Sherer Academy

I was walking calmly through the quad when a soccer ball came out of nowhere and grazed my arm. I turned around, sure that a moment ago there had been no one around, to see yet again, the empty campus. No one was around, but the ball was still rolling around in the grass with the momentum of someone throwing it at me. I kept on walking, racking my brain for ideas on where the ball could have possibly come from, immediately discarding windows as they were all too far away. A twig snapped behind me, and again I turned to look. This time I saw a person pushing up behind one of the thick trees, and after a few seconds I saw another figure dash from behind one tree to another. Boys. Of course, who else could it be, seeing as all the girls were in the dorm at the Pre-Christmas bash I had not been invited to. I went up to the ball, picked it up, and tossed it towards the guys behind the trees. I guess they wanted me to get mad, but I just wasn’t in the mood, not anymore. I had been new at the über-exclusive Sherer Academy, NH this August, and now almost half a year later I was still friendless. True, my appearance might not help me gain points with the New York society kids that attended here, but the fact that I came from a small town in Iowa or that I was on a scholarship here was a big part of the outcast problem too. I tried for four months to make friends, a skill which I had always possessed no matter where I was, but the people here are too superficial and just by glancing at my glasses and my braces they had ruled me out. All my attempts of being courteous and kind were destroyed by the orderly fashion they used to bug me about this or that, or by the not so subtle comments on my look. Boys would throw stuff at me, girls would point and laugh, and I was just not ready to ignore so I exploded and shouted and cursed for a long time. But two months ago I had reached the conclusion that having a sore throat al the time was not worth it, so I had learned to ignore. Now I ate alone, slept in a single, walked alone, and entertained myself by a larger amount of reading than usual. Thank god for the humongous library. And thank god tomorrow was the first day of winter break. I missed the warmth of my family, if you could call it warmth; I missed the comfort of my house and the gossip with my friends. As I thought about it I noticed I missed everything I had wanted to get away from when I decided to come to boarding school. I reached out and pushed the big oak door of the Marie Curie Dorm, welcoming the warm feel of the room that instantly flushed my cheeks and gave me a certain feeling of warmth. I could hear the music pumping up above me in the roof terrace, and the occasional laughter of a girl or two who came downstairs to get something, namely cigarettes.