Boarding School; not all it's cracked up to be :Ch 1:

The red-haired teen eagerly threw her suitcase on the bed, rushing to her wardrobe to pull out almost every clothing item she owned to put in it.

Today was the day…

You see, most teenagers dread the idea of going to a new school, living in a new town and making new friends but Alice wasn’t like that. Ever since she was thirteen she had begged and begged her parents to send her to boarding school. It’s not that she didn’t like where she was currently, she had trustworthy friends, she wasn’t bullied, she didn’t think there was anything wrong with her life.

She was just…

Bored.

Alice is a girl who likes adventure. Anyone who knows her would tell you that. She wasn’t one of those girls who were overly confident, yet she wasn’t exactly shy and withdrawn either. In other words, she hated staying in the same place and doing the same things over and over again for long periods of time.

Most people would argue that just simply being ‘bored’ wasn’t a good enough reason to pack up and go somewhere like a boarding school, especially when the fee’s are sky high.

But Alice’s reason wasn’t just ‘boredom’. Well, it was mostly the reason, but she also liked the facilities at the school she chose.

Dawson Grammar, Academy for Girls.

Yes, many of you will probably be thinking something along the lines of ‘What! Why not go to a co-ed school? How could you stand to live without boys?’

Well, Alice wasn’t like most girls; she didn’t mind the lack of males.

Either way, she was finally getting some adventure in her life!

Alice moved from her original school to Mernington High at the age of ten and she loved the feeling of a new start. But after three years of the same thing she started getting terribly uninterested in her daily life, that was, until she overheard a classmate tell her friend she was going to boarding school.

Alice had never really thought much of boarding school, but she was now immediately interested. As soon as she got home that night, she went online and looked up various boarding schools around the country and wrote a few interesting ones down. She then went and showed them to her parents who were surprisingly eager for her, but she didn’t question it.

So over the course of two years they went and looked at various boarding schools and having interviews with the principals. Even though Alice got accepted in most of them, she kept looking and finally found the ‘perfect’ school.

Her parents seemed pleased with Dawson Grammar (It probably pleased her dad because it had no guys) and signed the papers, after speaking with the principal and looking around the grounds.

It was agreed that she would go for Year 10, the year she would turn 16.

And now that day has finally come, it was a week before the start of the new school year and Alice was packing her things for her flight the next morning. Her parents had told her they couldn’t accompany her there for her Dad had to go on a business trip and her Mother was busy drawing up the plans for a new hotel that was being built.

Shoes? Check.

Shirts? Check.

Pants? Check.

Dresses? Check.

Uniform? Check.

Everything else? Check.

After laying out her outfit for the next day, Alice then moved on to packing her handbag. She grabbed her Video iPod and Mobile Phone from her desk and threw them in, also grabbing lip gloss, a comb and a hair tie from her dresser and shoving those in. She put in the last Harry Potter book, which she was currently reading. She also threw in a pair of sunglasses and her purse.

Alice smiled to herself and looked at the clock.

10:05, it read.

She had been packing for 2 hours at least.

She yawned then smiled as she took her phone back out of the bag and noticed she had 5 new text messages.

Jess:

Aw, babe. I cnt believe ur leaving :( im gonna miss u heaps xx

Jess was one of the girls Alice usually hung out with, they weren’t bff’s but they still talked. Alice looked at the next message.

Adam:

Wow, u have no idea how sad I am @ the moment. My closest gal pal is moving away ): *tear* u better come and visit me and update me on cute guys u may meet. ;D

Typical Adam. He was Alice’s closest guy friend, they even dated for a year but things felt weird so they broke up. A few months later Adam came out of the closet and confessed he was gay. This ended up bringing the two closer, the often made frequent trips to the local mall to check out guys.

Matt:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! IF YOU GET ON THAT PLANE 2MORO I WILL DRAG YOU STRAIGHT BAK OFF! D:

Matt was another friend. He was the class goofball. They played a few practical jokes with each other; he and Alice actually had a prank war with each other and ended up getting Saturday detention for a month. Matt started hanging out with her ‘group’ after a fight with his friends.

Amy:

OMG I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU ARE JUST LEAVING AND NOT TAKING ME WITH YOU! ily, please stay. <3

Amy and Alice were good friends, when amy first came last year she got teased because she was nerdy and shy. Jess found her crying in the girls bathroom one day and invited her to sit with the group. Amy slowly started coming out of her shell and then got more confident when Matt revealed a secret crush he had since she first came and they started going out. She is still only confident around the group though.

Alice was confused who else would text her, that was pretty much all the people she hung out with on a daily basis.

Jacob:

Don’t leave.

Ah, Jacob. Jacob and Alice were reasonably close, but it took a while. When they were twelve they were paired up to do a science project together, Alice was hesitant at first because he was the schools No. 1 bad boy and loner and she had heard some bad things about him. At first he wanted nothing to do with her but as they got further into the project they talked and became closer. Then for a second time that year they got paired up for a project which required them to do work at each others house.

First they went to Alice’s house and during that time he was more quiet then usual, and when it was time to go to his house he said that it wasn’t the best place to be. Bad side of town, she guessed. The house wasn’t as bad as she expected and by the end of that night Alice found out that Jacob had a slight crush on her because his little sister burst into his room saying something about his ‘journal’ and how ‘wonderful and perfect’ he thought she was.

Alice gave a quick reply to all the messages and put her pajamas on and went to bed.

She was going to need all the sleep she could get.