Chapter 1

Lost…

I have often tried to remember or should I rather say discover when my real life begun. You know what I’m talking about. That stage in your life that seemed to shape everything that came after it. At first I thought I thought it might have been my grade seven year. The last one I spent in Goodwood Park Primary with all my friends. By then my home life was set firmly apart from my school life and I stayed late at school most days to give me more time with “the crowd”, Amy, Letanya, Ashley, Gareth and myself, and to delay going home.

A lot happened that year. My parents divorced late in the previous year and I’d spent most of my December holiday at my grandparents place out in the middle of nowhere with my cousin, “to take me out of the situation”. Ironically enough this is also when I stopped biting my nails…though that’s beside the point. Anyhow due to the divorce my mom and me moved in with a friend of hers. This meant a major trek to school every morning but I was glad they let me finish grade seven there. Grade seven was also the year my mother remarried and the year we moved to Bellville.

In a way I suppose that that year was a very significant year. It led up to year I accept as the year that pivotal year when my life was redirected by my parents choice to send to the closest English medium high school in the area. Settlers.

I don’t think I have ever felt as lost I did on my first day of high school. I stood at the gates in my brand new uniform and over polished shoes, hair tied a back neatly in a ponytail and my almost empty case slung over my shoulder. I looked around as friends greeted one another and enemies exchanged warning glances. And realized with a settling feeling of dread that the comfort zone I’d existed in for the past five year had just been blown to pieces.

I knew somewhere in the throng of people my good friend, Rochelle, was hiding from me and I tried to find her, but after ten minutes of staring into the mass of blue I gave up. Shrugging, I joined the line to receive my new identity, a sticker that stated my name, a number and two capital letters. I drifted with the crowd towards what I assumed to be the main hall, most of that area smelled of pine needles, a fond scent that stuck with me through all the years.

As the hours passed I slowly grew used to my new surroundings and with the help of various teachers and prefects the minor mysteries of high school were unraveled. What still shocked me though was the shear amount of information they expected us to take in.

By break time I was running into systems overload and the problem was only compounded when I tried my hand at making new friends. Most of the people seemed to speak a foreign language. With some concentration I managed to find some familiar words from the good old English language but most of the dialect was some cryptic version of Afrikaans. Later I realized some words obviously had another meaning in this language. This communication gap posed quite a challenge at break time, my friend, Rochelle, still nowhere to be seen. As you might have guessed, I spent that first break time alone in the tuck shop quad.

By home time I was drained. I must have been quite a sight as I approached my mother’s car that afternoon. My hair bedraggled and weighed down by my now substantially heavier school case I climbed into my mother’s car, grateful for a familiar environment. And the whole way home I relayed to her how they made us call the teacher ma’am and about how big the school was. About the people I’d met and especially about how totally out I felt there.

That first week was hell. I just couldn’t seem to do anything right. I sucked at cheerleading, the teachers weren’t too fond of me. And no matter how hard I tried, I always seemed to get lost.

Looking back now I can only laugh but at the time I didn’t find it at all amusing. I’d wonder the halls, which all looked the same to me. Eventually if I was lucky I’d find the place I was looking for on my own. If I wasn’t so lucky finally someone would come up to me and ask

“Are you lost girlie?” which was apparently the name for any female that they didn’t know by name.

“Yeah” I’d say

“What class you looking for?”

And on a really bad day the place I was looking for would be miles away from where I ended up by following the “kind” person’s directions.

By the next week however, I’d settled into a more or less routine. I somehow found my way to register room in the morning, met Rochelle in the quad for lunch, she’d showed up in the quad midweek and we’d spend the most of our breaks together. Whether she did it out of pity or a common feeling of strangeness I don’t know, but I was glad for the company so I wasn’t going to ask. And my mother picked me up in the afternoon. School was almost bearable.

At least that was until I met Tracy.