Young Writers Society

The Chosen: 1
I gaze out the darkened windows of the jet black limo that is taking me to my new life, Bradford Grammar School. Back home the kids would never have left me hear the end of it. Coming from a lowerclass town and part of the town I've learnt to toughen up and fit in. Don't show how smart you are, don't show off, don't ride around in limos.
Back home I was the smartest one around, I didn't fit in but I did enough to gain a few friends but none that I could really talk to about things I really liked. It was Mum's idea for me to come here and I've been ignoring her ever since because I knew I'd never make any more friends. I'd be lonely again. She's probably right though and now I feel bad about ignoring her seeing as I will be gone for who knows how long. At least at where I'm going we're all too smart for our peers. We're all different.
The country side rolls on for miles outside of my windows. The luscious green of the meadow is dimmed by the darkened windows. I open them slowly to get my last glimpse of home before I go.
Whatever happens I'll figure something out. Samuel Clifford Milledge always does.

Midge Martyn-Graine

Journal Entry #1- {insert date later when I actually know what day this is meant to start on}

A plane. A bloody private jet plane just for me. I sighed internally when I saw it. What the hell had I got myself into.

All my friends had said goodbye: I can still remember the look of betrayal on Sara's face when it came time to leave. They had all told me that I was running away from my fears, away from my problems, but I just scoffed in their faces and we all laughed it off, as we had always done. Sara gave me a letter, scrawled on sheets of refill. She sealed it in a old brown envelope and made me promise not to open it until I was settled in and felt at home there.

There. Bradford Grammar School. The school for the elitist of the elite. Chosen from the brightest all round the world. The men and woman who graduate from that school are always successful. The biggest corporate agencies and government organizations bid for its students. Acceptance there is a sure guarantee of being successful in life. With a standing population of 30 students, the odds of getting selected are 1 in 40,000. I've done my research. So whoever else I meet there must be very special bunnies.

The air hostess ("I will be in charge of your comfort this flight") has informed me that it is exactly 15 hours until we arrived at my new "home". I choked on my non-alcoholic Margarita, because everyone knows the average commercial flight from New Zealand to England is 23 hours. "How fast does this thing go?" I replied. She just smiled knowingly and walked off. This is going to be a long flight.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Seeing my two black bags, full of underwear, gumboots and pure wool singlets (just kidding), being lifted with ease up three flights of stairs by men in suits that seemed to have come straight from the press, made me feel as weak as ant.(As a side note, do you know so ants can lift 50 times their body mass. On second thoughts probably not the best simile). I mean as weak as a [insert weak helpless animal].

I strolled after my personal ants and couldn't help be impressed by the size of this place. Some of its doors would put the Titanic to shame. And these people sure know how to splash out on decoration. They have every style of art, obscure and ordinary, and I would have sworn some of them have Van Gogh scrawled in the corner. And the statues. They really need to censor some of those. I was admiring one such piece, when suddenly I walked smack bang into another Homo Sapiens.

The Chosen: 2
The limo slides through the large, fancy, iron-cast and onto a gravelled driveway leading up to a huge building, the school, I suspect. Around three other limos joined us about ten minutes ago in a sort-of convoy and I've been seeing helicopters flying over for a couple of hours- even the occasional jet has been seen flying lower than normal around the place. I didn't realise the scale of this thing until now! It seems like kids from all the way around the world are coming here!
I feel a tingle of excitement, maybe this place won't be so bad after all. I guess most the kids here will be like me maybe-different.
The limo stops along with the two behind and the one in front. The driver turns to me and smiles, "Last stop sir!". I have to stop myself from grinning, the guys back home would be pissing themselves if they knew what it was like here. These guys are nothing like the taxi drivers back home. This is the real deal.
"Thanks!" I say back to him and I jump out with my smallish bag. Then it drives down smoothly into the fairly large garage.
I take my first look around; the people in the limos behind me are just getting out now one boy and another girl. The boy has slightly tanned skin and a crooked nose and the girl has a quite a friendly expression but she holds herself in a way that makes her look like that she can defend herself.
The boy in the limo in front has already scattered off as soon as the limo stopped leaving the driver with a bewildered expression. Shy I think as he does a quick walk with his sizeable bag straight into the building. I shrug and follow him in as that is the way that everybody else seems to be going.

Midge Martyn-Graine

Journal Entry #2

Okay, okay. I confess that’s not quite how it happened. I have promised to be accurate and honest in these daily accounts, so here is how my first encounter with one of my classmates really went. Let’s rewind back a bit.

I must have been overcome with jelly legs and jelly mind after my supersonic plane trip, because when the limo that had brought me from the airstrip, pulled up outside the overwhelmingly big house, where I was expected to make my home, I suddenly felt a wave of loneliness. “Midge? Lonely! As if,” you might laugh, but the honest truth of it all is that in the last 18 hours I hadn’t had a proper conversation anyone, had had virtually no sleep, flown halfway round the world, left all my friends and family behind, and arrived in a posh place full of strangers. I wasn’t feeling right, but as I watched two men manhandle my two heavy bags, I suddenly wanted to talk to someone who might be going through some of the upheaval I was going to. So I, yes I, Midge Martyn, ran and caught up to the boy who had got out of the limo in front of me.

He was a weedy boy, maybe 13 or 14, with brown hair and pale skin. He looked like a typical Brit, to far North to pick up any real sun. He didn’t have much height in him (neither did I at that age to be honest), but I was happy to see I still had a slight height advantage over him, maybe even 8cm. I appreciate any advantage to balance out the likely IQ advantage he has. Everyone looks at my IQ and thinks gosh he is just another idiot. But I wonder how many of the so called geniuses, who I denote as Tall Q’s, could do some of the Maths I could. Not many I bet. But let’s keep on letting everyone think I’m just someone stupid. It gives me the element of surprise. Anyway back to the boy. Who wanted to bet he was some stereotypical, smartass, know-it-all nerd. But my mother always taught me not to judge a book by its cover, so I decided I might as well give it a shot.

First words and first impressions are always extremely important. No matter how people try to change their opinions of others, their first perceptions of others define the underlying basis of how they judge you for the rest of eternity. I don’t think “Kia ora bro” in a brawled accent was the best first impression if I was trying to avoid stereotypes. (Other than being one 16th Maori and having slightly tanned skin, I am nothing like Maori boys. Pakeha all the way). But the boy just turned around and stared at me like I was speaking some foreign language. (Funnily enough, I was).

So I said to him in the same accent, “They really ought to give you guys some Maori appreciation lessons from wherever you come from.”

Still he stared.

Great job, Midge.

Deciding to drop the humour that was obviously being wasted on the boy in front of me, I offered my hand and said, in my normal voice, “Let me start that again. Hi, my name is Midge. I’m from New Zealand and I’m really tired from the flight, so excuse the bad humour. Are you new here to?”

Now that we were talking on the same page, he stopped staring and replied –

Ok before we get to how he replied can I make one comment about his accent. I knew, when coming to the land of the Poms, I was going to have to tolerate a range of English accents, but hearing his one brought it slamming home. I was so used to hearing normal voices come out of people, that his accent completely caught me surprise. I nearly started laughing. But I stopped. Because then I realised what people were going think about my accent.

Anyway, he shook my hand and said something along the generic lines of courtesy like “Nice to meet you, Midge. My name is Samuel Milleridge, but just call me Sam”. And that is how I met my first classmate and first potential friend.

It had nothing to do with statues and collisions with fellow member of the human race, just me being scared and lonely and running for the first signs of human life.

Don’t worry, with a good night sleep, which I'll take soon, I’ll be back to my normal old self in no time... (ooc: Diary entry continues but I'll let someone else continue the description)

Frederick Robert Ansell | The Ride

I stare out the window, watching the urban town I've known for my entire life slowly vanish as we enter some rural countryside. Sidewalks are replaced with dirt roads. Lamp posts turn into fence posts. Skyscrapers become barns. The land seems to stretch out for miles and miles. It makes me queasy, so I avert my attention to the empty seats to my left. I unbuckle my seat belt and stretch my legs out on the plush seats. Shutting my eyes, I rest my head on the cool window.

My mind is racing. And, God, my head is killing me. I open my eyes. My mother and father are sitting in the little room left on the chair my legs occupied.

My mother speaks in a soft, calming voice I've never heard spoken by her before."Erick, you need to relax. Everything will be fine." Her voice is full of emotion, high-pitched, like she's holding back tears.

I swing my legs off the seat to give my parents more room. I cross my arms across my chest while doing so. "I don't believe you."

Father scooches into the extra room I had just provided. "Trust us, everything will be okay, buddy." He is speaking in a voice familiar to mother's. It's a lot less gruff than usual. "This is a whole new opportunity! There'll be kids there, kids who are just as smart as you!"

"You can make new friends, sweetie!"

"I don't want new friends. In fact, I never wanted any friends."

"Well, why not?"

The answer comes out almost instantly. "Because I don't deserve any."

Both my parents gasp.

My mother reaches over my father, in an attempt to get closer to me. "No! No, no, no, honey! You're the sweetest, most h-"

"Get off me." My father's sweet, mushy voice is gone. His voice is back to normal. Gruff.

"What?"

"Get off me, woman! I'm trying to speak to my son!"

"Your son!?" My mother's calming voice is gone, too. Now she has her normal voice- nasally and angry.

"Yeah, my son! Do you have any idea how mu-"

"Oh, don't bring that up! Not in front of him!"

"He deserves to know! Erick, I... no, your mother and I-"

No. No, no, I hate it when they argue like this. I put my hands on my ears and stop listening. Still, I'm able to pick up certain words:
UNWANTED.
HATE.
YOUR FAULT.

I take my hands from my ears and yell. "STOP!" I look up. My parents aren't in the limo anymore. They have left me.

"Mr. Ansell? Mr. Ansell. Frederick Robert Ansell?" A deep voice booms from... nowhere.

"Wake up."

Wake up? What does he mean, wake up?

"Mr. Ansell, wake up."

"Wake up."

"Wake up."

"Wake up."

I wake up.

The chauffeur is tapping me on the shoulder, gently repeating my name, over and over. "Mr. Ansell. Mr. Ansell, we are here. Please do wake- oh, you are awake. Good. Please, exit the vehicle. We have arrived at Bradford Grammar School."

Yawning and patting down a cow lick, I get out of the limo. I stretch and begin to walk away.

"Mr. Ansell, your bags."

"Right." I grab my luggage, and ask the chauffeur where my room is.

"First floor, left wing. Nearest room to the bathroom." I thank him, but instead of heading to the first floor, I stay outside and find my way to the garden. I am surrounded by a rainbow of flowers. I take a deep inhale of the fragrance the garden emits. It helps me relax. I lie down on a patch of grass, ignoring the "DO NOT WALK ON GRASS" sign, close my eyes, and hope not to have another terrifying dream.