You usually try to avoid leaving at this time. On some days, the ones where it doesn't matter if you miss the first ten or so minutes of class, you leave later. Those days get you lectures from your mother on how precious time is; most days you just leave earlier to spare yourself from it all. Everything's busy at this time, sounds and images that blur and distort as you make your way down the pavement. The streets are roaring with the engines of cars, buses; if you listen closely you can hear the alarm bells of the trams and the boom gates at the train station.
Your bag sits heavy on your shoulder, dragging you down on one side both with its weight and the hair that's been trapped underneath the strap. You've been growing it out lately - you don't trust anyone in your family to come near you with scissors (years of uneven cuts and bangs in primary school taught you that, though nobody cared about that back then. It's only looking back at those photos now that has you cringing) and you've never made an appointment at the hairdresser. When you reach to lift the strap and tug the strands free, you stumble off-balance, figures pushing past you on each side of the narrow sidewalk. When you look up again, there are two boys with backpacks so large that you can't even see their torsos behind them racing ahead to the pedestrian lights, desperate to start crossing before the lights change and the traffic starts up again.
They don't make it and there's a brief battle over who pushes the button as you draw up and come to stand behind them. The boys are very young, their voices not yet broken; it makes you smile a little. A pair of sneakers enters your peripheral vision and you take a glance over at the woman in her beige suit. It looks a bit ridiculous, sneakers with a suit, but you can sympathise with that when you spot the top of a black heel peeking out from her handbag. If you were running around all day in high heels, you'd want a pair of comfortable shoes at the start and the end of the day, too. She doesn't notice your glance, she's too busy chattering into her mobile phone. You can't hear anything she's saying, her words blending into the constant drone of sound, but there's a nice timbre to her voice. Before you can turn your attention back to the pedestrian lights another voice cuts into your hears, loud and piercing.
The voice belongs to a girl whose group of friends are arrayed around her. Her school blazer is unbuttoned, the dress tight across her chest with the first button undone, white socks slouching around skinny ankles. The whole ensemble is dragged slightly off centre by the Country Road bag draped over her shoulder. She drags manicured nails through her hair and continues to talk. She pauses as one of the other girls chimes in and glances around at the crowd of people waiting. Too late, you move to look away but she's already caught you, turning her head to look at you. You avert your eyes quickly, ducking your head to check the time on your watch.
You can feel her gaze lingering on you, appraising you, and you are suddenly so horribly conscious of your faded school uniform (it was your sister's before it was yours because "it's still got some wear in it left") and your scuffed shoes. You can feel the heat rising in your cheeks, spreading flush down your neck, even as she turns back to her friends. You can hear her make a comment, and as the lights change and the signal starts to beat, all her friends burst into high-pitched giggles.
You cross the road quickly, weaving between the people, and stride ahead so you can leave behind the girls who are dawdling across the road in a straight line, immersed in their gossip. You feel the prickles of annoyance, hating them for their obvious vacuity, but hating yourself more for envying it. You could never be like them. You have your friends but you could never be like them, exuding such casual indifference, engaging in such mindless conversation.
But you wish you could. You wish you could be one of those rich private school girls, beautiful and confident and so goddamn sure of your place in the world.
***
When one has something they really don't want to do, there are suddenly a thousand things that suddenly seem so much more appealing. For me, in this past week, it entailed sorting out a box of books and papers from my high school days that had been haphazardly shoved into my closet.
My mother usually bemoans the fact that I like to hoard. Somehow, I simply cannot bear to get rid of anything. "But what if one day..." I tell myself, as I pack away yet more boxes full of papers and trinkets that I doubt I will ever look at again. Still, sometimes hoarding is not such a bad thing, I think. At the very least, you have the opportunity to stumble across a multitude of goods you had forgotten about. In my case, it was the excerpt from above. Judging from the contents, it's from...2006? or thereabouts. I was thirteen, then.
A lot of things have changed since I wrote this. It's funny how, in some ways, I feel I haven't changed at all.
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