This is my first time on this forum, I'm very nervous about posting my work. I've been working on a novel which I had named 'bubble gum flavoured tea' I hope you like. This is only around the first 1000 words, and there may be some mistakes.
People talk about death like it’s something you get over. It’s not. For Angel McGarthy it was a constant reminder of the failure and distress in her life. In her life she had encountered many deaths and misfortune. In 2003, her 2 cousins, Sam and Roderick Kissane perished in a house fire at their home in the west of England, later in 2006 her Aunt and Uncle passed away of natural causes in hospital, and most recently in 2011, both her parents, and both sets of grandparents, died in a bomb attack when out to purchase Angel a birthday present at the local shopping centre. It was April 13th, with Angels birthday being 2 days away they felt they needed to rush out, Angel was left alone and excited for their return and her present, as then, as a 13 year old child, presents is what mattered most. Angels parents and grandparents never returned that day, and she has since been living in the home of her adoptive parents, Alison and Edward, in a small town called Livingston in the south of Scotland. As mentioned before, death isn’t something you get over, but Angel sure did try. She would rush straight from school and get a bottle of still lemonade from the post office and she would climb up to her special hill. Actually it wasn’t a special hill, nor was it hers, it was a hill that overlooked many busy roundabouts, she liked to come here often because it would take her mind of her own shitty reality, while she imagined the lives and thoughts of passersby. Every day when she arrived home from the hill, she would receive what has come to be known as a ‘tongue lashing’ from her abusive carers, Angel would tell her Alison and Edward that the reason she was home late was for revision sessions, or for detentions, this just worsened things and usually ended with Angel covered in bruises from her thigh and upwards. At school her life was no better, she would get picked on awfully for just looking how she did. Angel was born with a rare disease called heterochromia iridium, this wasn’t actually a disease as such, and it just meant that the irises of her eyes were different colours, one was grey and one was brown. This was grouped with short curly blonde hair, which was styled into a bob, she wore a tattered brown leather rucksack. The girls at school picked on her because she was different, she wasn’t the usual blonde clone that everyone is so used to seeing nowadays.
The girls that picked on her were the type who thought that they where sophisticated and well informed, because their literally expertise spread to reading glamour magazine, and the Sunday telegraph. They where the type who had a fresh bundle of flowers placed in a vase in their room every Friday by their over adoring mothers. They where the type of people who had one hundred ‘likes’ on everything they posted on facebook. They where the type who took pleasure in making other girls feel bad about themselves, they were just another un-dignified part of society. Basically, they where all basic bitches. However, these girls were just dogs, followers of their ultimate leader, Sarah Foal. Sarah Foal wasn’t your typical washed up, daddy girl, blonde bimbo, nor was she the stereotypical bitchy girl who spread a few rumours about people in a petty attempt to embarrass them, what Sarah Foal was however, was a lying, deceitful, revenge seeking however extremely intelligent girl. (I would here, call her a bitch or a whore, but everyone’s scared of her and I don’t want her coming for me) Angel was Sarah and her followers’ new cause célèbre.
Now Angel wasn’t one to whine and complain. She had suffered enough in her life to get caught up on trivial things such as name calling. Instead she decided to carry on, after all her main aim in life was to make her parents proud even though they weren’t still with her physically, they were very much alive in her heart.
*new page same chapter*
September 12th 2013, it was Angel McGarthys’ first day of the new academic year that was ‘year 10’ (for any Americans, this is for 14-15 year olds and is the year where you study for your SATs, we call them GCSEs) She thought she would walk in as we all do, we’ve had 6 weeks off and walk into school as a ‘new person’ who has changed their attitude on work and life, where in reality, we’ve all just had an expensive haircut and bought a new bag. This wasn’t the case for Angel, she figured if the girls didn’t like her now, then a new bag wouldn’t make a difference. So she walked in like she would on any other day, she kept to the left of the corridor because she didn’t like to be in peoples way, people had places to be and she understood that. The bell rang at 9AM for her first lesson, Biology. She went in and found her seat in the back corner of the classroom, there were 5 tables with 4 chairs at each, there were 21 people in the class, Angel hoped that she would have escaped the possibility of having to sit next to someone this way, after all, isn’t that the british way? Angel watched as the rest of the class came through the door, she had made a running commentary in her head as each person came in, it followed a pattern such as;
• Fat
• Anorexic
• Ugly Hair
• Ugly Bag
• Anorexic
• Blonde
• Ugly Hair
• Ugly Hair
• Ugly Hair
• Ugly Face
• Pretty
The word ‘pretty’ never really entered Angels literal vocabulary when she was in school. The girl that she had called pretty had long red wavy hair which fell just below her breasts. The girl that she had called pretty had a leather satchel sat on her shoulder. The girl that she had called pretty had deep brown eyes. The girl that she had called pretty was popular and had 10x more friends than Angel (this only required the girl that Angel had called pretty to have 10 friends) The girl that Angel had called pretty was coming towards her, and at quite a speed. Angel panicked and quickly fixed her hair.
