The Start or not the start?

Jessica walked into Mrs Cedar’s class of St Mary’s Primary school for the last time, it was the last day of term and she would be starting Shires Academy in the September after seven weeks of holiday.  She looked around her, everyone was excited that the summer was finally here; they would all be going home to their parents tonight to start seven weeks of fun, happiness and love.  What did she have to return to?  A children’s home, Sunshine House, ‘Ha, anything to try and make it sound an appealing place’ she thought to herself as she took her seat.  She hated it there and disliked all the other residents; it was a small, long-term children’s home where the children were unlikely to get adopted from.  No one had ever been adopted from there whilst Jessica had been there and she’d been there seven years; the only member of staff she got on with was Sharon, the Manager, Bill, was ok but she didn’t really see much of him as he was ‘always in his office hiding behind the paperwork’ as she had heard the staff saying so many times.  There were five children in the home including Jessica, ranging in ages from thirteen to eight; Jessica had been there the longest and was the third eldest at eleven, Cerrie and Carla, aged thirteen were the eldest, they were twins and wanted nothing to do with Jessica at all, Michael and Shona were nine and eight respectively and were too young for Jessica to be interested in so she was alone.  The two full time day staff Sharon and Steve had often tried to engage her in the group activities but she wasn’t interested, they had given her copies of all the photos from their day trips and activities and she had simply stuffed them in a large plastic box without really paying attention to them.  The staff kept files with all the work she had done at school, and she had some old books, pictures, and pieces of work in the box with the photos.  Jessica was rather a sentimental young girl and kept most of her Christmas and Birthday cards she had been given, along with anything that she had when she was happy stuck in a scrapbook; it was rather an empty scrapbook but there were a few bits in there like tickets from the plays she had been to.  Jessica wanted to be an actress more than anything else in the world, she loved music and singing but had such a low level of confidence that she knew it would never happen; she would often sing along with songs on the radio but no one had ever heard her.  All the children in her class took their seats as Mrs Cedar began to call the register, she told everyone that as it was the last day of term the children could do as they pleased and they would not be doing any formal learning. 

Jessica’s other love was she was extremely creative so she decided to draw whilst all the other children played together leaving her sat at the drawing table alone; she didn’t care, she loved being on her own and didn’t even pay attention to the other children.  Her social worker, Mr Michaels, had often expressed his concerns regarding her solitary preferences but no matter what anyone did Jessica simply preferred to be alone or be with much older children who really didn’t care to have her around.  Jessica picked up her paper and pencil and began to draw, not really paying attention to her surroundings and concentrating purely on what she was drawing.  She had tried to express to her social worker the day before that she felt as if she wasn’t a child anymore, felt as if she didn’t belong with other children, but as usual he hadn’t listened to her.  Jessica decided she would put how she felt into her picture so she drew her face but made it broken in half, like a vertically cracked egg; she wrote ‘happiness’ 'childhood’ and ‘life’ coming out of the face and put drops under them as if it were blood.  It was quite a macabre picture and it wasn’t Jessica’s usual style but it did express exactly how she felt.  Mrs Cedar came over to her trying to get her to engage with the other children but seeing the picture she grabbed it up and taking hold of Jessica’s wrist she took her to the bin screwed the picture up and threw it in telling her it was a horrible picture and she expected better of her, told her she was a bad influence on the other children and was glad she didn’t interact with them.  Jessica was told to go and sit at her desk and think about what she had done; in reality Jessica didn’t know why her picture had been so offensive to her teacher and if she was honest she didn’t care, she waited for her teacher to forget about her and retrieved her picture mixing it up with the rest of the work she would be taking home at the end of the day, which for Jessica, could not now come soon enough.  She vowed that from that day on she would not draw another picture or do anything creative for enjoyment, she would do it for schoolwork only, ‘Mrs Cedar killed my creativity,’ she would think to herself whenever she looked back on that day.

The rest of the day dragged, as did the seven weeks holiday; she was bought her uniform, books, stationary, and schoolbag the week before she started her new school but had no interest, she just didn’t care.  On her first day at her new school she sat with the rest of the year sevens in rows in the large hall, waiting to be assigned their forms.  She was sat between two girls, one rather large girl in a tight fitting collared shirt who looked extremely uncomfortable, and one who stank of perfume and was chewing gum, Jessica felt out of her depth and wished she was somewhere else, anywhere else would do.  Names were called and slowly but surely the hall emptied, Jessica was one of the last called, unfortunately the perfumed girl ended up being in her form too.  Jessica decided upon looking around the other pupils in her form that she was going to be miserable the whole time, one girl seemed to be glaring at Jessica as they all took seats which had been assigned to them by her form tutor, Mrs Taylor, in alphabetical order.  The girl who was staring at Jessica was sat in front of her and kept turning round glaring at her, making Jessica feel really uncomfortable.  Mrs Taylor tried to get everyone to get to know each other with introductions about what primary school they had come from, what their favourite subjects were and what their aspirations were for their futures.  Jessica was the only one in the class who refused to volunteer, she was the last in the class to participate and as she stood she turned bright red and almost whispered
“I’m Jessica Cox from St Mary’s my favourite subject is maths I don’t know what I want to be” She sat down and the girl in front, whose name she had learnt was Claire, turned to her and laughed at her loudly, practically shouting as she told Jessica she was pathetic.  Jessica ignored her, didn’t even look at her, but felt more alone than she ever had as the whole class erupted into laughter; safe to say Jessica had a pretty miserable first day at high school.

Jessica was an extremely clever girl, in every test at primary school she had come top; as her first year at secondary school progressed she continued to excel in every subject, and was often praised by the teachers.  This caused the other pupils to single her out and they began to bully her for no real reason, there was no rational explanation behind it that Jessica could understand but she didn’t bother to argue, to question why, she just ignored everyone and remained solitary, quiet, introvert, and retiring.  She progressed well in year seven and began year eight still top of the class in most subjects; at the end of year eight the Head retired, the new Head had been in the school since the January and announced big changes for the school, the biggest being that forms would be assigned a form tutor that would stay with them whilst at the school instead of changing every year as they always had; they were told in the last week of year eight who their form tutors for the following year would be, Jessica’s class was assigned to Mr Holmes who was one of her favourite teachers so she was glad.  He was middle aged, Jessica reckoned about thirty, had fair hair kept cut very short, and was a genuinely good hearted teacher, he enjoyed having a laugh and joke with the pupils and had a laid back approach to discipline so long as the work got done.  He had taught the class maths for the past two years and at first he had singled out Jessica as an exemplary student, constantly praising every achievement, but he noticed that Jessica seemed to resent the praise and attention so stopped openly praising her and instead put the comments in her books, on tests papers or coursework.  He had taught at the school for six years when he had met Jessica and not once had he come across such a talented but shy pupil, he had often discussed her with the head teacher and Jessica’s other teachers who all had the same opinion.  Jessica’s English teacher, Mrs Paige, had been at school with Mr Holmes and the two were very close friends, they had often talked about their pupils comparing them and one of their favourite subjects was Jessica as she was such a mystery.  Jessica left the school on the last day of year eight slightly excited about year nine, as her form teacher, Mr Holmes, would not only be teaching them Maths but Social Skills, Social Education, and IT as well meaning out of the forty lessons per week he would be teaching eleven.  The school holidays dragged for her but the staff at the home noticed she was a little happy to be returning to school and thought she was eventually fitting in to her surroundings.