Her name’s Alex.

She puts sticky notes on her favourite pages of her books.

When she’s sad, she finds a picture of the exact colour she’s feeling.

She made a promise to help anyone who’s feeling bad about themselves.

But no one knows how she’s feeling herself.

Her name’s Maggie.

She listens to songs to help channel her emotions.

When she’s lost, she changes her phone background to song lyrics on how she’s feeling.

She made a promise to change.

But no one knows her secret.

Her name’s Alex.

She puts sticky notes on her favourite pages of her books.

When she’s sad, she finds a picture of the exact colour she’s feeling.

She made a promise to help anyone who’s feeling bad about themselves.

But no one knows how she’s feeling herself.

Her name’s Maggie.

She listens to songs to help channel her emotions.

When she’s lost, she changes her phone background to song lyrics on how she’s feeling.

She made a promise to change.

But no one knows her secret.

One wants to hide whilst the other wants to be noticed.

Today I am orange.

Like Crayola orange. Bright orange.

Why? Because it resembles how positive I am today. Orange is a positive colour. And I am positive because it’s the first day back at school.  A new term a new start as they say.

Currently there are 64.1 billion people living in the UK. Meaning that there are lots of names out there.

The name Alex is about the 40th most popular baby name for boys in the 2000s.

 However I am not a boy.

I am a girl. And the name Alex for a girl is the 120th most popular baby name for a girl in the 2000s which makes me feel kind of special really. I am one in every 120.

Then I realise that I was never any good at maths.

I picked up my copy of Eleanor and Park before walking out the door. Maybe that’s my new colour today, the orange of Eleanor’s hair. I would love to have hair like hers but instead I’m cursed with a muddy blonde colour that’s hardly recognisable as the colours it’s supposed to be.

My copy of Eleanor and Park currently has 14 sticky notes peeking out the top of the pages. All in different colours. The notes resemble my favourite lines out of the book and include the date that I added them. However the colour is to resemble the mood of the quote. The blues sad. Yellow happy. Green excited.

I skim the corners of the pages with my thumb and stopped at page 220. Picking up my new orange sticky note, I stuck it to the end of the page. On it read:

31/08/26

‘It’s not me.’

‘Of course it’s you.’

15.

7 yellow.

4 blue.

3 green.

And now 1 orange.

The heap of metal that we call a bus pulls up to the road near the bus stop. The only problem with this is that I can see it nearing the bus stop from on top of the hill that takes a normal person 5 minutes to walk down. However I am not a normal person. For me, it will take a good 10 minutes to get down the hill then another 7 to reach the bus stop that is 3 minutes away in normal human time. So therefore, I decide not to attempt getting the bus. I turn around right there and head home; hoping that my mum hasn’t left to visit my gran yet so she can take me.

10 minutes later and a boring car journey, I finally arrive at school. Despite my morning setback I am still feeling fairly positive. Besides, I still managed to get here before the bus did. As soon as I step out of the car, I begin to regret every life decision I have ever made. With the weather turning colder, I maybe shouldn’t have put a dress on this morning.

But oh well.

I am positive.

I pull my scarf closer around me.

I am calm.

I trip over a small dip in the path, which is probably not noticeable to anyone else, and fall head first into a small puddle forming on the path due to the slight rain. It feels like I just fell off of Mount Everest and into the Pacific Ocean. The water splashes up around me and hits innocent passers-by. I feel shocked, humiliated. I look around to see if anyone saw, not to worry I was the only one around. Then I realise that class started five minutes ago and that’s why I’m alone.

Maybe I didn’t beat the bus after all.

But oh well, I am happy, I am positive.

Upon approaching my form room, my brain calculates an excuse as to why I’m late. I walked in with a sense of confidence, teachers always favourite the popular ones. After spurting out excuse after excuse, turns out she didn’t even notice I wasn’t there. I went to go take my old seat, the seat next to it now occupied by a weird Goth girl. However in my attempt at acting confident, I ran into a table on my way to my seat, dropping my bags as a consequence of this.

Due to the loud bang of my bags hitting the floor, the whole class turned around the stare at the source of the noise.

Did I mention that I was clumsy?

I decided that it was best to scope out the room before deciding on my permanent seat. I scouted over the multitude of heads to find some free seats. The first one next to a medium build year 10, I could see her school uniform peeking out of her excuse for a vintage yellow rain mac. The second next to a year 13 boy, that one was definitely out. I looked back to the girl sitting next to my seat.

Well, I might as well give it a try.

Despite her scary looks she might be a nice person.

I mean, what can go wrong. Right?