Джейн Каммак (Jane Cammack)CHAPTER ONE
A New School
Parents and grandparents say that the years you spend at school are the best years of your life. Maybe it's true for some young people, but it wasn't like that for me... not at the beginning anyway.
My name is Alice May and I'm eleven years old. I lived with my family in London until my father got a new job in St Ives. We moved to beautiful Cornwall one summer.
This is my story.
The sun shone over St Ives, a seaside town in Cornwall. It was a busy fishing port. There were small stone houses and white sandy beaches. Lots of families lived there.
The town needed a bigger, more important school, so a famous architect designed a secondary school. The school was for children between the ages of eleven and eighteen. It was called The Fairbrother Academy.
The architect was very clever and he also loved music.
'Every school needs a concert hall with a stage and lights,' he said. The concert hall he created was wonderful. He also built a large gym, art studios, computer rooms and classrooms that were big and bright.
The outside of the school was beautiful. There was a large front door and lions around a fountain. There were gardens and playgrounds and birds sang in the trees.
Some of the children who came to The Fairbrother Academy didn't want to learn. They were not interested in French or Latin, Maths or History. They pushed their classmates in the playground and called them bad names. These children were good when they were at home with their parents, but terrible when they came to school.
I can hardly sleep before the first day at my new school The Fairbrother Academy. I am excited and nervous all at the same time.
In the morning, when I walk into my classroom, I see a group of girls. They are talking together. They stop speaking when I come in.
'Hello,' I say. 'I'm Alice.'
The girls don't smile. Their eyes are cold. One of the girls called Iris Fudge, who has an angry face, comes close. She looks at my long dark hair and blue eyes. Then she makes a scary face and runs back to her best friend Roxy Miller and the group of girls.
'Don't go near her. She bites!' Iris says.
They won't talk to me because I have braces on my teeth. They call me 'Shark Face'.