NOTE:

Hello, people who are lucky enough to be able to read, and enjoy doing so!

I feel like doing something a little different this time around, and that is exactly what I am going to do. I love writing stories, but I never seem to finish them. Maybe it’s because I rarely do any planning, maybe it’s because I get bored of the story, maybe it’s because I come up with new ideas and forget about the old ones. Who knows? Certainly not me. That’s why this time, I’m not going to think up a line or a scene, or a vague idea, and plunge straight into a doomed storyline. Nope. I'm fed up of that approach.

This time, I’m telling a story that already has events and characters. You know those moments when you feel like nothing can go right? Well that was me in 2013. And it made me think about everything that has happened in my life, good and bad. So I have decided to share my story, to let it all out, and free myself from the torturous aching that holds me captive in this strange and broken mind of mine.

Ergo, the story I refer to is mine, the story of my life. Told the way I’ve lived it, with my thoughts and my views. Now I know you may be thinking ‘How is the life of a fifteen-year-old girl going to be interesting enough to entertain people?’ Well, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, here. This is the internet, after all. And once it’s out there, it’s out of my reach and beyond my control. Plus, my memory is hardly perfect. And so, yes, the events will not be exact, some may be taken away or replaced or added. I hardly want the world to know all of my deepest and darkest secrets now, do I? And of course, all names of people and places will be changed. I just need to let it all out, to show people that I am not the person they assume that I am. So please, give me a chance to explain.

PROLOGUE - HOW IT ALL BEGAN

It all began on the day I was born. Unfortunately, I was only a newborn baby at the time, with a tiny, premature body, a cone shaped head and yellow skin, so I cannot remember the exact details, although I've been told that it was a very long process that involved a failed epidural, lots of pain on my Mum's part, stress over my well being (for the umbilical cord had miraculously twisted around my body) and the use of various appliances that were supposed to yank my stubborn unborn self from my own little universe fourteen days before expected. Long story short, after hours of painful drama, my parents were finally blessed by my arrival into the living, breathing world and my Aunty practically fell down the stairs in shock after hearing that I was in fact a girl, and not a boy, as she had so believed would be the case. Hallelujah!

Or not.

You see, the fact that I was born two weeks premature meant that I wasn't exactly the healthiest of babies. I spent a fair bit of the beginning of my life in the hospital. First it was jaundice (that's what I meant when I said I was yellow), for which I had phototherapy, which was basically having very bright lights shone at you. And then it was croup, for which I had a tiny tube stuck down my throat to help me breathe. I had my first two rides in an ambulance, to and from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London. My Mum says that the first time she saw me after I was admitted to hospital, she didn't even know it was me because there were so many wires sticking out of my body, and I still have the scars on my hands and feet to prove it.

After two years of living in a flat in London, my parents finally decided to move to the house I live in today, and shortly after the move (exactly two years, two months and two days after my own birth, which I think is pretty cool) my Mum gave birth to my little sister, Gwen.
I remember sitting at the bottom of the stairs in our house and crying because I couldn't go with Mummy to the hospital, and staying at my Nana's house until I was allowed to visit her. I remember walking past various hospital beds to see my Mum on the left hand side of the room, holding a tiny, squished blob of a creature with no hair and blotchy pink cheeks. My parents told me that my new baby sister had gone down to the shops and bought me a present, which I eagerly accepted. It was a baby doll, which, being the creative child that I was, I named Georgie after my first toy: a little giraffe.

Now you may be thinking "Oh, Lila, what a lovely story!" Or you may be thinking "what the hell is this shit, when will we get to the good stuff?! I don't want to read about the births of you and your sister!" Or hey, maybe you're thinking about something entirely different, like what food you feel like shoving in your gob in order to make yourself feel better! How am I supposed to know? Just don’t you worry, my little cupcakes. I just feel I need to ‘set the scene’ and all that jazz.

Moving on!

CHAPTER ONE - BOYS, BOYS, BOYS

The next few years of my life were pretty normal. Not really much to comment on. I went to playgroup, then nursery, and then I started primary school. I had various ‘boyfriends’ between reception, year 1 and year 2. Jack Reed kissed my hand while we sat on the carpet in reception; James Bryant baked me a cake for Valentines Day, so I gave him a packet of love hearts; Sam Wilson made me play this strange war game with him, and then when the supposed bombs went off, he shoved me away from the window and onto his bed to protect me and gave me a kiss on the cheek; Harry Smith’s Mum saw me in town and announced her son’s love for me, so I gave him a Valentine’s card; and Matthew Hill tied me to his bedpost with his dressing gown cord because he didn’t want me to go home. All in all, if you think about it, I was a right slut.

Half way through year 2, I had to move to a new primary school because I was being so badly bullied by crazy bitch Chloe Peters, who clawed my face so deep I have a scar, slapped me for being invited to my friend’s party and dragged me around the playground by my hair. I used to make myself physically sick worrying about what would happen each day at school. And then she had the audacity to invite me round to her house for dinner, where we melted chocolate and put it in moulds to cool down as interesting shapes! She really was an odd one. (And, to be honest, the chocolate wasn’t even that nice...)

My new school was much nicer. And now for the long, tiresome description! It was very small, with only 4 classrooms and 30 pupils in each year, compared to the 90 per year that were in my old school. However, the reason for it being so small was because it was an infant school, rather than a primary school, and so only went up to year 2. This changed when my class reached the end of year 2, as the Headteacher decided to convert the school into a primary school. My class got to cut the ribbon to open it, and our picture appeared in the local newspaper, which was very exciting for a bunch of seven-year-olds.

The change was slow, meaning that our class was the school’s first year 3, year 4, year 5 and year 6.  As in previous years, pupils would leave the school and move to another when they reached year 2, half of our class left before the beginning of year 3, meaning that our year only had roughly 15 people. The fact that we only had 4 classrooms (5 if you counted the art room, which was converted a few times to be an actual classroom) some of the years had to be put in the same class. By the time I was in year 6, the reception class were still on their own, year 1 and 2 were together, year 3 and 4 were together and year 5 and 6 were together. The art room was used for whatever class my sister Gwen’s year was in, as barely anyone left when the change took place, and so they still had 28 pupils.

Phew!

Now that that boring information has been explained to you, my dear patient cupcakes, I believe you require something of a bit more interesting nature.

Now, let me see… Do you remember, earlier, how I went through that list of names that made me look like a little slut? Well, time to continue that list with names from my new school! YAY!!! Let’s sluttify Lila! (I must say though, I wasn’t actually a slut. I was a nerd. I did well in class, I read books for fun, and I was obsessed with Doctor Who. The guys I knew in my younger years just seemed to like nerds, I guess…)

So, there was:

Louis Rogers – He wore shorts all year round, even in the winter, and he was obsessed with bikes and animals. There are three things about him that I remember in particular, and they were: the time in year 3 when he came to sit next to me with his animal encyclopaedia and draped his arm across my shoulders as he talked to me about it; the time in year 4 when he chucked mud at me and my friend Emma Parmenter; and the time in year 6 when Gwen’s friend threw my favourite hat onto the roof of the school and he went and got his dad and his brother so that he could climb up onto the roof to get it back for me.

James Clark – Obsessed with trains and Doctor Who, everyone thought he was a bit strange. He even brought in his favourite model train for show and tell in year 3, and created a Doctor Who episode with his best friend to perform in the talent show. But that didn’t stop me from having a crush on him in year 4! Ohh, no. After playing husband and wife in the school production of ‘Hoodwinked’ (in which I had 3 parts to play, might I just add in there) and having to hold hands on stage, I realised that he was actually quite a nice guy. However, when I told my oh-so-loyal friend, Laura Stone, (who had bought me bras for my birthday?!?!) about how I felt, she went and told our entire class! Yeah, thanks Laura! And so, me being me, I forced myself to stop liking him.

George Harris – Oh-so-charming George and his hatred of pesto was my entertainment throughout lunchtime duty in year 4. Our teachers were lazy, and they couldn’t be bothered to help the little kids open their cheesestring packets, so they made two people from our class sit at each end of their tables to do just that. (This was also what was happening when I admitted to Laura how I felt about poor James Clark) And so, from being paired with George, I began to develop yet another crush! Hah! And this for the sweet boy who asked me oh so very politely to please stop shoving my Mum’s pesto yoghurt in his face because he really didn’t like pesto. How sweet.

Andrew Ross – pretty much every girl in my class had a crush on him at some point, including me. I will admit that he was in the year below me, but he was just so good looking! I gave him a Valentines Day card in year 4 (year 4 seems to have been a very eventful year for my love life) and then in year 5, when our Headteacher decided to teach us ballroom dancing and the guys had to ask the girls to dance, he asked me!!!

Albert Moore – another boy from the year below who also asked me to dance during ballroom dancing, but not nearly as hot as Andrew (guess who I said yes to). He was a right cry baby, and when he cried, his face would go bright red. Poor kid. I remember receiving a Christmas card from him that said something like: ‘To my darling Lila, I hope you have a wonderful Christmas, lots of love from Albert xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’

Also, our class were playing kiss chase one lunchtime (except boys being boys, they decided that instead of kissing us, they would grab us and chuck us on the ground) and after a while, the game became a little more violent, so a lot of the girls slowly left the game, leaving the boys and I playing some game that involved a football – otherwise known as a soccer ball, if you’re from somewhere far away, like America. (Hmm, how many times can you say the word ‘game’ in one sentence, Lila?) It was quite embarrassing when I realised that I was the only girl left, so I awkwardly shuffled away, only to be followed by Albert who said he had to tell me something in private.

We struggled to find a quiet spot, as the other boys kept following us and trying to listen into our conversation so eventually he gave up and told his friend, Owen Mason, who later approached me rather awkwardly to whisper in my ear that Albert loved me! What was I supposed to say to that, huh?! And might I add that Owen was a right stuck up dickhead. This event clearly signalled the end of my participation in the game, which then escalated into a huge fight where a boy in Gwen’s class leaped into the air and landed, on his knees, on Liam Newton’s neck. And so began the appearance of an ambulance on our school field, and the suspension of the idiotic fuckwit who put it there.

Charlie Green – Now this, I consider to be a major one. Hardly the brightest bulb in the box was he, but everyone knew I liked him, and they all said that he liked me too. His sister told me that the password to his computer was my name! Even his Mum thought that we would end up together. Now picture this: our final primary school disco and our entire class were gathered in someone’s back garden beforehand. People rushing around and securing dates, guys asking their friends to ask a girl for them. Albert asked Andrew to find him a date, and Andrew assumed he meant me, and when I decided to just go for it, Albert said that it wasn’t me he wanted to go with, but my best friend. Nice one, mate! Way to make a girl feel appreciated! Anyway, Charlie had decided to let his sister find him a date, and of course she came straight to me, and I said yes.

On the way into the school for the disco, his Mum was there and she said something to me about me being the ‘future Mrs Green’. And then guess what he did! He sat at the back of the hall for the entire disco and ignored me! What. A. Dick.

So there, now you know a few of the events that occurred during my primary school experience.

Do you find me irritating yet?