Post by Saskia Wood on Mar 13, 2007 17:19:47 GMT -5
Right, Left. Right, Left
Saskia Wood was finally back in her element.
Here she was free from all the stares, all the strange looks.
Here she could be who she was, who she wanted to be. She could the person she’d left behind. And she could leave the mask she’d made for her new life back in her dorm room.
She stared angrily at the cement footpath as if blaming it for all her troubles.
She hated it here, she really did.
It was nothing against America, it was a gorgeous place, but it wasn’t home. It wasn’t her high school or Liverpool University. These people weren’t her friends, and somewhere inside her was a little voice telling her that maybe they never would be.
These people were all so different from her. The boys were whatever the girls wanted them to be and the girls were exactly what the stereotypes suggested.
Saskia wasn’t and never would allow herself to become one of them. That was one of the things that she’d promised herself before allowing herself to be caught up in this industry, the industry of communication and instant stardom, she wouldn’t let it change her.
Her mother had let it change her, she’d told Saskia that. Once upon a time her mother had dreamed of being nothing more than a wife, nothing more than a mother. But instead her uncle had made her his secretary at his advertising agency and slowly things grew from there.
Her mother had never regretted the move, Saskia knew that, but she did regret the way she’d changed so much to be what everyone expected, everyone wanted.
Saskia often told herself that she didn’t care what anyone wanted, she just wanted to be herself. But sometimes she couldn’t help sitting there and watching people watch her and wondering what they were making of her.
Right, Left. Right, Left
Saskia’s joggers smacked the pavement with a very satisfying slap.
She knew she shouldn’t be so quick to judge those around her, she barely knew these people. She had only been in the university grounds for a week now.
It was still summer break so as yet classes were still a while off, and all she’d done so far was get lost and find her dorm room.
It had just been Saskia’s luck that when she had finally started to hope that maybe she’d share a room with another Freshman, instead she’d found herself in a room with no dorm-mate. Apparently her dorm buddy would be a bit late for the semester.
That was one thing Saskia despised, someone who took their place in life for granted.
Sure, she hadn’t exactly worked hard to get here, her mother having just dropped a name left and right, but she had had to wait a year for a university place after the move and felt it was bad enough that she was a Freshman whereas if she’d stayed at Liverpool she’d be in her second year by now.
Saskia rounded a duck waddling along the running track and kept going, the morning sun climbing to just the right height to start burning her pale skin.
Earlier there had been no one in the park, but as the morning grew later the place began to fill up a bit more. Saskia watched a small group of people as she jogged past them.
These people were all the same. They hung together in their own little groups. All the musicians, all the fashionistas. No one really helped each other out. In a sense it was just like all those bad American high school movies she’d watched when she was 12. Except, this time, she had to live through it.
No one had even tried to help her out when she’d arrived at the university just a week ago. In fact, the only person who had said more than three words to her was a boy a little older than her named Alastair who’d helped her find the student centre.
But then, Saskia realized, she hadn’t exactly been straightforward either.
Right, Left. Right, Left
Saskia stopped, realization and a stitch bringing down her hard hour of running.
She was being a snob! A real cow!
She didn’t know these people, she’d never talked to them? How could she judge them?
She was a hypocrite, saying to herself that people judged her when here she was jogging around like the Queen herself and thinking horrid things about people she didn’t know.
Okay, so they wore designer clothes and were all a size 4. Sure, but that didn’t make them horrible people right? I mean, evidently there were smart because they were in this university aren’t they? Probably smarter than she was because she’d got in on name alone. She was Hudson’s ticket to the English market.
Oh god, she was a poster girl!
Saskia bent over trying to get air back in to her lungs as she rubbed the painful stitch hard.
How dare she shun everyone because she was different?
Saskia felt sick, what had she become? Where as the girl she used to be? This wasn’t Saskia Adelaide Wood, the back-talking but overly friendly football nut who the popular girls hated and the unpopular girls admired.
No, and maybe she’d never be that girl again, but she would be something like it.
Right, Left. Right, Left
Saskia wiped her brow with her oversized Liverpool FC football shirt and pulled a hair-tie out of the back pocket of her shorts, trying her hair up into a bun off her neck.
Everyday since she’d arrived she’d jogged around Al Lopez Park, but she’d had trouble when she’d started. Mornings were so much warmer here than they were in London and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t pretend she was back in Hyde Park with her jogging partner Callie. She so wished she were back there.
The stitch finally went away and Saskia stood up straight again allowing the cool air off the pond to wake her up.
“C’mon you silly cow. Stop moping and get running.” Saskia muttered to herself.
And so she did just that.
At least until she barreled straight into the person on the footpath just ahead of her.
She fell to the grass in a very unsophisticated heap…