I counted time with the ticks of my watch. Every sixty ticks meant one less minute until the bell rang; one less minute until summer. Unfortunately, despite being an English teacher Miss Rhode did not know the definition of "Last Day of School" so I was shut in her after lunch double period with an unfathomably hard close reading exercise.
Sixty more ticks. Only five minutes left.
"Sandra, d'you want to head to the library after school?" whispered my best friend, Josie, from the desk in front.
"Why? We've spent the last two hours reading this passage."
"This isn't interesting though. We-"
"Miss Baxter, will you kindly stop talking to Miss Forester. Or has it escaped your notice that you are in a classroom?"
Ten ticks till summer. Nine, Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one---
"WOOHOO! It's summer."
"Need I tell you two again?"
"Sorry Miss but you can't tell me anything for the next six weeks" I yelled
"I can't believe you said that" exclaimed Josie, exiting the classroom
"Neither can I!"
On the way through the building, I checked my reflection in a darkened window. I had finally dyed my hair a satisfactory shade of bleach blonde with some sky blue touches at the bottom -which matched the frames of my glasses.
"Will you stop admiring yourself?"
"Okay, okay. Library."
The library wasn't far from the school, in fact, nothing was far from anything in the town. There was one long, wide main street, with clusters of little bunting fronted stores selling knick-knacks for the tourists, and narrow lanes spilling out into the streets of older housing. And at either end where the bands of modern housing estates, invading inwards to the dwindling tranquillity of the town and outwards into the ever shrinking farms and woodland.
The rain was slapping heavily against the pavement when they exited the school, typical British weather, why couldn't I live a bit closer to the equator? I was going to get soaked in about five seconds; the water would easily penetrate the thin white shirt of my despised uniform. Plus I had no jacket, not even my maroon school cardigan. At least in August I'd be losing the maroon as would be wearing the black of the senior school. I never liked black, I would rather be clad in pale blues and purples, but anything's better than maroon -the colour that seemed to be solely used for school uniforms. Running up the main street raindrops coated my glasses, limiting my sight so I never saw the woman that I run straight into.
"Sorry!" I yelled to the woman who I relished was Mrs Jardine, my closest neighbour who worked as a nurse in the nearest city despite the fact that she was about eighty years old.
"Sandra Forester! I'm going to tell your mother about your horrendous manners."
Mum wouldn't care what the old crackpot rattled on about anyway. People said she was crazy, and I had always wondered why she was the one working in the hospital instead of being locked up in there.
Josie and I ran into the library and shook of raindrops at the doorway, I didn't get her obsession with books. Sure some of them where pretty good when your reading them but I never thought about them twice. Josie on the other hand, she was still fixated over a book months after she turned the last page.
"Why do you need to go to the library just now anyway?"
"I was bored, wanted a browse. Plus I need to get you into some good books."
Not again, I was tired of her trying to shove literature down my throat. Plus it was romance -the last "amazing book" I had endured made me make retching noises.
"Here, read this, you'll love it!"
The front cover of the book thrusted in my face was emblazoned with the title "the werewolves curse".
"Ooh werewolves; is this some sort of horror novel?"
"You've never heard of the werewolves curse! It's the biggest werewolf story ever!"
I turned to the blurb.
"It's romance! How do werewolves and romance even mix, that's just weird."
"Get with the times. This is what people are reading these days."
"Its just not my thing." I wandered out of the teenage section of the library and without thinking moved to the non-fiction section and pulled out a book on Egyptian mythology.
"Oh, of course! You've got that big holiday coming up. When are you going again."
"Tomorrow night, for two weeks"
"And you're leaving me all alone."
"It's that or shoving you in my suitcase and we tried fitting me into your suitcase back when we where nine and if it didn't work then it won't work now."
"Okay, okay! Do you think Miss Jardine's gonna go blabbing about your horrendous manners!" She said the last bit in a squawking imitation of my neighbour.
"Nah, she won't go out her way. If she does no one'll care anyway."
"What is her problem anyway? Why is it that everyone thinks she's crazy?"
"I only know rumours but she apparently had this sister, a twin I think. There was something wrong with her, disabilities or something, I don't know. She wasn't seen much in public but eventually when she was in her twenties people realised she was gone. When people asked Miss Jardine about where she was she would tell them: "They took her; they killed her." or something to that effect."
"Wow, mysterious."
"Better than that dumb werewolf story!"
"Honestly Sandra! It's not dumb!"
"I'll be the judge of that."
In the end I left the library with the werewolves curse tucked in my school bag. I was still shaking with the cold when my dad pulled up in front. He dropped Josie of in the ugly orange clones of the housing estate and headed on into the path through the woods.
"Have you got your suitcase packed yet?"
"How could I have not? I've been dreaming of this holiday since I was seven!"
The Egyptians had been my favourite topic in Primary School, there was something brilliant about the vibrancy and sheer difference of their civilisation from our own. I had wanted to see the red desert sands at the pyramids standing tall. I wanted to see the mighty pharaohs and the men with animal heads -at least until I realised they where long dead or non existent. My dream had finally begun to come true when my parents booked us a two week holiday to Egypt. It wasn't as much of the fantasy it has been eight years ago but was still one of things I had dreamed of forever. The thing was though, it would be so different. I had grown up surrounded by narrow green trees and trickling burns; Egypt was a world away. My home, my paradise -which we where drawing up to- was physically and spiritually distant from the Egyptian desert. It was a low stone house, the kind that they don't build any more, the heavy blocks of solid stone where designed to keep the heat in a time before central heating. The roof was paved in dark slates rather than the tiles of modern houses and fence reduced to an orange string of rust. To get to Miss Jardine's, our nearest neighbour was a five minute cycle.
Once I got into the house quickly took off the damply clinging white shirt and the ugly knee long school skirt -wouldn't need them for a while. I pulled on jeans, a plain blue top and my favourite purple hoodie before blasting myself with the hairdryer. It was horrendous that this was needed after being outside! I rechecked over the contents of my pink suitcase. It was full of the cloths I can only wear in those few rare weeks of Scottish summer I flipped open my book on Egyptology. I didn't know why I liked it; I was never one for the fanciful, I like solid fact. However, something had drawn me at the age of 8 to the colourful culture of Egypt. I didn't believe in the Egyptian gods, growing up in a family of Catholics had made the idea of multiple gods and ludicrous as unicorns being real, but I found them fascinating. I didn't know how Josie could read about werewolves so much, the very idea was nonsensical. Yet she lived and breathed the stuff. As I sat there wondering about the absurdity of my best friend I never released how long it would be until I saw her again and how different my life would be by the time that day came. In fact, the last day of Fourth Year, the day I ran through the High Street in the rain was my very last day of normality.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi guys, Hope you enjoyed the first chapter! Also I'll probably not be too fast at updated as I'm currently in the middle of my exams (had my English exam today).
Please vote and comment, it would mean the world to me.
Ellen