Chapter 5

Monday morning, seven thirty and Sarah woke up for the first time in ages to an alarm. Her first thought on waking was. 'Oh shit! School!' She dragged herself from her bed and made her way to the bathroom. She showered and spent ages on her make up, hair and clothes, reapplying her make up twice after she didn't like the first results.

She wandered downstairs and glanced at the clock. "Bugger me its ten past eight!" she exclaimed. "You didn't shout?" she asked Jenny.

"No, should I have? I thought you'd be ok," Jenny said from the kitchen.

"Did you get out the door on time without help when you were my age?"

"Not a chance! I'll shout to you tomorrow. Here, grab this and go," Jenny laughed holding out a toasted bagel smeared with cream cheese and tomato.

"Goh whareh?" Sarah spluttered through a mouthful of bagel.

"Up to Cromwell store, that's the bus stop."

Sarah grabbed the book bag she'd readied the night before and scuttled out the door and up the road. She reached the store and waved to Mr Doyle through the glass. He nodded to her and turned back to his customer.

She glanced at her watch, eight twenty, five minutes till the bus and there was no sign of Jason. The ding-a-ling of the store door attracted Sarah's attention, out swaggered the poster boy for American high school football, six-foot tall, blonde hair, brown eyes, letter jacket, tanned and with perfect teeth, hair and skin. Sarah smiled a quick nervous smile. He smiled back but because he was quite obviously giving her at once over at the same time, the grin looked a lot like a shark smiling at its lunch.

"Hi Darlin', I'm Andy, Andy Clark. You must be new round here. Are you waitin' for the bus?" he finished with another quick once over.

Sarah was immediately struck by his demeanour, 'I'm something else, ' it shouted, 'you should be pleased I'm talking to you.'

"Ah, yes I am" Sarah replied politely.

"Well I can't allow that, would you like a ride with me?" the innuendo punctuated by holding her gaze for just long enough to throw the young girl off balance. To her credit, she recovered quite fast.

"No thank you, I'll be quite alright on the bus thank you," Sarah replied in her best no-nonsense, clipped English voice.

"Say, you ain't from round here? Are you Canadian?"

Spotting the opportunity to mess with his mind Sarah replied, in her best English accent "Ah, no I'm Australian."

"Ahahh, that's it," he announced as if he'd solved The Times cryptic crossword in record time. He turned and waked to his car, opening the door he turned and asked, "You sure I can't give you that ride?" Again with the same shark like grin.

"No. Thank you," Sarah firmly replied.

Andy shrugged, lowered himself into his car and turned the key. It rumbled to life and Sarah recognised the sound as a V8 and the badge as a Mustang, although the car didn't look anything like the one from Bullitt.

Andy sped off with a shower of gravel and almost immediately the shop door rang and out stepped Jason. Sarah turned to say hi and the great yellow school bus nearly ran her down as it pulled up between them.

Sarah crossed the road, ran around to the door and cursed herself for waiting on the wrong side of the road. As she mounted the steps she looked for Jason, she found him five rows from the front in the center of a conspicuously vacant area. She approached him and his blank face turned to dismay, she stopped and heard Jason talking to the floor, "Please, please don't sit here," he pleaded, only just audible over the rising noise from the back of the bus. She looked down to see him look up from the floor his eyes pleading with her to go. She pondered for a moment, long enough for her to realise the noise was growing the longer she stood next to Jason.

"Hey!" shouted a girl, "don't sit there, 'cos..." she paused and the whole back of the bus joined in with singing "Suicide's contagious!" to the theme of MASH. She moved, the noise lessened and Jason turned to the floor letting out a sigh of relief. Bouncing down the aisle as the bus pulled away Sarah looked to the back of the bus to see the source of the scornful chant. Filling the back of the bus were a dozen or so people wearing red and green, smiling and laughing.

"Sit down and clear the target area!" shouted another girl. Sarah found a seat and watched in shock as a hail of spitballs, gum and other debris rained onto Jason's back with a continuous barrage of insults and other verbal abuse. What made it worse was Jason's complete lack of emotion, as if it was expected and deserved. It continued all the way to school and, to Sarah's growing horror, off the bus and all the way to the school door past a teacher who seemed completely oblivious to the scene around him. All the way to her homeroom, she watched as Jason was targeted.

"Good morning ladies and gentlemen," a loud clear voice cut through the babble of teenage voices. It belonged to an attractive businesslike twenty-something woman who continued as she walked to the front of the room. "Welcome to your sophomore year. My name I Miss Mueller and I'm going to be your homeroom teacher." She turned and stood behind her desk, "This is my second year teaching high school and it's your second year learning in high school. I'll be fair and reasonable with you IF you're the same with me. So lets all make our second year a good one." She paused, picked up the register and started calling names and asking a few questions of some of the students.

"Jason Carter?"

"Miss," Jason mumbled, examining the foot of the wall in front of his desk.

"Jason, are these grades and scores correct?"

"Probably Miss, the school office usually gets it right."

"Well done then, I hope to see it continue." She smiled at him and continued with the register until she reached Sarah.

"Sarah-May?"

"Miss."

"Your surname isn't on my list Sarah-May, what is it?"

"It is Miss," a slightly perplexed Sarah said, "it's May."

"Oh, the office has your first name down as 'Sarah-May' with no surname, I'll make a note." she paused, thinking. "Ah!" she realised, "you're the new student from England, aren't you?"

"Yes Miss," Sarah acknowledged, hoping she wouldn't be asked about what had brought her here.

"Don't worry dear," the teacher said looking at Sarah. "So, what differences have you spotted since you've been here?" she asked, much to Sarah's relief.

"Well..." Sarah considered, "I'm glad I don't have to wear a uniform to school!"

This caused a ripple of laughter through the class as Miss Mueller continued with the last few names.

Throughout homeroom and the first period class she shared with Jason, the harassment continued, Sarah realised that other people weren't left out of this. In or out of class, anyone who appeared 'bookish, geeky or different' were targeted by the mob in red and green. Cheerleaders, footballers, basketballers and other sports players as well as some of their supporters seemed to pound on everyone else. Sarah noticed as she walked to her locker to dump her bags before lunch that as the red and green faction strutted down the middle of the halls laughing and joking, the underclass (as Sarah was already thinking of them) were hanging to the edges, trying to recede into the background.

Mitch was leaning on Sarah's locker, "hi there. How's it going so far?"

"Jesus H fucking Christ," Sarah blurted, "what the fuck's going on round here? Is this bloody place segregated or something?"

"No," Mitch looked puzzled.

"Then what the fuck is this beasting thing about? I mean the sports crowd seem to kick shit out of the rest of the school!"

"Ahhhh," Mitch sighed, "you've discovered the result of the famous Levant 'School Spirit Drive'."

"School Spirit Drive?" Sarah enquired.

"Yeah, come on." Mitch indicated as she walked off toward their lunch, "It started when Seymour arrived two years ago,"