what's wrong, what are you looking at?" he asks. I say I'm fine, and I start making my lunch.

I am all packed, and ready to go. Mum asks if I have everything, and weirdly has a checklist for all my school stuff. She starts asking me if I have this, if I have that, and just goes on and on. When she finally approves that I have everything, we set off. Amy needs to be taken to day care, so Amy is in the car too. She starts singing lame songs like Old MacDonald and Hokey Pokey. She sings like a crow, all croaky and loud, but somewhat cute. I arrive at the foot of the school gate. I start getting really nervous, I am so glad I had a jumper on so I could cover my scratch. As I walk into the school hallway, there are a bunch of kids about my age, some older but they were all chatting away with their friends, in small groups. There were heaps of lockers in rows, going all across to the never ending hallway. Then there is the school logo, there is a picture of this man, I'm guessing it's St Paul, since that is the name of this college. As I walk in through the hall, I see this trendy looking woman, wearing stilettos, a colourful dress, fancy looking glasses, and black hair, above her shoulders. Her face all of a sudden lit up, as soon as she looked at me.

"Ah, if it isn't Ms Marie Corte." she greeted. I was surprised that she called me "Marie Corte" since my actual last name has always been Thompson. "That's me." I reply, trying to pull a promising smile. "I have been expecting you, my name is Mrs Pokins and I will give you a short tour around the school before my meeting I must attend to, let's go!" she says, walking ahead of me. She shows me most of the classrooms I will be in throughout the year, which locker was mine, what my code was to open my locker, how to log in to computers, showed me the basketball courts, oval and outdoor area and gave me a complete timetable on the classes I need to attend to. It was actually a fast tour, and soon enough, she set off. It was 10 minutes before school started, and if you haven't noticed, I suck at meeting new people, especially making new friends. As I put my bag into my locker, this girl, she had the type of nerdy glasses, freckles, blonde hair tied back in two pig tails and had the sort of bunny teeth, like two teeth way more visible than the rest when she smiled, tapped me on the shoulder and said "Hi, my name is Miranda, you're new here right?" She looked nerdy, but really cute, even her voice was cute. "Yeah, hi my name is Marie, nice to meet you too." I say, smiling back at her.

Miranda ended up being in all my classes, which I was very happy about. I met Miranda's two other friends, Sarah and Tracy. They were really friendly as well. I was actually quite eager about asking them about the infant when lunch came. As we all sat down and ate our lunch, I felt that I had the urge to ask. "Hey guys, do you know anything about..." I stop for a moment. "About?" Tracy asks, wondering what I was going to say. "The Infant?" I finish off. All three girls look up at me at the same time. Then Miranda chokes on her lunch. She starts coughing and Sarah keeps on patting her on the back. When Miranda stops choking, she looks at me again. "You know?" Miranda asks.