Excerpt from Best Years of Our Lives
You are thirteen and it is your turn today.
You don’t know why it’s your turn today but all you know is that it is.
The atmosphere has been building up for weeks.
Those little incidents.
Brief encounters.
Minor skirmishes.
You’ve never experienced anything like this anticipation before and you’re scared. Your stomach is turning over as if you’re staring down the side of a skyscraper. You are tense and dizzy and you wish you hadn’t had seconds in the dinner hall.
Two slices.
You’re thirteen, sitting at a large school desk, your satchel packed and blazer on.
Five boys are staring at you. You know it’s your turn.
You’re paralysed. Panic. You cannot move. You’ve never known a feeling like it. Trepidation courses through your veins. Your body is charged and you want to cry. But you don’t. Weeping will only make things worse.
You wish it isn’t your turn today but it is.
You pray.
That’s what they taught you to do at Primary School. Pray. When in trouble. Pray. God will provide. God will save. They taught you to pray before they taught you to read, those nuns. You really need him now but as you’ve long suspected, he isn’t there and somehow even if he is out there, you know he isn’t going to help.
You’re on your own.
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