L a s t d a y o f s c h o o l

I wake up to the dreaded sound of my alarm. Rubbing my eyes, I yawn and turn the alarm off. Slowly, I drag myself out of bed. I go to the bathroom and splash cold water on my face, then pad down the hallway, past my twin sister's room. I knock on her door and hear her groan, evidently trying to save the last minutes of sleep. I open the door and barge in. She is lying curled up in a ball with a pillow over her head. I walk over and yank it off, and she turns around and glares at me with her piercing blue eyes, then gets up. I walk back outside, and she follows moments later, tying up her straight brown hair.

"Ready for the last day of year 8?" I ask in a falsely cheery voice. She scoffs, but then her face lights up and she bounces further down the hall until she reaches our older brother's room.

"That's not a good idea," I say, but I join in anyway. Silently, she mouths 1, 2, 3, and then we bang on his door. We hear him moving around inside, and step on either side of his door so that when he opens it he won't be able to see us. His heavy footsteps come closer, and he wrenches the door open, seeing my sister, then he guesses where I am and looks at both of us with severe annoyance in his eyes. Then, he rolls his eyes, grabs us both by the arms and drags us downstairs to the kitchen, where my mum is laying out bowls for our breakfast. Dad is sitting across from the kitchen, in the small couch area near the stairs.

"Morning," he says.

"Hi," I say.

"You look happy," he comments to all of us.

"Yeah, kinda. I mean, last day of school, but like, we have to go to school," my sister answers, and he chuckles. "Ok."

We turn to the kitchen, where my brother is already sitting at the bench, scarfing down cornflakes, and we walk over to join him.

"Last day of junior school, huh Michael," mum says to him, and he nods in agreement. Michael's in year 10, next year he's gonna be part of senior school. For some reason though, mum is making a really big deal out of it.

We finish breakfast and clean up, get ready then walk out to the bus stop. We get on, and the bus begins the 20-minute drive to school. When we arrive, our friends, Mia and Amelia, are waiting at the gate for us.

"Hey, it's the twins," they greet us like they normally do. Whenever we tell people that, they're always like 'oh, but you're not identical, you look older,' or whatever, but we are not identical twins. We are very different. My sister is smaller than average, kinda frail but not exactly. She is an introvert through and through, always keeping quiet. And she has brown hair with blue eyes, while I am a dirty blonde with green eyes. I'm also taller, slightly taller than average, and I am more outgoing. Not full-on, like those people who talk to everyone and do everything, but still. We are complete opposites in our personalities, except for our school and studies. We are both straight-a students, but we achieve it without becoming teachers pets and being goody-two-shoes. At least, I do. She is definitely both those things. Although, at home she is more outgoing than at home.

"Yep, it's the twins," I reply.

"Told you they'd come," a new voice joins in, and I recognise it as Lucas. I turn around and see him, his brother Casper, and our friend Damon walking through the gates, and they come over and join our gradually growing group.

"Yeah, their parents wouldn't let them ditch school, especially not on the last day of school," Damon adds.

"And you two also showed up!" I say, faking surprise.

Casper scoffs. "hey, we could easily get our parents to let us stay home."

"Yeah, but we aren't slackers, unlike youse," Lucas concludes.

"Sure," Damon says, but then the bell goes, cutting off any further talk. I check my timetable. Today, I have English, PE, Music prac, Science and History, so it is a pretty good last day.

"C'mon, we have homeroom," I say. There are 4 Pastoral Care classes, each with 40 students. 160 students in the grade. I'm in Zemblanity, along with Lucas. Casper and another one of our friends called Pandora are in Fate, Amelia and Cecilia are in Serendipity, and finally Mia is in Fortune, as well as another, not exactly friend, Matthew. He just follows us everywhere, even though we've told him before we don't want him to.

The names of our school houses are weird, yes, but it is a weird town, surrounded by a forest, and filled with strange stories about magic. We get to PC and mark the roll, then while the teacher is going around signing our diaries, the class chills and chats. I turn to Lucas, who is sitting next to me.

"What are you doing in the holidays?" I ask.

"I dunno. I was thinking, if you want, you and the others could come over for a while." Lucas and Casper live in one of the mansions at the other side of town. These mansions are massive.

"Yeah! If I'm allowed," I add.

"Ok. My parents won't mind, it's just you guys' parents who we have to persuade."

"Yay." I groan. It's not gonna be easy. I open up my laptop, then go on google maps, just to look at Lucas' house.

"It is actually so big," I say.

"Yeah, but empty."

I move around, then zoom out to look at the whole town. It's surrounded by a forest, a small dark path leading out. We have one public school, from years k-12. Looking down, the school stretches the whole length on the left, moving on to roads and houses, the further to the right we get the bigger the houses. The houses opposite the school are mansions, 10 of them. The road at the top is shops, and any other services for people, eg. sports centres, hospital, etc. Google for some reason doesn't let us explore past the forest, and not many people have ever been out, so almost no one knows what it's like out there.

"Lucas, you've been out of town before, haven't you?" I ask.

"Yeah."

"What's it like?"

"I dunno how to explain it. It's-it's different. For one thing, the stories they tell are so childish, although some have hidden meanings behind them. The houses don't really get as big as my one does, but some are still pretty big. People act differently, they do different things." He stops and looks into the distance.

Then the bell goes for period one, and the class packs up then they all disperse throughout the school. I meet up with Mia outside my PC classroom.

"We have english in room 349, and we don't want to be late." We have a good teacher, Mrs Robin, but she's strict, so when you misbehave or are late to class then she can get mad. We wind through the throng of moving students and make our way down to the main classroom blocks. On the way, we pass by our lockers and drop off our bags, getting our laptops, books, pencil cases and diaries. We get to lines just as the bell rings one final time. Mrs Robin comes a minute later, and leads us up the stairs and into the class. I rush to the back of the class to get a good seat, and Mia follows close behind. We sit down, arrange our stuff, and the lesson starts.

"We will be finishing last lesson's work. You have to finish writing your short story, and then analyse all the literary techniques you use, and explain how you could put this into a visual technique." She writes on the board as she speaks, and the class gets out their laptops and starts.

55 minutes later, the bell goes for lunch, and the class rushes to pack their stuff up. The teacher stops them just before we head out the door.

"If you haven't finished, this is homework," she states, and the class groans. "Including the annotating of your story." she moves out of the doorway, and we push through.

"Really? Homework for the holidays?" I sigh.

"Well, thats Mrs Robin for you. And just about every other teacher we've got." Lucas replies. We sit down in our normal lunch spot, waiting for the others to get here. As the group slowly grows, Lucas says, "Anyone wanna come over to my house for the break?"

A chorus of 'yes' arises, and once they stop Casper says, "Youse are all welcome, but we're gonna hafta try and get the twins' parents to say yes."

"You realise you guys are also twins?" I say, pointing to him and Lucas.

"Yeah," he answers. "But thats what we call you. We can be something else. Besides, we don't like being classified as 'the twins'."

"And you think we do?" I ask.

"Eh, dunno."

We spend the next 30 mins of break discussing the meet up, and then the bell rings so we all head to class. I have PDHPE prac, double period, so it'll be pretty fun. The lesson passes quickly, and so does break, and science, then before I know it we are in the last period of the day, History. Today, we are learning the history and the meaning behind all of our town's little stories, that are apparently only told here, not outside the forest. The legends, the grain of truth.

"Firstly, our town's little game of true or false. It was developed a long time ago, just after our people had been locked inside the forest. They used it as a way to tell between the humans and the magics. They were dark times, when people lived in fear, and the twisted minds of the evil magics fought for command of the planet and all the people. Eventually, it evolved into a game, and everyone forgot the way it started," the teacher speaks to the class, but no one is really listening, being the last day of school. We were so close to holidays!

After his lecture, the teacher hands out worksheets of all our strange traditions, and he tells us to research the origins of them, but then the bell goes for the end of school.

"The worksheet is for homework," he says, and another collective groan arises from the class, but they quickly run out of class.

I am definitely looking forward to these holidays, chilling with my friends, no troubles arising.