August crept through the school gates like a sickness.
The air was too warm for morning, thick enough to cling to the back of my throat as I walked through the crowd gathering outside the entrance. Everyone else seemed sharpened by summer, louder laughs, brighter faces, skin still carrying traces of sunburn and freedom. I felt grey beside them. Like a paragraph left in monochrome,whilst everyone else was colourised.
The lining on the pad of my shoe scooped up the years of dirt that were in the playground. A bus hissed somewhere behind me. Someone shouted at me from across the courtyard,
"Fat arse"
I flinched as it echoed off the concrete walls hard enough to make my head ache. I kept walking. The school stood exactly as it had in June, all cold windows and peeling paint, but after six weeks away, it looked unfamiliar in the cruelest way possible, like returning to a house after a funeral. Nothing changed, yet somehow everything had
Groups formed naturally around me, people colliding into hugs and stories about beach trips, parties, drunken mistakes they would laugh about for months. I slipped through them unnoticed, my hands buried deep inside my blazer pockets despite the heat.Hiding the past,behind my smile,acting as if it was normal to be the only one not wearing short sleeves.
The sky hung low and white above the building. It's not raining. Not sunny. Just empty. A girl beside me complained about being tired already. Her friend laughed and said,
"We've been back ten minutes."
I chuckled, responding,
"Not even"
One of the girls replied,
"I wasn't speaking to you."
Ten minutes were enough. The closer I got to the doors, the heavier my body became, as if the building itself was pulling me inward. Every step felt rehearsed. Same route. Same walls. Same exhaustion waiting patiently for me inside. Someone barged into my shoulder and muttered a quick sentence telling me to move before disappearing ahead.Somebody laughed so loud,everyone in the hallway winced and I jumped out of the way to avoid a pair that were sharing earbuds.
I almost envied how easily people moved. I stopped for a second at the entrance, staring at my reflection warped faintly in the glass doors. Pale face. Half-dead eyes. My Tie was sitting crooked around my neck like it was trying to strangle me softly.Mrs Macdougal stopped me and said,
"Is this another of you dressing like you are going to a funeral?"
Then the bell rang, and the building swelled with noise. The corridors were packed tight, students pressed together like sardines in a rusted tin. Muddy shoes smeared the once-white tiles into brown streaks as everyone shoved past one another, desperate to get somewhere first. Voices crashed against the walls in uneven waves of laughter, shouting, and lockers slamming shut hard enough to make me flinch.
I kept my head down and moved through the crowd slowly, letting people brush past my shoulders as if I were invisible. The air smelled of rainwater soaked into blazers and the sharp sting of cheap deodorant sprayed far too heavily.
I hurried up the stairs toward the gym hall, my heartbeat growing louder with every step. Students clustered near doorways and corners, lingering there to avoid class for a few extra minutes, their conversations dropping into whispers whenever a teacher passed. Some laughed too loudly, others stared at their phones as though the screens could swallow them whole.
As I neared the locker room, I stopped abruptly.
Something twisted in my stomach.
I stepped back from the doorway and pulled myself into the shadow beside the peeling trophy cabinet. My eyes flicked across the corridor carefully, searching the sea of faces to make sure nobody had followed me. Nobody is looking. Nobody noticed. I snuck out to the woods that were situated behind my school, carefully peering down at my shoes, which matched the early autumn tone of the ground to ensure that I was not stepping in any dog shite.
