Chapter Four
Silent Standoff

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!
‘UGH! Noo… just a few more minutes, pleeeaaase?’ Lee reached over for the alarm clock and hit the snooze button. ‘I only just got to sleep!’
   Lee had had the worst night of sleep ever imaginable. She was stressing about school the next day and didn’t get to sleep until it was well into the early hours of the morning. She’d spent most of the night listening to her MP3 player, staring up at the ceiling as she thought.
   Ten minutes later the alarm sounded again, that time Lee got up. She rubbed her face and sat up in bed. ‘that only felt like seconds…I wonder if Nan will let me pull a sickie?’   she thought to herself as Jodie knocked on the door.
   ‘Come on Lee, time to get up if you want to get in the shower before the other three do.’
    ‘Ugh!’ Lee peeled herself out of bed and got her uniform from the cupboard and headed to the bathroom.

Jodie drove Lee to school, to support her on her first day. She’d usually make them catch the bus. Lee sat in the front seat, head bowed, holding her bag on her lap.
   Elle had called her friend up the night previous to organize a lift to school- she didn’t want to be seen getting out of the same car as her new housemate.
   ‘You’ll do fine!’ Jodie kissed her granddaughter, on the cheek. Lee looked back at her Nan with eyes full of uncertainty. ‘Trust me,’ Jodie winked and Lee took up the courage to get out of the car.
   Lee had already made an enemy at this new school, without even trying: Elle.
    ‘Snotty cow, I bet her whole flock will hate me by morning recess,’   Lee decided to herself as she walked through the front boundaries of her new prison. Lee reached into her bag and rummaged around for her mobile phone as she followed Jodie to the office. Turning it on, a picture of her best friend, Chester, popped up on the screen’s display. ‘Is it really going to be okay this time around Chester?’ She asked herself and sighed deeply.
   Jodie pointed in the direction of the administration office. ‘I won’t be more then a minute.’
   Lee found a bench and sat down, with her bag on her lap. ‘This feels familiar enough…’ She thought before hanging her head to let out a sigh. ‘And now it starts again. It’s not hard to tell that they are talking about you when they are staring and pointing.’ She looked in the direction of a group of people. ‘I prefer to be ignored. I don’t like the attention I receive. They used to call me fat and now they call me Goth. Will people ever accept that I am Lee? I’m not anything but myself, no one; nothing, but me.’
   The school bell rang and still the students stood around talking. Jodie returned to Lee. ‘The year 10’s will be meeting down in block M,’ she said and went to walk away. Lee didn’t move from the bench she was sitting on. Jodie stopped and turned back to Lee, ‘This way.’ Lee got up and followed Jodie to M Block; the music and performing arts hall. ‘Just be yourself and you’ll do just fine,’ she assured Lee. ‘The teachers know about your “shy nature” and aren’t going to expect too much from you right now,’ she hugged Lee. ‘Get them to call me if there are any problems okay?’
   Lee nodded as Jodie said her goodbyes.
   Turning to face the doorway Lee swallowed her fear and walked towards everyone else entering. Many people looked at her as she made her way inside.
   ‘Gosh look at her…’
   ‘What a weirdo!’
   ‘Doesn’t she realize that its summer here? Why is she wearing a jacket and gloves?’
   ‘What is wrong with her?’
   ‘I heard she’s Jodie Baker’s granddaughter’
   A girl laughed, ‘some social worker to have a grandkid like that!’
   Lee looked away from them. ‘Get a life. I’m not that interesting.’
   As they continued to look and point she just wanted to scream. ‘STOP IT! STOP LOOKING AT ME! ’ Kept racing across her mind but she was nowhere near ready to take that verbal plunge quite yet. It wasn’t time for her to throw away her security blanket for the likes of them; people she didn’t know. ‘It’s like they’ve never seen a new person around before!’ She thought to herself as she walked past the groups of students flocking together, gossiping and laughing about how they had spent their summer holidays.

On the other side of the hall, leaning against the wall were two girls. They were also talking about her but not in the same pestering way as everyone else.
   ‘My God, he must be hot under that coat! I’m in shorts and I feel like a steamed dumpling!’ a girl dressed in the summer sports uniform lifted her hat out of her face as she noticed Lee walk into the hall.
   ‘Maybe- I think it’s a girl actually,’ the second girl squinted.
   ‘Oh. So it is! Wow!’ the first girl replied and laughed.
   A teacher walked to the front of the group and cleared her throat. She was in fact the Junior School’s coordinator; Ms. Styles. ‘Boy’s- tuck your shirts in. Miss Corelle, hat off!’
   Lee turned to look at the girl in the hat who Ms. Styles was referring to. She wasn’t all that tall and had thick black hair tied back from her face. The girl beside her was taller then she was, with darker skin and brown pigtails tied up with eccentric coloured ribbons and ties. The taller girl was laughing at the shorter one.
   ‘Don’t look now, but we have her attention,’ she said as she took off her hat. The other girl turned around to face Lee and their eyes caught. Lee looked away quickly and sat down in the far back corner.
   After a brief hello and welcome back the teachers, new and old were introduced and the class listings were underway.
   Lee’s name was called under class 10-D. She got her bag and moved outside with the group who had just been called and waited for the rest. She was the second in line.
   The two girls who she had been caught watching that morning were still on the other side of the room against the wall talking.
   ‘Lee Baker, Huh?’ The taller one said.
   ‘What?’
   ‘Yeah, exactly,’ she smiled at her dark-haired friend. She was highly interested in the newbie who held so many people’s attentions.
    ‘Jeez school is great!’   Lee thought as she trailed behind her home room teacher.
   Lee found herself a desk up the back of the class, away from everyone else. Her home room teacher was Ms. Grey; thirty-something, tall and thin. Her hair was a mix of blonde and light brown and she had a small tattoo of a star on the left side of her neck. She rode a motor bike to school and the students tended to call her gay; The Dyke on a Bike. Lee thought she was lovely; she was very helpful to Lee.
   After Ms. Grey had handed out the student diaries and marked off the roll she went over to where Lee was, scribbling in her notebook, and pulled up a chair.
   ‘Okay, Lee. This here is a map of the school I found for you with everything marked on it, this is your timetable and your diary. When I call the roll its fine for you to raise your hand- but I’ll have a look around for you to make sure that you are here or not,’ she smiled at Lee.
   Thanks.   Lee scribbled on her notepad. I appreciate it.
   ‘No worries,’ Ms. Grey replied.  

Recess came and Lee put her new belongings into her bag and waited for everyone else to leave the room before she did. She found herself a spot under a tree, between the Science and Maths, blocks and made herself comfortable under its shade. No one had conversed with her except the teachers. She didn’t mind either way.
   Being alone and at peace she searched for something to draw and there she found him, sitting alone, reading. She couldn’t see what book it was, but he seemed to be enjoying it immensely. His hair was light brown and really rather messy, his clothes were tidy and neat, Lee could see a pair of glasses. He did appear to be a typical book-worm type.
    ‘It’s 100% improbable, but I’ve seen him somewhere before, I’m sure of it,’ she thought as she pulled her sketch book out from her bag and retrieved a pencil from her pencil case. ‘I’ll have to get a good sketch of him so I can think about where I have seen him later on.’ She thought and began to draw her subject. As she drew the rough outlines she hoped that he wouldn’t look over her way, but he eventually did. Lee sat hunched over her book and continued her drawing hoping her hair was positioned right over her face to make him think she was looking elsewhere. But the inevitable happened; he closed his book and walked towards her. Lee closed her sketchbook and began to stuff her belongings back into her bag.
   Just as she stood and began to walk away from him he spoke. ‘What? What is it? Why do you keep looking at me?’ he snapped aggressively at her. She didn’t answer as she couldn’t; it seemed there was one person at least who was oblivious to who she was. She just kept walking.
   He followed her and stood in her way so that she had to stop. ‘Are you ignorant to my questions or just being a bitch?’
   Once again she didn’t reply or even look up; she didn’t know a thing about him. Who was he?
   ‘Thought so,’ he began to make assumptions. ‘You’re just like all the other chicks at this school, snobby cows that leach money off Mummy and Daddy.’
   Lee stopped and gave him a dirty look. ‘Don’t call me that!’   The thought as she looked at him through slanted eyes. She aggressively pulled out her notepad and scribbled him a note. You don’t know anything about me so don’t go assuming you do, because you don’t and never will!   She scrunched it up threw it at his face before leaving. ‘I wish people like that wouldn’t bother me. It’s not like I was doing anything to hurt him!’
   He pulled a face at Lee as she retreated, ‘weird girl… what’s with the letter?’ He unscrewed the paper and read the note Lee had thrown. ‘I guess I was a bit over the top… but that doesn’t explain the weird looks she was giving me…’

The break was soon over and she was off to her first real classes for the day. Maths came and then Graphics. Lee didn’t take much notice of the people in those classes- sitting up the back and paying attention to only the teachers.  Lunch time made its appearance and people had seemed to have gotten used to seeing her by then as she noticed she didn’t get as many weird looks as she had that morning.
   The boy she’d had a run-in with at recess seemed to appear again in the library at lunch. ‘Do I know you?’ He asked Lee, who was listening to her MP3 player and drawing in her book.
    ‘I thought that he would have had enough this morning at the first break,’ she thought and raised an eyebrow at him, shrugging in response.
   ‘No? I’m pretty sure we have met before. I definitely know you from somewhere.’
   Lee took out her notebook again and wrote him a note; maybe u remember me from this morning where you abused me for… looking at you the wrong way. That’s where I know u from.
   ‘Yeah,’ he paused, ‘right.’ Then he was gone as soon as he had appeared. Lee turned the volume on her MP3 up again and went back to her drawing; it was finishing the sketch she had started of him at recess.
   ‘Maybe I should have mentioned that I recall his face from somewhere too…I wonder who he is… that weird boy? Where have I seen his face?’
  Those questions plagued Lee’s mind the whole afternoon, even after she got home from school. She nodded solemnly to Jodie’s questions about her first day and how it had gone but wasn’t really listening to a word that was being said. She did however pick up momentarily that the last of her new housemates would be arriving that afternoon.
   She didn’t feel much in the mood to be meeting new people, so she hid herself away in her room and listened to her music. No one bothered her until dinner time, when she heard Mat calling from the foot of the stairs, ‘Lee! Dinner’s up!’
   Upon hearing this she paused the song she was listening to and plugged her MP3 into charge before making her way down to the table for dinner- little did she know that she was going to get the biggest shock she could possibly think if at the time. Walking into the dinning room her eyes went wide with horror, she stopped suddenly in the doorway.
   Jodie was standing beside the boy Lee had encountered at school that day, with the biggest smile on her face. ‘Lee, I’d like you to meet our late arrival…’