Forest Lake State High School.
The sign loomed above, casting a dark shadow upon Jason’s pale face in the brilliance of the Australian sunlight. His vivid blue eyes flicked about his surroundings.
Students flocked from all directions – down the boulevard, across the road from the shops, down the road branching off the intersection from the suburban housing, up the boulevard from the lake.
They all bore one of the two Forest Lake High uniforms – a green and blue polo shirt for sports or a blue pin-striped formal shirt. Neither of the shirts looked similar to what Jason was wearing. Did dad get me the wrong uniform, or am I in the wrong place...? he wondered, fidgeting with the strap of his rucksack.
He was knocked a step forward as someone bumped into him. “Whoa, watch it man,” a voice said from behind.
“Why don’t you?” Jason retorted. How did they not see him standing there?
He turned to face the culprit, and his eyes met those of a boy’s his age.
“Oh, aren’t you the new kid?” A grin broke across the dude’s tanned face. “Hey, I’m Caleb. You wanna stick with me until you know your way around?” Before Jason got a chance to reply, the dude clapped him on the back. “Awesome, this way.”
Jason shrugged internally - of all the schools he’d been to, this one had the best start so far. No one gawped at him as the two lads weaved through the crowd towards the main gate. No one even glanced at him. It was just as odd as it was relieving. When his new companion pulled out two cans of V and offered Jason one, Jason thought the day couldn’t be any better. He took it gratefully and pulled the tab.
The kid slurped at his V energy drink. “Soooo... who are you?”
Who Jason was was a completely different matter to his name. He refrained from saying as such, and reached to shake the kid’s hand. Caleb’s hand, he forced himself to think of it as. This time was going to be different; he’d make sure of it.
Jason swallowed the considerable amount of V in his mouth and cleared his throat. “Jason, Jason Blake.”
Caleb shook his hand vigorously, his small round head bobbing. “Oh yeah, I remember now. Saw your profile one of the office computers the other day,” Caleb grinned, releasing Jason’s hand. “You just got expelled from Bremer, aye?”
Great... Jason grimaced. How many of the other kids knew this too? Did they know the reason? Jason nodded once, brushing his black hair back from his eyes. To Jason’s intense relief, Caleb said no more of Jason’s expulsion – whether out of courtesy or lack of interest, Jason didn’t know nor care. As long as he didn’t have to talk about it.
It seemed that wasn’t the first can of V Caleb had drank that morning as he hopped up onto a bench and skipped along it as the boys followed the crowd.
“What was Bremer like?” His speech was lightening fast.
“Full of bogans and sluts. What’s here like?”
“Full of sluts and bogans.”
“Australia’s messed up,” Jason declared in his distinctly British accent, realising only afterwards that it might offend the other lad.
Caleb, however, laughed. He didn’t sound so Australian either, but Jason couldn’t quite pin it. “Bloody oath, mate.” The two bumped their cans together in a toast, grinning.
Somehow the two managed to be late to class, though they’d arrived at school with plenty of time to spare. The only available seats in the classroom were at opposite ends of the room; Caleb bee lined for the one at the back. Jason paused at the door, but the teacher was busy writing on the white board, so he managed to slip in silently and take his seat at the front. It would do him no good to get in trouble on his first day.
“Where did you get the shirt? Vinnies?” a girl whispered from behind.
Jason glanced down at his clothes as a few giggles went round the room. “Is it that obvious?”
The girls laughed, but this time with him, not at him. He grinned to himself. Perhaps this time round he would make a good impression on everyone. Perhaps this time it would work out fine.
A paper ball smacked the back of his head. Perhaps not.
“Porby!” hissed a boy, his voice cracking. Jason twisted around to see a hairy kid in the back row grinning at him, his piggy eyes gleaming. Jason’s middle finger did all the talking almost automatically, and beside the fat boy Caleb sniggered. The fat kid glared at him, and Caleb flipped him off as well.
There was a new spark in Jason’s blue eyes as they darted around the room. He could feel an electrical charge in his blood, a shining beacon gleaming on the horizon. For once, he felt good. This time I won’t screw up, he thought with delight. Then, he realised, this is what hope feels like.
All positive thoughts plummeted as he took in the person in the desk beside him. Her hair was pulled back so tight Jason was surprised her scalp wasn’t ripping off. Her uniform was so immaculate, so finely pressed, she looked fit to be a politician. She was smoking hot, but as she copied everything the teacher scribbled on the board neatly and without error or abbreviation, she was obviously a goody-two-shoes, teacher’s pet.
Jason’s experiences with teacher’s pets were not good ones.
He was in for a year of being corrected, dobbed on, and rebutted. That was of course, if he lasted a year.
“Welcome to Forest Lake High,” the girl said, “So you’re the infamous Jason Blake.”
Jason raised his eyebrows thinking, what the hell does infamous mean? “Nah, I’m just his representative. And who might you be?” he asked.
“Kim,” the girl smiled, showing all of her sparkly white, perfectly straight teeth.
A deep, gravelly noise of one clearing their throat diverted Jason’s attention to the elderly teacher staring pointedly at him. “Were you here before…?”
In a flash judgment of the teacher’s eye sight and memory from the glasses that had slipped to the very trip of his bulbous red nose alone, Jason tried his luck. “Yes, sir.”
“Oh…” the teacher said. “Ok.” He turned back to the board.
Jason grinned as more giggles went around the classroom. With a teacher like this he could get away with murder.
He cringed at the thought, suppressing a shudder.
“Is it true?” Kim whispered, leaning towards him with wide brown eyes.
Jason wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts, then began fidgeting with the loose thread coming off his shirt. “Is what true?”
“Did you really set fire to your old school library?”
Jason’s eyes slid closed. Why could he not just curl up and die? “No,” he replied, his voice gruff. “That was a misunderstanding.” A misunderstanding. How could that apply? People don’t die in a misunderstanding. No, they die when Jason tries to be a hero.
“What happened?”
“Would you piss off?” Jason snapped. “I’m trying to work.”
The thirteen-year-old didn’t even have a pen on him, let alone an exercise book. So much for a good fresh start, he thought dismally. Feeling guilty for snapping at the girl, whom he would later have to borrow a pen from, he put his head in his hands and tried not to think. But the flames consumed his mind.
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