Skip to main content

The Swordbearer Chapter 2 (The LOTSS Project)

Hi Friends,


Please enjoy the specificity of the homework organization system and the fact that I thought a fourteen-year-old girl would be the saviour of both the human and the fae world.

***


I started school two days later, which happened to be Monday.  It was March, middle of the semester and I would be a novelty, the new girl from the big city. 

Yippee.  Mom insisted on walking me to the school the first day even though I'm fourteen!  But even though it seriously ticked me off, I didn't complain.  I knew that mom was just trying to adjust to the fact that dad wasn't going to be around much anymore. Come to think of it, he'd never been around much when he worked in New York.

The walk to school took about three minutes.  You could see the school from our house.  In my backpack I carried a packed lunch (the school didn't have a cafeteria, everybody ate their lunch in homeroom), seven binders in the colours of the rainbow, notebooks in the same colours, a big, multicoloured binder that had a, TAKE ME HOME sticker on the front, and a pencil case.  The school building itself was small and built out of wooden boards, just like every thing else in Bethel.  I guess it was pretty. The school was three stories but it sort of looked like it had been built in the eighteen hundreds.  I would later find out that the first floor had been built in the eighteen hundreds. Eighteen twenty – seven to be exact. The other two floors had been added in nineteen seventy – one.  But right at that moment, it looked small, depressing and foreign.


“Have a great day, honey,” mom said.


“Right,” I muttered hoping I didn't sound too sarcastic.  I hurried up the front steps, determinedly ignoring the stares of my soon to be fellow classmates.  Not as many people as I thought were staring at me. But there was one boy, two or three years older than me maybe, that was staring at me with keen interest, almost fascination.


I glared at him until he caught my eye and looked away, grinning.

Inside I looked around, located the office and walked through the open wood panelled door.  A middle aged guy was busy typing on a computer.  I waited a few seconds for the guy to notice me, when he didn't, I cleared my throat.  He looked up.


“Can I help you?” he asked.


“I'm Rachel Jonstone,” I said.  I saw recognition light his eyes.  Great


“Oh, yes,” he said, opening a drawer and pulling out a few pieces of paper. 

“Here's a list of your classes and a map of the school, although you probably won't need it, it’s not very hard to get around this school.” 


I had no doubt that he was right.  He handed me another slip of paper.  “Your locker is on the third floor, with the rest of the freshmen.  Here's your combination.”


“Thanks,” I sighed looking down at the list of classes.  I had Geography first which was on (I checked the map) the third floor.  A bell rang and kids started coming in the front doors.  There weren't many of them but in the smallish school, it felt pretty crowded. I followed the kids heading upstairs, to the third floor.  I took out the slip of paper that had my locker number on it.  Number seventy – two.  It was at the end of the long line of lockers. I carefully twirled the combination number.  The locker popped open.  I hung my bag on the hook, took out the pencil case, the red binder and the red notebook, hastily making a note on the inside cover that red equalled geography.  (I colour code all my subjects in case you're wondering, yeah go ahead and laugh.) 


The Geography classroom was tiny.  Only about nine or ten desks, a black board at the front, teachers desk in the front corner.  The left wall was covered in maps and the right wall a bookshelf was fit to the length of the wall.  A globe, a shelf full of atlases and a couple of random books on different places in the world were resting on it.  Every thing just barely fit.


I walked up to the teacher sitting at the teacher’s desk and gave her my name.  In return, she gave me my textbooks and stuff.  I sat down at the only empty desk

beside a freckled redhead.


“Hi, my name's Becky,” she said, smiling


***

Want more stories? Consider buying my book (link at the top of the page)! Your support helps me create more free content just like this. Can't buy the book? No problem! Subscribing by email is another good way to support this blog and it's free! 

Thanks for reading and I'm sending lots of love to you in these uncertain times!

xxKathleen



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

C'est La Vie

Hi Friends. I was flipping through old documents last night, silently panicking about what to put on my blog this morning when I came across this short story that I wrote in high school. It is ... very silly. But well-written silliness and I got a chuckle from re-reading it. I'm not sure about the rest of you but as this pandemic rages on and many of us are still confined to our homes (or at least to the neighborhoods immediately surrounding them) I think a dose of silliness is exactly what we need right now. If you enjoy this short story, consider buying my book (link at the top of the page)! Your support helps me continue to create more free content just like this. Can't buy the book? No problem! Subscribing by email is another good way to support this blog and it's free! Thanks for reading and I'm sending lots of love in these uncertain times. xxKathleen Wendy Waters shifted uncomfortably in the hard plastic chair which, to her mortification, groaned in protest unde...

The Swordbearer Chapter 1 (The LOTSS Project)

 Hi Friends. We've made it to the first chapter of The Swordbearer!  Oof. You know when you realize you're actually about to put something out there for everyone to see? I was extremely tempted to edit heavily before posting this but that is not the point! The point of this project is to embrace and honor the cringe of our childhood selves. But to ease the vulnerability hangover, I'd love to know in the comments; what was the cringiest thing you did when you were 11? Mine was definitely thinking that 14 was an appropriate age for the heroine of an epic fantasy adventure ...  Confused as Hell? Start  here .  --- I guess it all started when my family moved from New York to Vermont.  Dad got laid off a couple months before, and the only work he could find was as a logger in Bethel, Vermont.  I loved the big city, the hustle and bustle of daily life in New York.  Needless to say I was a bit bitter about this whole move.  Okay, “a bit” is kind of ...

cigarettes

sometimes i wish i were a smoker so i’d have something to calm the nerves or even just a light to throw shadows on my face bring the hollows into focus make a playground of my lips and eyes explore the shadowy corners where firelight hardly ever plays lay bare the haunting and the healing take a deep breath and for once be not afraid of being fire and smoke and light like a cigarette lit with shaking hands