1. Rude Awakening

Zandra paced confidently down the corridors of the high school, occasionally smiling at friends of friends, or people she had once shared a class with. She recognised most of the faces in the corridors, but there were very few people she knew well. For the most part, she just wanted to get to the restrooms before her bladder burst, and then hopefully reach her next class without getting yet another pointless 'tardy' mark on her record. As she passed the courtyards, she could see the rain outside lashing against the windows. She could remember how this place had seemed like a shelter from the storm when she was younger, but the buildings were worn now. A couple of rivulets of water ran down the walls on the inside, where the city council hadn't been able to spare money to replace a decades-old seal. Zandra brushed against a bank of lockers against one wall, and then realised that her hand was wet. She stared at it in frustration, and then shook the droplets off onto a carpet that was already near to waterlogged with all the muddy shoes traipsing over it.

Zandra rounded one corner, and then another. She quickly realised that she was lost. She would have thought that ten years of walking between the same dozen classrooms would be enough for her to have memorised the layout, but this place was a maze. She sighed and set off again, hoping that a confident stride would mask her confusion. She didn't want anyone to think she was starting the slide down to dementia before she'd even graduated high school. Once upon a time that thought would have seemed funny, but it felt more tragic after she'd seen exactly that happen to poor Sean. It was a grim spectre hanging over them all.

Unfortunately, her proud stride didn't keep her safe from other ailments that people might laugh at. Her hip, for example, gave a twinge of pain to suggest that she was overdue a fall if she kept on moving at this pace. But she didn't want to admit how old she was; by now, she was probably the only girl in their class who hadn't resorted to hair dye, and she told herself daily that she was only as old as she felt. Unfortunately she was sixty-nine now, and whatever part of her body she was saying those words to had apparently gone deaf about a decade before. She slowed her pace slightly, but she still wouldn't stop. She would be able to get to the next class, she was sure.

"Zan!" a voice called out, and Zandra turned to see Sabine standing next to the lockers. Her friend's blond hair had turned almost grey now, and even her continued membership of the track club couldn't keep her body in the muscular shape she had once taken such pride in. She was loading books into her bag now, and stowing away her gym kit. "I thought you'd already be on the front row, waiting for Cockroach to tell you what a teacher's pet you are."

The both shared a laugh then; there was no way that either of them would ever be called a shining example of good behaviour. Not that they were bad at all; they were just trying to survive the tedium of school life like everybody else.

"Nice to see you too," Zandra answered, glad of the opportunity to lean against the wall and rest her hip while they talked. "Dell not here yet?"

"Haven't seen her. Thought you two might have found a quiet corner somewhere."

"Not me," Zandra laughed. "Besides, she flirts with you almost as much as me. Why have you not asked her out yet?"

"She hits on everybody," Sabine laughed. "It doesn't mean anything. But I swear, you're the one she wants. She told me, you know? She's going to ask you out, just as soon as you graduate high school and get out of your parents' attic." Zandra stepped aside to make it easier for a boy with a walking frame to get past; giving her an opportunity not to respond to those words.

"Think we'll actually manage to grow up this time?" she asked a moment later.

"Didn't you hear? They put the age of majority up again. The bill just passed."

"Seriously? We got another two years, I guess?"

"Worse. Can't graduate until we're seventy-five this time. Saves having another vote every year or two."

"Oh, hell," Zandra grumbled. "Well, can't say we didn't expect it. Should have nipped this in the bud when it first started. I wonder if we'll ever…"

She didn't want to keep on talking about such depressing things, and someone else was waving to Sabine now. So Zandra walked slowly off into the maze of corridors, trying to remember which one would take her to the bus stop for the ride home. There had to be a way out somewhere. Her hip started to protest even more as she started climbing the stairs, and it felt like she was on a treadmill that never seemed to get her anywhere. A good metaphor for life really. The sound of laughter caught her attention and she spun sharply. Not such a good idea on the steps, and a moment later she was falling, tumbling over and over in the air. There was nothing but darkness above and below, and after a few seconds she couldn't even tell which way was up.

"Oh," she thought, she felt something like a splash as she hit the ground; or at least went from falling to lying still with no sense of deceleration. She didn't try to move yet, just lay there with her eyes closed, trying to decide what to do next. A sense of reality pressed down upon her, and she wasn't ready to deal with that just yet. The pillow under her cheek was warm, and she could feel the soft cotton of the blankets draped over her shoulders. One foot was cold, where the bunched up blanket only covered the top half of her body, and her left hand felt chilly too, where it dangled limply over the side of the bed. The sweat of a hundred bodies had become one of Mum's scented candles mixed with a sharp odour she wasn't quite awake enough to care about. The babble of an imaginary crowd of elderly students had now resolved itself into the much more familiar sounds of muted laughter and a fan whirring somewhere else in the house. And even with her eyes closed, she could tell that the blinds weren't admitting sunlight to shine on her face, so there was no reason to wake up just yet.

She marvelled at the weirdness of that dream, going over the events in her memory before they faded away. It was easy to see where it had come from, though. Zandra had been nineteen last month, and her brother still called her a baby. He'd been starting at university when he was her age; but all of Zandra's peers were now reeling with the news that high school graduation was being pushed back another two years to allow for a more intensive media literacy curriculum, and possibly the addition of a third mandatory foreign language. Zandra hadn't been able to think about anything but the terrible news for days.

Jay didn't make it any easier to take her mind off it, either. He laughed and called her 'baby' given even the slightest excuse; teasing her for still being in school. She wondered how he would have liked it if his dreams of college had been put on hold to–

Zandra's eyes opened suddenly. That was what had woken her! Jay's laugh, an irritating snigger that he couldn't keep quiet even if he tried. What was her brother doing in her room today?

"Morning, baby girl!" he announced, and Zandra felt the scowl forming, her hands forming into fists even before she was awake enough to make that decision. He'd only been back from university a short time, and already Jay was making her life miserable. Calling her a baby was the worst thing possible, right now. She was being kept in high school for an extra two years, on top of the previous increase which Jay had so narrowly avoided; and she didn't need any humiliation to reinforce the fact that the world was suddenly promising to take away her adulthood. It was just too much to take, all at the same time.

"I'm not a…" she started growling, and then sat bolt upright, grabbing the blanket and throwing it over herself in a desperate attempt to hide the detail that had just grabbed her attention. But she had already heard the synthesised shutter sound, and knew that her brother was taking pictures to guarantee her humiliation. It was even more embarrassing to realise that he had noticed before she did. He would never show them to anyone, she was sure, but just the fact that he had pictures of her like that made her cheeks glow like a stop light.

"You can't… stop that!" she shrieked, outraged and ashamed all at the same time. She wanted to hide from the world, as if throwing a blanket over the problem would make it go away. But she knew that she needed to actually deal with it, and she wasn't sure where to start. That didn't matter though, because Jay was already shouting for their parents to come and help her, taking away any chance of privacy she might have had.