Moonlight

The morning came far too soon for me; my alarm clock rang harshly, forcing me to jerk out of an almost pleasant sleep. I staggered up, blinking the sleep out of my eyes and fumbled trying to find the button which would kill those ear splitting beeps. Finally the thing died, and I slumped back onto my bed holding my head in my hands, cradling it, trying to make the morning seem less daunting.

I have to be the new girl, the one everyone stares at, the one people whisper about wondering who I am today. If that isn’t a scary thought I don’t know what is, the idea is starting to make my stomach feel nauseous and my heart beat accelerate. The funny thing is that I should probably be used to it, but when ever I walk down a new hallway or meet a stranger’s eyes (not a random stranger on the street but someone I may have to acknowledge daily over the space of a month or two, because that’s how long we generally stay in places) I panic.

This new school is, according to my mother, beautiful. Unfortunately this probably means that it will have ivy climbing up its walls, the doors will have cracks in it and I will have to live in constant fear of the ceiling caving in. It doesn’t even have a proper name, it’s just called ‘Skylan High School’ and I think the number of students is something like two hundred and forty six, that means that however I accidently humiliate myself everyone will know about it, what a cheering thought.

I groaned and stood up, walking over to the window I drew back the curtains. Staring out I saw my car outside, partly covered by ground mist, the sky is so grey I can’t even see the sun. Great, the perfect weather for my perfect mood, wet and miserable. That’s another reason to hate being the new girl, I always feel really, really hostile towards my mother, because, technically, it’s all her fault.

I love my mum, I honestly do, but since she’s an artist, when ever she gets bored with her surroundings we have to move so she can find her ‘muse’. Her ‘muse’ can range from a sky scraper to a sunny shop even to a coat stand, once. When we were in California the reason we moved there was because of the view in her bedroom, it was a collection of shops and every day a random woman would come and sit down outside one of the shops (a café) and she would order a drink, always a coffee. My mother painted her sitting there and called the portrait ‘Tradition’ lots of art critics tried to find some sort of symbolism in the title, but they never guessed the real, slightly eccentric, reason.

This time it’s the quiet seaside town of Skylan, or as I call it ‘the place of rain’ or ‘land where the sun doesn’t shine’ or if it does, I certainly haven’t seen it and I’ve been here for at least six days now. My mother took one look at the practically falling down houses, the stormy sea and the atmospheric cliffs and fell in love, she wanted to work on a slightly darker picture, different to ladies sitting outside shops drinking coffees, more storms and exiting things like that (note my sarcasm) it’s a pity she forgot all about me, and my feelings about moving.

I honestly don’t mind moving around a lot (well I don’t feel like I should be in therapy or anything because of it) but I don’t know…something about the atmosphere here, it seems sort of apprehensive, as though something is going to happen, something big (that’s probably the thing I should be in therapy for; my over active imagination!).

I remember when my mother took me here for the first time, surprise, surprise it was raining, but still my mother (being the individual women she is) decided it would be a great time to go for a walk on the stony beach.

It was freezing cold and the rain was the type of rain that no matter how many layers you’re wearing seems to get under them, leaving you’re skin cold and clammy. The waves were huge and I remembered seeing a few intrepid (or stupid) surfers struggling away from their cars towards the sea, their surf boards carried on their backs.

One of them saw us and he stopped and stared, causing the other one behind him to crash into him. I suppose it have must been the shock of seeing someone new, Skylan doesn’t exactly look like a tourist resort! However it was so rainy I couldn’t make out their faces or expressions, but from their size I guessed they were roughly my age, maybe a little younger. One of them (after staring long enough to make a blush rise to my cheeks and make me find something very interesting in one of the pebbles lying on the ground at my feet) waved to us. I knew this because my mother dug me in the ribs, causing me to look up at the surfers and her, and said