In Bed With My Hockey Stepbrother

High Hopes

SHANNON

It was January 10, 2005.

A whole new year, and the first day back to school after Christmas break.

And I was nervous-so nervous, in fact, that I had thrown up no fewer than three times this morning.

My pulse was beating at a concerning rate; my anxiety the culprit of my erratic heartbeat, not to mention the cause of my upchuck reflex abandoning me.

Smoothing down my new school uniform, I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror and hardly recognized myself.

Navy jumper with the Tommen College crest on the breast with a white shirt and red tie. Gray skirt that stopped at the knee, revealing two scrawny, underdeveloped legs, and finishing with tan tights, navy socks, and two-inch, black court shoes.

I looked like an implant.

I felt like one, too.

My only consolation was the shoes that Mam bought me brought me up to the five-foot-two mark. I was ridiculously small for my age in every way.

I was thin on the extreme, underdeveloped with fried eggs for breasts, clearly untouched by the puberty boom that had hit every other girl my age.

My long brown hair was loose and flowing down the middle of my back, pushed back from my face with a plain red hair band. My face was free of makeup, making me look every bit as young and small as I felt. My eyes were too big for my face and a shocking shade of blue to boot.

I tried squinting, seeing if that made my eyes look any more human, and made a conscious effort to thin my swollen lips by pulling them into my mouth.

Nope.

The squinting only made me look constipated.

Exhaling a frustrated sigh, I touched my cheeks with my fingertips and exhaled a ragged breath.

What I lacked in the height and breast departments, I liked to think I made up for in maturity. I was levelheaded and an old soul.

Nanny Murphy always said that I was born with an old head on my shoulders.

It was true to an extent.

I had never been one to be fazed by boys or fads.

It just wasn't in me.

I once read somewhere that we mature with damage, not with age.

If that's the case, I was an old-age pensioner in the emotional stakes.

A lot of the time I worried that I didn't work like other girls. I didn't have the same urges or interest in the opposite sex. I didn't have an interest in anyone: boys, girls, famous actors, hot models, clowns, puppies... Well, okay so I had an interest in cute puppies and big fluffy dogs, but the rest of it, I could give or take.

I had no interest in kissing, touching, or fondling of any sort. I couldn't bear the thought of it. I suppose watching the shitstorm that was my parents' relationship unravel had put me off the prospect of teaming up with another human for life. If my parents' relationship was a representation of love, then I wanted no part of it.

I would rather be alone.

Shaking my head to clear my thunderous thoughts before they darkened to the point of no return, I stared at my reflection in the mirror and forced myself to practice something I rarely did these days: smile.

Deep breaths, I told myself. This is your fresh start.

Turning on the tap, I washed my hands and splashed some water on my face, desperate to cool the heated anxiety burning inside of my body, the prospect of my first day at a new school a daunting notion.

Any school has to be better than the one I am leaving behind. The thought entered my mind and I flinched in shame. Schools, I thought dejectedly, plural.

I'd suffered relentless bullying in both primary and secondary school.

For some unknown, cruel reason, I had been the target of every child's frustrations from the tender age of four.

Most of the girls in my class decided on day one in junior infants that they didn't like me and I wasn't to be associated with. And the boys, while not as sadistic in their attacks, weren't much better.

It didn't make sense because I got along just fine with the other children on our street and never had any altercations with anyone on the estate we lived in.

But school?

School was like the seventh circle of hell for me. All nine-instead of the regular eight-years of primary had been torture.

Junior infants was so distressing for me that both my mother and teacher decided it would be best to hold me back so I could repeat juniors with a new class. Even though I was just as miserable in my new class, I made a couple of close friends, Claire and Lizzie, whose friendship had made school bearable for me.