Chapter 4: First Impressions

Lucy was led through the corridors by a very excited Amelie. Her first lesson was going to be maths, which just so happened to be one of the few subjects of her expertise. The school had tested all of the new intakes 3 months prior, so they could be placed in the right classes for the extent of their knowledge. After around 3 minutes of manoeuvring down many corridors, the girls finally arrived at their classroom. Their classmates had already arrived and were 10 minutes into their lesson as they had not had to attend the speech this morning nor get assigned new uniforms. The door closed behind them and all eyes looked upon Lucy. “Ah Amelie, you bring us a new student today I see.” The speaker was a woman of about the age of her mother. She was most likely the teacher and the biggest giveaway of this was her uniform. The uniform of the teachers was light grey in colour. The teachers had a wide selection of articles of clothing to choose from, the only item which would be the same for all was a light grey jacket with three stripes, signifying which subject they taught and what block they taught in. Lucy promptly introduced herself then took a seat at the desk beside Amelie’s. The lesson dragged on and Lucy was on the verge of falling asleep with all the talk of triangles. The bell eventually rang to signify the end of their lesson and they all left for the common room to chill.

As soon as she entered her group common room, she was instantly swarmed by a group of girls excitedly chattering about the new arrival. Amelie started conversing with them and Lucy slowly drowned out all the sounds as she examined the room. The walls were purple with a pastel green stripe running across and a slightly darker shade of purple for the skirting boards. All the furniture either followed the same colour scheme, or was black. Just like their uniforms. It made her feel sick. 80% of the objects Lucy had encountered today had followed the same colour scheme. It was too orderly. Too organized. Too perfect. Almost like a prison.... She had to escape, the sooner the better.

Lucy was snapped out of the thoughts by someone repeatedly calling her name. The girls seemed to have gotten bored of Amelie’s vague answers concerning Lucy and decided they wanted to hear from the girl herself. Lucy blinked a couple of times before being bombarded with questions, “how far do you live from here” , “what school did you go to before” , “ what’s your favourite colour”, “what do you think of the school so far” and an endless stream of more. Amelie’s quiet yell could only just be heard over the stream of questions as she yelled for silence, not wanting to overwhelm the poor new girl. Lucy sighed before answering all the questions in one breath. “What does it matter where I live, are you a stalker?!?!?, uhhh it would take too long to list all the schools I’ve been to before, today made me realise that purple and pastel green are most definitely NOT my favourite colours, andddd I hate this hell hole”. With that, Lucy got up and headed out the room with Amelie tagging along behind her.