Silverstone

Chapter 1

There were only two schools in Silverstone, one for boys and one for girls. From the age of five, all the children in Silverstone started at the school dedicated to their gender. The two schools were Silverstone's Academy for Boys and Silverstone's Academy for Girls. Silverstone was a small town next to a lake, and standing tall behind the town were the Silverstone Mountains. Silverstone was in the middle of nowhere in Canada, and it was a pretty average place, even perhaps a bit boring. Everyone in Silverstone seemed very happy with their lives, you almost never heard a complaint out of anyone. The locals liked to say there were lots of things to do, but could never name anything. Really there was nothing there.

Brooklyn Edwards had been living there for ten years, after her Dad, Luke decided to move them back to his hometown. The only things to do were go down to the lake and swim in the slightly polluted lake (maybe catch some horrible rare disease from the murky brown water) or go up Silverstone Mountain and look at the view of nothing that went on for miles in every direction. The only interesting things were the mall and the skate park but even they got boring and "same old" over time. Brooklyn Edwards hated Silverstone. She wished her family had stayed in Vancouver. She liked it there so much more. The thing she missed the most about Vancouver was mixed schooling. There you could go to a co-ed school and make lots of friends, boys, and girls, with no hassles. In Silverstone, the boys and girls are separated at the age of five and only saw each other when the school wanted them to go to the embarrassing dances, rare sports events or forced music festivals.

Brooklyn was quite small for 15, she was a beautiful girl, even though she didn't like to think about it. She had gorgeous dark brown shoulder length hair that liked to curl when it got wet, large hazel eyes and the cutest button nose. She loved to pair different kinds of clothing together - her newest favorite was tight shorts or jeans and big baggy tops tucked in. Over the summer holidays, she had bought herself a pair of cherry red, patent leather Doc Martens that she loved with all her heart. Brooklyn was a very smart girl but she was also very shy. Before moving to Silverstone Brooklyn loved school, but now it felt like torture. She hated the fact she had to go to a girls-only school. She thought the uniform was even worse than the school and even the girls in it. The uniform was made up of three colours - Black, Silver, and Blue. They wore a white shirt with a blue and silver striped tie, a black quite short pleated skirt with knee-high black socks and black shoes. The only acceptable part of the uniform was the Blaser, matching for both the schools. It was black and edged with silver and blue stripes, the shape was quite boxy meaning that it covered up Brooklyn's shape, which she liked.

Brooklyn hated school. She thought the girls were annoying and the classes were even worse. When her family was looking at the course list, it said they did "technologies to train our girls for the workplace." Brooklyn thought that was going to be woodwork, metalwork, digital technology, and cooking, but when she got to school she discovered that she was very, very wrong. They did cooking but the other "technologies" were needlework, dressmaking, laundry, and housewifery - unbelievable! Brooklyn hated these subjects. She never understood why they couldn't do the same subjects as the boys, but the school was very strict about these subjects being important, and something the girls had to learn to be "good citizens". There was one thing that made this nightmare even more intolerable, and that was the sports they let the girls take. Tennis, badminton, horse riding, volleyball, and netball. No girl was allowed to play any fun sports like football or basketball. No, they had to play "girly sports" where the uniform was disgusting and just plain wrong for the sport. Brooklyn had never understood why all girls must play sports in tiny wrap-around skirts that hardly cover the bum and tops whose necklines were so low half a girl's boobs were out.

"Why must girls always be exposed with tiny tops and skirts but boys get to be almost completely covered?" Brooklyn asked angrily to her best friend Emilia Henderson.