The Unexpected

Walking up the concrete stairs, echoes of my heels against the ground reverberated, the mere sound couldn’t ever compete with my thumping heartbeat. The breathing therapy was definitely failing me. Positive thoughts, Florence. Positive thoughts, positive thoughts, p-o-s-i-t-i-v-e, positive. One breath in, one breath out. Gripping the straps of my backpack tightly, I blindly followed the flow of the crowd. The crimson tie around my collar was like a noose, stealing my breath away even though it wasn’t tight at all.

Finally, the signboard for Secondary 1 caught my eye. The muscles in my legs hardly strained from climbing up to the fourth floor, my efforts for my jogging routine paid off well. The corridors on both sides were filled with people socialising - chattering, laughing, fist-bumping and joking. The apparent familiarity was shown through a spark in the gaze, a cheerful smile, a hostile glare and a warm hug. The strong bonds between the majority was so obvious that I could prognosticate my solitary future. That elicited a slight tug on my lips. No one here was my ex-classmate. How delightful!

Upon entering the classroom, I could feel the curious stares around me. Looking around without focussing on anyone in the room, I searched for a table among the neatly arranged rows. Most of them were already occupied and the tables were arranged in an odd way, the first two rows from my left - the ones near the windows - were joined whereas the third row wasn’t. The following four rows adopted this eccentric pattern. There’s not much choices thus I randomly selected one at the back.

‘Are you new here?’, a soft whisper roused me from my voracious reading of the Maths textbook. A girl with faint freckles gazed at me with wide eyes. She was twirling her fluffy luminous strawberry-top pen with her left hand while resting her chin on the other. I nodded back and took a sip of water from my bottle. ‘Ni zhi dao ni hen ke ai ma?’ She replied back all of a sudden that made me choke and cough unstoppably. She guffawed and patted my back gently. Is she being indiscriminate towards my education background or is she just being friendly?

Still speechless, I glanced at her while trying to calm down the urge to cough. With a teasing smirk, she spoke with a mischievous tone, ‘I’m Teresa.’ Then, she gave me a hug and mumbled, ‘Welcome to the sanctuary I lived in since 4.’

I responded with a pat her back and uttered, ‘You’re choking me.’

‘Te! Stop scaring her with your inner mamma bear instinct!’ A tall boy with hazelnut-dyed ends hollered from the front of my row and peals of laughter filled the air.

‘Can’t you see how cute she is?’ She cupped my face and turned it towards the gang ahead of me.

‘Careful, new girl. She might not be able to keep her paws of you for a long time.’ With that, that guy winked and resumed chatting with the group of people around him.