Catherine (GirlxGirl)

Catherine- High Hopes

Chapter 2

High Hopes

Since i first started school here, I had been giving teachers the silent treatment since day one.

I didn’t want to speak to any of them, nor did I want to converse with any of the other students in the class. I had just turned fifteen; I was living with a nice family in Coventry, not too far from Rover Road for a couple of months now. Sometimes they acted as though I was one of their own, then other times I was treated as the ‘fortunate foster kid who just happened to be in the house’, according to my new temporary ‘brother’ Adam.

I can’t remember the last time I’d smiled without forcing it. The only person who happened to make me smile was a girl called Catherine.

What can i say about her? She's the most amazing girl i've ever known. You couldn't even label her gorgeous, no, she was beyond that. The only reason I had turned up to school almost everyday was because of her, other days we’d stroll the streets searching for excitement, rather than sitting in a classroom learning about absolute crap.

Who needs school anyway? Everything is in books, once you learn how to read and write school is partially stupid. Don't get me wrong, it's important to know your stuff, but for me it was useless. 

English was one of my favorite subjects, as well as sociology. The problem I had with English was the amount of analyzing we had to do, just for one poxy line within a poem. Yet, whenever i took any interest in front of the teachers, they'd accuse me of sarcasm, that i was doing it to annoy them, which lead them to kicking me out of their class. It was only because i had never really paid attention, although secretly i was. I just didn't want anybody else to know that, even though i didn't speak to anyone, i was still the class clown, the girl who caused trouble.

I studied hard though; I was determined to become a social worker so I could help children. Give them everything I didn’t have the chance to get. Provide them with love and care, and perhaps someday I’ll become a foster parent and help those kids too. But at the moment, I was stuck between a world of thoughts and trapped inside a door of reality.

One side of me craved the danger and excitement of running off on adventures with Catherine, and the other serious side of me, knew school- however stupid it was sometimes- was indeed important. I knew it was the only way I’d be able to get out of this place and start a better life.

I met Catherine the day I entered the new foster home. After a couple slices of pizza I had ran off upstairs to unpack my things with the help of this kid called Stanley. The woman who brought me here thought it would be a good idea if he helped me unpack and perhaps make a friend while I’m at it. But I knew staying here, and after many months of experience, a friend is something I didn’t want.

I guess I wanted companionship, but the last friend I made turned out to be a mistake, she hurt me and destroyed the only thing I had left of my childhood with my parents. It was the necklace my mother gave me before she turned to alcohol and drugs. It was the only thing that kept me from hating my mother, because it reminded me of who she really was before the alcohol and drugs took over.

It’s not that I didn’t hate her for what’s she’s done, but it was the only thing that made me feel like I was still apart of a family. Now, here I was without any friends, maybe that’s the only way to move on.

I found my way around the place easily. After I had unpacked my clothes and whatever I had left from my last home, I carried on walking around ‘Evansdale Children’s Home’. Every room was either abandoned or filled with younger and older children, sitting at tables working or coloring in their books.