Read Online Out of My Depth by Emily Barr - Free Book Online

remembered that she was nearly seventeen, and that she didn’t need to be in school at all. She could be married. She could be working full time, paying tax, and living in her own flat. Her primary school friend, Andrea, was living with her boyfriend and expecting her first baby before Christmas. It had, apparently, been a planned conception. Andrea, Izzy was sure, would end up as a single mother. Izzy was equally sure that she would never meet such a fate.
    She walked in through the sixth-form door, a sacred privilege which didn’t feel quite as grand as she had always supposed it must. It was a pathetic offering really: she was still at school, still confined within the institution that had held her since she was eight, but now that she was nearly an adult, she was able to use the side door. Peeved, she set off up the sixth-form stairs. This felt equally bathetic.
    She had chosen English, French and music for her A levels. At least it would be pleasant to be studying subjects she enjoyed. There would be no more multiplication of negative numbers, no more bunsen burners, no sedimentary rocks. There would, however, still be compulsory morning assembly, compulsory praying to a God in whom she did not believe, and compulsory PE. Being seventeen should involve more freedom than this. She had let herself down, and she knew it.
    Suzii caught her up at the top of the stairs.
    ‘Hiya!’ she exclaimed, with a grin. She was slightly breathless. ‘I’ve been shouting but you were in a world of your own. You looked a bit glum.’
    Izzy hugged her friend. ‘Just wondering how come I’m still here. How are you?’ She looked at Suzii. She was dressed in tight pale jeans and a man’s shirt with swirly patterns on it, which was tucked into her waistband and pulled partly out again, and she had had the spiky tips of her hair bleached. ‘You look great,’ she said. ‘Very unschooly.’
    ‘Thanks. So do you. Well, you look lovely, as usual.’
    ‘Where do we find out whose form we’re in?’ asked Izzy.
    ‘I think there’s a list. Look, Amanda. Hey! Amanda!’
    Amanda was in dark blue jeans and a pink rugby shirt. They all hugged again. Izzy noticed that Amanda smelt of soap and moisturiser and CK One. There was something very wholesome about Amanda. Her hair was newly bleached, so she had no roots at all, and she had managed to fix it so half her face was obscured under the blonde thatch. She was wearing pink lipstick, and her fingernails had been French manicured. They had seen each other several times a week through the holidays, so it was not a real reunion. Amanda and Suzii seemed genuinely excited to be in the sixth form. Izzy was fighting a growing nausea at the enormity of her mistake.
    It got worse. Mrs Spencer was Izzy’s worst teacher by a million miles; the only one she actively hated. And, of course, her and Tamsin’s names were both down on Mrs Spencer’s list. That, Izzy knew, was karma. Suzii and Amanda were with Mrs Grey and Isabelle longed to swap with one of them. Tamsin, of course, couldn’t be in her own mother’s form, but Izzy could have been.
    Everyone congregated in Mrs Grey’s classroom, because it consisted of two large tables in the glorified corridor which led to the common room and the other tiny classrooms. The upper sixth — the year above — bustled around importantly, making a show of looking down on the upstarts.
    Tamsin was morose. ‘My bloody mother!’ she said, sitting on the edge of a table and pulling her thin, jeans-clad legs up so her knees touched her chin. ‘I mean, I like her as a mother. But why does she have to be a teacher? Why? And why does she have to be in charge of the best classroom so I have to see her all the time?’ She turned to Izzy. ‘Why didn’t we leave?’
    ‘I wanted to!’ said Izzy, appalled. ‘I thought you didn’t.’
    ‘I was too lazy. I couldn’t be arsed to find somewhere to go. You should have made me.’
    ‘I wish you’d said that. We