Daydream
Aurora sat in class staring at the board, twiddling her pen, while her lame professor droned on about something she wasn’t interested in. Staring at the clock she couldn’t wait for class to be over so she could go home and check into a good book, snuggled up on her bed in her favourite blankie. Huh… ten minutes why does the time have to move so slow; she was trying not to fall asleep, that would be a fate worse than death in a school like hers.
Belmount High, was not prestigious, it just thought it was and so did the people who went there. Constantly trying to one up each other over who had the most money, biggest car or best-looking boyfriend. Aurora didn’t fit into this school, and they let her know; she didn’t have a car, her mum was a waitress, and nobody would date the loser freak who spent more time tripping over her shoelaces than socialising with the other girls.
She had tried to fit in when she first moved here, digging through her wardrobe to find a cute outfit for the first day of school while she waited for her mum to get her uniform. Finding her cutest hairbands to put her hair in pigtails and packing her cheerleader uniform just in case.
Standing at the entrance way to the school, she saw all the usual clicks the same as at every high school, but something felt different. The skater boys were reading geography books and trying to catch up on homework, the jocks were the jocks, that never changed, but the cheerleaders sat on picnic benches looking like nothing she had ever seen before. Black eyeliner, nose piercings and army boots were not the usual uniform for a cheerleader.
A girl in a check skirt with pigtails that matched Aurora’s came bouncing over, surprising her and bringing some relief. “Hi, my name is Lainie and yours?”, “Um… Aurora… are those your cheer leaders?”, Lainie shot a quick glance in their direction, “yeah… don’t look at them, they’re the worst, lots of criminal records, no brain cells! So, what instrument do you play?”. Aurora looked confused “I don’t play an instrument… why are they dressed like that?”, “my mum says they dress like that for attention, that they are just trying to get pay back on their fathers or freak their families out. If you can believe it, they come from the richest families in the area”.
Aurora keeps one eye on them as she walks up the steps. The jocks walk over and collect their girls to walk into school. Aurora looks at the strange scene muttering under her breath, “like I said Jocks, never change”.
That was two weeks ago, thankfully her mum had got her uniform sorted, but Aurora had not adapted her appearance to fit in any group as she had not found her people yet. Sitting in the classroom felt like two weeks.
The clock ticked slower and slower, Aurora counted the minutes in seconds, her eyes were getting heavier and heavier. “Ouch”, Aurora sat up and looked around; Lainie who was slowly becoming one of her friends had shot her in the head with a band, trying to save her from becoming even more of an outcast.
For the past two weeks Lainie had been trying to convince her to learn an instrument or go to math club, Aurora had nearly given in, but all she liked to do was exercise, dance, listen to music and party. Seeing the cheerleaders she knew her mum would never agree to her looking like that, and they would not want her to join in with her blond hair and tight spanks. This left her looking like a geek with no grades to back it up.
The bell suddenly rang and caught her off guard, Aurora grabbed her bag and ran for the door trying to escape through the class and into the corridor before everyone else; she needed to get out of the building and half-way across the fields before he spotted her and tried giving her a lift home.
Nathaniel was the head of the jocks and captain of the football team; she had met him when she spilled onto the floor at his feet, after tripping over her own feet looking through her bag. It was super embarrassing, she had seen blue and pink that day looking up at him as he helped her to her feet. And when he grabbed her hand there was electric, literal electric. He had almost dropped her like he had been tasered; she had got just a glimpse of something, something that made her face flush and her cheeks turn a bright shade of red.
Aurora was unsure what was wrong with her, but this had been happening to her for the last few months and had got super weird in her last school. Normally she would have been upset about leaving but on this occasion, she was glad, because people had started to look at her like she was a freak. She didn’t want to bring that energy to this new school, but what had happened between her and Nathaniel had people talking already.
Walking at a fast pace across the field she almost missed the sun, but the warmth caught up with her, and she decided to risk sitting under a tree to read for a while. People drifted past her as she sat in her own daydream, reading her book and imagining herself in a different place and time. She didn’t notice as the field grew quiet, and the shadows started to creep in.
Looking up from her book she saw the outline of a man, a man who should have been in colour but was black, like a shadow with no features. He started to walk towards her slowly, her body froze, she was sure it must be a dream. Behind him a bright glow, like white fire in the shape of a man appeared, it jogged across the fields towards her. The shadow turned and retreated, walking off the field and down the road. As the bright light got to her, she almost had to shield her eyes, it was like staring into a bright torch. A hand appeared out of the light by instinct she put her hand out, the light dimmed and in its place stood Nathaniel, He pulled her to her feet and picked her bag up off the floor. “You shouldn’t be out here when the school’s closed, I don’t know what your last place was like but in this sleepy town, people come to be forgotten”. Walking her briskly without much choice he took her and put her in the car.
Aurora was still a little dazed and unsure of what she had just witnessed, she sat quietly as they drove along towards her house. Nathaniel looked at her, and she thought she saw the sunset reflecting in his eyes and off his skin, she knew she was tired now and half asleep. “Can I offer you a word of advice, not everybody here is what they seem. Most are just playing a role; you need to find your role and play it if you are going to fit in”. Aurora took his words in. “What if I can’t find my role? Or I don’t want to play this stupid game?”, He looked at her to read her face, “it’s just in school, most of the time, when the bell rings you can go back to, well, whatever this is. You don’t want to stand out; you will make yourself a target”.
The light reflecting off his skin seemed to change and shimmer somehow. It now contained dark blues and orange, reflecting even more of the night sky. She needed to go to bed before this day got any weirder.
