I rolled over and counted down the minutes until my alarm went off. I had woken up three minutes early; that made it three minutes left to enjoy the warmth of my bed before I had to officially wake up and face the day. I didn’t want to. I had school. It was a hundred and ninety days until I was free to leave school- not that I was counting down, or anything.
The alarm went off, offensively loud, and I turned it off quickly before it could do much more damage to my eardrums. The noise always seemed so harsh to me. Surely waking up should be calm, easy; you shouldn’t be terrified and deafened that early in the morning.
I sighed as I pushed the duvet away from me, shivering in the air of the room even though, in reality, it probably wasn’t that cold. It just seemed it to me, after the warmth of my bed. I yawned and stretched, clicking my back as I did so. I went straight into doing sit ups, not many, just enough to ensure I was truly awake. It was a habit that I would hopefully grow out of soon. I looked forward to not having to worry about the way I looked. That came with age, apparently.
The shower was lukewarm due to the fact that the boiler had been shut off for a couple of hours. It was still warm enough to mist up the mirror, for which I was thankful. It sounded rather girlish to say, but I hated seeing my reflection in the mirror. I didn’t look like a man should. Men should be tall, muscular, handsome. I was average height, average build, average looks. Everything average, even my personality.
I left the bathroom and, once back in my room, got dressed in my school uniform; dark grey (almost black) trousers with a white shirt and a plain black tie. I say plain black, the school emblem was at the top, but you had to tie it so that it was hidden. You weren’t supposed to, but that was the rule amongst students- I didn’t understand it, but I didn’t question it either.
My hair was still slightly damp from the shower as I went downstairs to make myself breakfast. I wasn’t particularly hungry but I knew that it was good for people to eat in the mornings, and so I did. I stuck a piece of bread in the toaster and set the timer before going into the living room and turning on the TV.
The house was silent. My parents were at work.
I flicked on the TV but couldn’t find anything that wouldn’t melt my brain, and the music channels were still asleep, so I switched the set off again. I crossed the room to our small record player and picked out a vinyl at random, not looking at what it was as I put it on. It turned out to be The B-52’s eponymous debut album. I went back into the kitchen and picked up the toast as the high-pitched vocals at the beginning of Planet Claire filled the downstairs of my house.
Swinging myself up on the counter, I bit into the toast, only to find it was too hot to eat. I dropped it quickly back onto the counter and slipped off, landing lightly on my feet, and ran upstairs again to pack my bag. I checked the time and realised I didn’t have long till I had to leave; I must have had a longer shower than usual, which was weird for me as I am usually good at time management. I pulled on socks, shoes, brushed my teeth, grabbed my bag and my denim jacket with the Alice Cooper “School’s Out” patch sewn onto the sleeve, before rushing back downstairs. My satchel bag was black, per the school rules’ request, but I had sewn various band patches onto that also. I dodged into the living room and packed away The B-52’s vinyl and switched off the record player.
It was only after I had locked the front door that I remembered my toast on the kitchen counter.
My hair, which was somewhat long nowadays, was kept in my eyes for a reason as I walked along the pavement. I didn’t want to see anyone. If I saw someone I knew, I had to talk to them. And I didn’t want to. This was also why I spent most of my life listening to my IPod; it helped me avoid people.
I’m not exactly socially awkward, not at all, really, I have quite a lot of friends. I just prefer solitude. I find it difficult not to fit into society but to understand it; everything seemed to me to be propaganda for solidarity, but in reality everyone just bitched about each other. They tried to better each other. And I couldn’t understand why.
So I kept my head down as I walked along the pavement. It wasn’t exactly cold out but I liked to wear my jacket because it helped people get a sense of who I am. It showed my individuality. If you see a person in a uniform, all you know is that that is what they have to wear. If you see them wearing a jacket with an Alive Cooper patch on it, you know they like Alice Cooper. You know something more about them.
My school wasn’t too far away, only a couple of blocks, but I liked to draw out the journey as long as possible so that it wasn’t obvious that I was ignoring people as we waited for the school blocks to open. So, I dawdled along and kicked stones as I went, and by the time I got to my form room- which, incidentally, happened to be in the block furthest away from the school gates (science)- I was actually late.
I took my usual seat at a lab desk near the back of the room, in between two of my friends.
Mitch looked up from his dilapidated comic book as I sat down and nodded to me. He was like me in that he didn’t like to speak much. It was a good friendship because we always understood and respected this quality in each other. The girl to my right, however, Mollie, talked enough for all three of us. The three of us had met as little kids when our mothers all took us to the same playgroup. After that we’d gone to the same schools and lived in the same area. It was, to be honest, the perfect formula for a friendship.
And so Mollie continued to talk at me more than to me, and I didn’t really listen to her. Eventually she stopped speaking and decided to play with my hair instead. She liked to style my hair. I didn’t mind what she did seeing as my hair would fall back into place no matter what she did to it.
We were registered and then left the lab to go to our first class. Mollie didn’t have English first period like me and Mitch did, she had it third period, so she went off to History class instead. We hugged goodbye to her before walking away to the English block. It seemed weird to have a whole block of classrooms dedicated to one subject, but our school had rather a lot of students, more than a usual school; it was probably due to the fact that the more students as school has, the more money it receives.
So we arrived at English, and Mitch and I sat next to each other as this class didn’t have a seating plan. We got out our books and settled down quickly as we both liked the subject. I pulled my IPod out of my pocket and offered him a headphone whilst we waited for our teacher to arrive. The classroom slowly filled with our fellow students and they all sat around, laughing and talking loudly, until Miss Corah arrived.
“Okay, everyone, take out your books please…” she said. “Okay, so who would like to read out their homework?”
A couple of people offered their hands and Miss Corah sighed. It seemed to me that every class had a certain group of students who always answered, and no-one else ever put their hand up. Miss Corah was clearly thinking the same thing as her eyes scanned the class- landing on me.
“Alex- would you care to offer your view on the Id, the Ego and the Superego, and their representations in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde?” she asked. I sighed and pushed my chair back from the desk, standing up shakily and clutching at my homework. Miss Corah liked people to stand when they read their work aloud. I hated public speaking.
“Stevenson’s book conveys conventions of its time period- interests in horror and the gothic, religious connotations and references to the Freudian theory. Psychoanalytical theory suggests that every person has an Id, the bad part of them, and a Superego, the good part of them. Seeing as the Id and the Superego are at two different ends of the spectrum, you need something in the middle; an Ego. Every person is supposedly an Ego. You, supposedly, have a proportional balance between your Id and Superego. In the book, Dr Jekyll finds a way to split apart his Ego nature, resulting in the creation of Mr Hyde, whereby Jekyll represents the Superego and Mr Hyde the Id. This allows for Hyde to commit crimes without remorse, for example, the murder of Carew. And as the split allows Jekyll to become a different person, he is not a suspect for the crime. The book, however, does show that when an Id is allowed to act as it pleases, it can take over and eradicate the good part of a person.” I read aloud.
“A good thesis, Alex- well done.” she remarked.
I sat back down quickly and waited for the blush to slowly fade from my cheeks. Miss Corah moved on to hear other people’s work, but I didn’t pay much attention to them. I just continued to recover from my bout of public speaking. Gross.
Today, sadly, English class was rather uneventful. We studied parts of the novel and Miss Corah seemed to have to explain Freudian theory to the rest of the class a thousand more times… Maybe if they actually paid attention the first time round we wouldn’t have to go over it so much. And then me and Mitch wouldn’t have to sigh and be bored.
And then we were suddenly packing up our books and heading back out into the hallway. My second lesson was Chemistry but Mitch had Music Tech, so we parted ways and I headed back over to the science block. I was early and so I had to wait outside for a bit, and whilst people nodded to me as they passed, I was left alone. The corridor slowly emptied of students and became silent, but my teacher hadn’t arrived yet so I had to stay outside. One other person, Becky, I think her name was, was leaning against the opposite corridor wall, ignoring me.
I swear I saw movement further down the corridor out of the corner of my eye, but after turning my head I could see that the corridor was still empty.
Mr Cunningham arrived and entered the classroom just as the rest of the students turned up. I took my assigned seat in the middle row and swung my bag off of my shoulder and onto the lab table.
“Today, guys, we will be continuing with Empirical Formula, so if you could all get your books out…” Cunningham said. I sighed; no practical today.
The seat beside me was dragged back and the girl sat down. I had sat next to her every Chemistry lesson for the last six months, and I still didn’t know her name. I was too shy to ask, and she always seemed to cover the name label on her book over with her homework diary in exactly the same position each time. Possible OCD… We barely ever spoke to each other. She liked to be silent, so did I- or maybe we were both just that little bit too socially awkward?
Cunningham started to write on the board at the front of the class, so I turned my attention to him. As much as I enjoyed practical work, I loved doing Empirical Formula. It seemed to be just about the only thing in Chemistry that I could actually do. That was the annoying thing about Chemistry; I loved every aspect of it but could rarely do the work.
So the whole class fell into silence and we just started to write.