My story called "the advantages of hiding"

My other "other hobby" is writing. In my school, someone is planning an other nanowrimo on february and I am anticipating it. Anyway a nanowrimo is some sort of competition to see who writes the best things and the winner gets to print their book and publish it in our school library!!!
This is the first chapter of the story I am writing called : the advantages of hiding ! Here it is.

I have grown up always following the same question: What if…? What if I give up and leave school? What if I grow up and become a waitress? A lawyer? A chef? What if I change country? What if..? What if..? Well I had enough of that. I got way too much of that. Something has to change right now. My thinking has to take change right now. I want to wake up tomorrow knowing exactly what I will eat for breakfast and if I will, with whom of my friends I will hang out with in the afternoon. Sounds weird, doesn’t it? Why would someone want that? I had enough surprises, now is my turn to decide what to do, when, how and where. Freedom. What a beautiful word... Freedom, it sounds like a cold sunset. So close and so far at the same time. No one had a moment in their life when they were completely free. For example there are the people in jail, people feel they are in jail even if they are not. The adults working, the moms taking care of the kids, the children at school... Etcetera. Now, just to explain, I’m not trying to be sad, I’m trying to be happy because I found some of the moments when I feel free, even more than free… I feel like when I am in that place, I decide everything… I am the queen. Oh, now you want to know where is this place, don’t you? Actually there is more than just one special place, there are lots but all of them are really hard to reach. You can’t get there walking or running. You can’t get there by car, airplane or train. You can’t get there. There is something that brings you there and that’s the only way. This is the story of how I found out about it. It all begins when I did actually change country. That was the biggest change I ever had in my life, I was moving almost to the other side of the world. But something was weird. I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t sad about leaving my friends and my family. I wasn’t sad about leaving the place where I was born. I wasn’t sad at all. But that doesn’t mean I was happy. I had to start everything all over again, but looking at it from the positive side… it was a new chance, a new beginning! I could be whomever I wanted to: I could be the nerd, the popular. I could create an “old hobby” that I actually never had like dance, or photograph… that’s original! I could create my fake old life, my fake past. I could have said that me an my family got there by boat because my father was in charge of…. Oh I don’t know; something important for sure. I could have pretended to be one of these serious and lonely people… an Emo. I could have pretended to be everything I wanted to or even something that someone else would have liked me to be.

 That could have worked, but I wasn’t brave enough, I couldn’t lie. So I just went on with my boring personality and my usual days doing the same things as ever… homework, walking around my compound wondering again what if…? I wasn’t changed. At least not yet. Even my compound looked weird, it had lots and lots of greenery, parks and soccer fields, everything rounded from a circle of houses where you could only hear the annoying sound of silence from. “Where are all the people?” I wondered my self knowing there was no one else to ask it to. “And, what are they doing?” I thought again “With such a good place were to hang out, people just stay in their houses”. I was just  by myself . That had been a really long day, but after that tiring weekend it was finally my moment to show up, even if I didn’t  really understand if I was happy about it or not. It had been a quiet afternoon at school, but then a girl with curly hair, skinny, but really good looking asked me adjusting her thick brown glasses “You are new! Hard life, anyway what’s your name?”. For a moment I tried to came up with a cool name and later on tell her the real one, but then I understood that was a stupid idea, so I hesitated and then answered “Elisabeth, what’s yours? Marta would have been a good name for you.” “No, but is close enough, it’s Carla”. I couldn’t wait much more time to know more about her, so without even thinking of it I asked “How long have you been in this school?” She rolled her eyes for some reason before answering ”I don’t know, maybe two years, if it was I didn’t even notice”. That was a weird answer, but I just kept on going “So, what do you do for fun here?” She passed her hands through her hair and started a long list of things that I didn’t even fully hear “Well, there are some cool activities you could try like painting, chess club, tennis, origami, basketball or swimming”. After that sentence, the bell rang so fast that I didn’t even had enough time to say “Bye”, she tried to say something to me without stopping walking and turning her head, but not a word came out of her mouth. It was so obvious we wanted to talk again, but it was time to go to class. I acted really stupid; I had enough time to ask her three questions and I didn’t even ask her phone number, luckily we have school five times a week so I was gonna meet her again. Anyway, she wasn’t anyone important, she was just another reason why to wonder myself again what if…?

On the next Friday, I saw and stopped her again “Finally, you are here. I am lost, this school is way too big. Do you know where the science room is?”. She didn’t look really stressed by all my attachment to her, so she nodded “Sure I know. Come, I am going to the science room too.” We walked together close to each other like friends that know each other from a long time, until the science room. She opened the door for me and we entered in. I knew she was working on a really hard project and I didn’t want to distract her, but I didn’t really have something so important to do, so I stood up and walked around the class room and close to the door of the exit I saw  something interesting. It was a paper on the wall saying: “If you are interested in any of the following contributions to the school, Sing Up!” Carla turned her head, looked at me and asked “Are you leaving?” I smiled and answered happy knowing that she cared “No, no I am not. I was just looking around and… and I saw this.” I said pointing at the paper “What is it?” She took off her thick glasses and answered surprised of my interest in such a thing “Oh that? That’s nothing. It’s just the list of afterschool activities, if you want to join them”. I looked at them closely and saw all the things she mentioned the first time we met. “Are you in anyone of these?” I asked with the pen already in my hands ready to join whatever she was going to say. She stood up leaving her book and the pen down on the table “Well, yes. I am in basketball”. I was really surprised of that, she was the only girl that signed up for that. “Anything else?” I asked full of hope. “No” she answered “But if you really mind that much… I guess I could join a new one”. I checked through the list and hesitated. “How about swimming?” I asked after minutes of there-is-nothing-left-to-say silence. She took her pencil and was about to sign up, but she closed her eyes and signed where the pencil was pointing to. ”How about….. that? Ehm.. painting?” She forced her eyes to read. I smiled and signed even if I wasn’t really happy with that “Why not to try?” Now I had even more things to do on Wednesday. Anyway I knew that with the time, becoming closer friends I would have made her somehow join the swimming team. That weekend was really important for my family, and me because my uncle was coming home with us and he was much of a critical person and for some reason for my mother his judgment was “The judgment”. That’s why for two really long days lots of things changed: my brother stopped yelling at me for not letting him watch the TV until four o’clock and I could not listen to music before going to sleep at night.

That was nothing confronting it with what happened at dinner on Sunday; we were all eating, a part of my brother that wasn’t even in the kitchen. I could see my mother’s hands shacking, which was pretty normal when she was nervous. “Luke darling” she called trying to look relaxed “why don’t you come to dinner?” There was an easy explanation to that, he simply already knew what uncle Bern was going to say and didn’t want to hear it a second time. Not hearing any answers, my mother smiled trying to look at the positive side of it “Well, it looks like there is going to be more marrow for us!” Bern smiled back changing completely his usual mood.”Yeah, it does” he said “But now I have an important thing to say.. Maria…” I was really surprised of that because I think I have never heard him calling my mother by name. “Actually..” He continued “It’s a good new, I am getting re-married”. After the word “Re-married” the only one that kept on eating like nothing happened was me. My family, was an old style family, in fact in my all life I have never seen any of my kindred getting re-married. ‘Cause for them when the priest says “forever” during the wedding, for them it’s Forever-With-Absolutely-No- Exceptions. Clearly they don’t know what happens in today’s world, the modern world.

My mother looked really sad about it, but it looked like my father was just following her face expressions, after all it wasn’t his brother.