This Girl

Chapter 1: Watch Where You're Going, Dude

"Okay," I shrug. I'll wear a cardigan instead.

"Now, you're driving yourself, Nat?" Mum asks me after turning to the boys, looking at their impatient faces. "C'mon you two."

Paul follows Mum out the door but Lucas stays behind, staring at their backs. I walk over to him. He looks up at me.

"What if they don't like me, Nat, what if they like Paul more?" he says nervously.

"They'll like you," I say, ruffling his hair. "If they don't, they're not your friends. You're a great person Lukey, don't doubt yourself."

He smiles at me and I hug him, whispering into his ear, "If they hurt you, I will personally hire a team of FBI agents to punch em' up."

He laughs and squeezes me once more before waving goodbye and following Mum and Paul, who are waiting on the street expectantly.

I grab my car keys from off the key tables and toss them into the air as I walk into the garage, catching them with one hand and repeating the action until I have to stop and unlock my car.

I open the garage door with the remote in the glove box and reverse out. I click the button to turn the radio on. My parents bought me my car for my sixteenth birthday. It's a white C-class Mercedes Sudan, and somehow was parked outside our house when we arrived. Mr Potter must be around somewhere, it was like magic.

"Thought I'd end up with Sean, But he wasn't a match, Wrote some songs about Ricky,
Now I listen and laugh," I turn up the radio and sing along with Ariana the whole three-minute trip to school which I scouted out on the weekend, memorizing the short route.

I do a few laps around the car-park, trying to find a spot closer than a hundred meters away. I can't find one, and so I settle for one of the only parks left. I lock my car and stuff my keys into my backpack.

I start walking to school and see a couple of groups of people, boy and girls, looking over at me curiously from where the stand against their cars, chatting. I pull the hood of my jumper over my head and walk with my head down until I reach the main office.

"Hello," I say to the receptionist lady.

"Hi," she says, looking at me from over her semi-circle glasses with a warm, kind expression. "And who might you be?"

"Oh, um..." I pull out a folder from my small back pack. She takes them. I tell her my name before she glances down at them.

"Oh, yes, that's right. I've got your schedule here... somewhere," she says and pops down for a second before returning with a page or two. She hands them to me. "There's a map there too, just so that you can find your way. If you have any questions you can come back here or ask another teacher. Have a great day, love."

And with that, she swings on her swingy chair and types something into a computer beside her. I walk off, pulling my hood up over my face and opening the map. I continue to walk to my classroom in A14, occasionally looking up to see if I'm going in the right direction.

Even though I know most people won't recognize me, I'm still cautious. I only had one friend when I lived here 9 years ago, Amanda. She turned on me, and left me alone, luckily my mum got a work call and we moved to Paris after I had just started at a new school.

I really don't think I've changed that much since I was here. When I showed Adele pictures of me she was totally confused, so hopefully people won't recognise me. Not that everyone who went to my elementary school would go to my new high school, but some would, I'm sure about that. Back then, I'd had completely blonde hair, not the brown-at-the-roots-with-light-blonde-ends-kind-of-like-a-natural-ombre-colour hair that I have now since I've never, ever dyed it in my life. I also had large gaps in my teeth when I was younger, which was fixed up with braces. I was really overweight back then, before I started running and going to the gym frequently.