*

After fifty minutes' worth of a long, drawling Motivating First Day Of School Speech, we were dismissed to the front hall outside of the auditorium. There were about twenty teachers stationed behind fake wooden schooldesks who were handing out class schedules. Outside the grand front window of the old school building were what looked like a few hundred Freshmen standing behind a forty-something woman, who was aimlessly struggling to hold their attention.  
I suddenly realised how painfully awkward I must have looked, standing isolated in the middle of the drafty space. A group of angsty-looking guys were air-guitaring to an apparently awesome guitar solo on a small black iPod. I turned away, noticing that the swarms of Freshmen outside were getting a move on inside.
"Anyone left without a schedule?" piped a short, plump old lady wearing thick glasses and a black knit sweater. Shit. I had been so focused on how awkward I looked in this foreign building that I forgot to pick up my class schedule.
"Me!" My voice wasn't quite co-operating, and I was pretty sure I sounded like a kind of mouse being trodden on. Blushing, I stode towards where the woman was minding loads of papers.
I stood in line behind a group of "gangsta" wannabes, all with ginormous, technicolour "badass" shoes and loosely fitted clothing.
"I hear there sketchy crackhouses ou' by Corner Street West," blurbed a particularily "pimpin'" character.
"To' sketch, f'sho!" replied another.  
"Yo, playas!" A pair of scantily-clad, Baby Phat-wearing, she-ghettos joined the crew. Their lack of grammar was burning my desperate geek ears. I wondered, How the hell can they listen to eachother talk like that while keeping a totally straight face? while turning onto the next line, which wasn't so much as being held up by a clan of 50 Cent wannabes whose jeans were inching dangerously close to their ankles.

By the time I got my schedule, most of the students had already shuffled off to their first period classes.

GYM- GPE-20
DURRANI, JENN
GYM 2
was first on the schedule. Wait, I hadn't signed up for gym! Had the woman behind the desk confused my schedule with some jock girl's? I practically prayed that it would at least be an all-girls class. Let's just say I wasn't the most physically-inclined teen, OK?
"Umm, excuse me, do you know where gym 2 is?" I asked a lanky girl with who was typing something on a grey cell phone.
"Just out by the courtyards. You'll see it, there are signs on the wall that say Gym 1 and Gym 2."

The gyms, health rooms, tech rooms, science labs and... pool(?), were contained in the Northern Building. Unlike the century-old, gorgeous redbrick Academic Building, it was a big, silver, modern-looking fixture with lots of huge rectangular windows. I could see the sparkling turquoise gleam of the pool as I strolled up the pathway with a few dozen other students who were also late for their homeroom classes.      
I swallowed. A pool? Would we have to be able to swim? The most I could ever do was a meek dog paddle across the shallow end. I couldn't stand the idea of sticking my head fully under the water. I had only ever done that a few times, and every time, I had ended up inhaling enough water to have me coughing and wheezing on the deck for about half an hour. The nasty feeling of heavily-chlorinated water entering the nose- I knew it all too well.

*

"Late!" barked Miss Durrani as I took a seat on a random patch of unused gym floor. It sparkled like a professional basketball stadium. Not that I'd ever been to one...
"Hair pulled back! No jewellery or watches! Wear your gym shirt you bought last year. Come to class prepared!"
"Sorry, I didn't sign up for your class, so I wasn't expecting to have it first."
"The schedules have been up for grabs in the main office for the past three weeks. You should have came in and got one."
"I just moved here last week. I had no idea..."
"You'll need to order a gym shirt and shorts. Socks are optional. The shirts are thirty dollars each, the pants, forty. You'll also need real running shoes, a hair tye and a modest swimsuit." She handed me an order form and an inch-thick stack of Rules And Guidelines. A couple of jocky-looking girls in the class snickered. I couldn't tell if it was directed at me or the teacher.
She spent about half an hour going over Rules, Guidelines, the difference between the two, Units(The first would be volleyball. Yikes.), Punishments for Not Following The Dress Code, etc, etc. It turned out that every Friday was Swim Day. Shit. The boys' gym class would join us every Wednesday for Competitive Activities. Double shit.

"Hi! I'm Richelle." The girl next to me gave a smile after Miss Stefani or whatever her name was, was finally finished.
"I'm Devon-Leigh. I'm new to this school."
"Yeah, I could tell. You looked so awkward." She smiled again. "I like your accent. Where are you from?"
"Caledonia. It's down near Port Dover. But I was born in Georgia, which explains the accent. Me and my mom and sister have a cottage on Lake Erie, which is where my mom met my stepdad, Sean LaRose. They got married and we lived in Caledonia for four years. We just moved here last week because Sean found a new job on a bigger news station."
"So he's a news man?"
"Weather guy, actually. How about you?"
"Huh?"
"Like, have you always lived here?"
"Yup. I live down on Edinburgh Crescent. It's like, the richest part of Hamilton. You must live in a nice house, you know, with your dad being on TV and all."
"Stepdad," I corrected her. "It's kind of a nice house, I guess. More like just average. I like it."
Richelle lifted her eyebrows. "I can't wait until we go swimming. I kind of hope the guys are nearby so they can see us in our bikinis."
"I thought Miss Durrani said it had to be a modest bathing suit."
"She says that, but nobody follows." Chuckle, chuckle. "She makes us wear our gym shirts overtop, but we can always flash some skin to the boys when she isn't looking."
"Oh."
"You know anybody at this school?"
"Just my pain-in-the-ass stepbrother Jonas. We're actually pretty close, though. He's a freshman."

After a few games of "spit", an obstacle course and a whole lot of jumping jacks, gym was over. All of the other girls got changed into their regular clothes while I wandered in solitude towards what would soon be my locker. It was bright orange. I dumped my blue Roots backpack in it and waited for the other girls to return. Richelle came back along with the two other girls she had been sitting with in gym. Their names turned out to be Chandler and Brittney.
"I really like your hair. Is it real? I mean, the colour." asked Richelle.
"Yeah. I've never died it." I forced a smile. I wore my almost-shoulder length, frizzy fire-engine red locks with pride.
"Lucky. Mine's definitely fake. It's actually this really dull, boring brown." She flicked around a strand of her pale yellow, almost-ass length, ceramic straight long hair and made off to her next class, "Photage", with her two preppy friends.

She was the first person I met at Westbrook Lawns; the first potential friend. Nobody who wore her kind of clothes had ever taken me seriously at my old school, so it was all a new experience. She seemed like someone who could become a rival at any moment if I wasn't careful of how I presented myself, but I wasn't going to give up her and her crew. Over summer break, I had decided that I would make as many friends as possible at Westbrook Lawns. I would no longer be the awkward, pale, frizzy-haired girl who often walked the halls alone with nothing but a green turtleneck and two dolphin earrings to keep me company.
I had a few friends back in Caledonia, of course, but none except for Meg had been worth keeping contact with after the Big Move. Meg had been almost as awkward as I had- what with her blue Velcro sandals and greasy, "scrunchie"-tied hair.

Thats as far as I've gotten..