Text 1: A map for Monday, by Aisha Rahman

An original contemporary blog entry.

On Monday morning, everyone else seems to know exactly where they are going. A river of navy blazers flows through the gates, carrying me with it, while I grip the printed map the receptionist gave me. I have already checked it six times on the bus. It has not become any clearer.

My family moved here during the summer, so I am beginning Year Nine in a school where friendships appear to have been fixed in place for years. At my old school, I knew which stair squeaked and where to stand when it rained. Here, even the corridors seem to turn their backs on me.

A teacher sends me towards the hall for assembly. I follow a tall girl with green laces in her shoes because she looks confident. Unfortunately, she is going to orchestra practice. By the time I realise this, I am standing in a music room beside a set of drums.

“Lost?” she asks.

I admit that I am. She does not laugh. Instead, she walks me to the hall and waits while I find my form. Her name is Nia, and she tells me that she spent most of her own first day searching for a science laboratory that was one floor above her.

The morning is still awkward. Twice, teachers pause over my name when they reach it on the register. At break, I pretend to study a noticeboard while groups gather around me. Then Nia appears again. She introduces me to two of her friends and asks about the sketchbook sticking out of my bag. Within minutes, we are arguing cheerfully about which mural should be painted on an empty wall near the library.

At the end of the day, the map is soft and crumpled in my pocket. I have taken three wrong turns, arrived late to geography and called one teacher “Mum”. Yet, as I walk through the gates, I realise I am no longer counting the weeks until we can move back. I am thinking about what colours to bring for the mural.

Text 2: My first day at Ashcombe School, by Edwin Mercer

An original diary entry written in a nineteenth-century style.

In this imagined diary entry from 1888, a boy records his arrival at a boarding school.

17 September

Father left me at the great iron gate shortly after noon. I watched his carriage until it vanished at the bend, though he did not once look back. Ashcombe stood before me, grey and severe, with rows of narrow windows. I thought it less like a school than a place in which a person might be locked away.

A servant carried my trunk inside, and I was taken to a long room where thirty boys were writing. Every pen seemed to stop as I entered. The master asked my name, my age and what work I had completed at home. My voice sounded so small in that enormous room that I scarcely recognised it.

He placed me beside a boy called Harwood. I whispered a greeting, but he only examined the ink on his pen. When I could not find the correct page in my Latin book, someone behind me laughed. The master struck his desk with a ruler and ordered the room to be silent, though this made me feel more conspicuous than before.

Supper was bread, broth and a piece of cold meat. I had no appetite. A younger boy named Ellis sat opposite me and pushed an apple across the table when the others were not looking. He said nothing, but I was grateful for this small kindness and saved the apple in my pocket.

We sleep in a room beneath the roof. The wind presses against the windows, and beds fill the room from one wall to the other. Harwood is already snoring. I have placed the apple beside my pillow, where it reminds me that not everyone here is unkind.

Nevertheless, I would give anything to hear our gate click and Mother calling me in from the garden. The school bell will ring at six tomorrow morning. I hope that, when it does, I shall be brave enough to rise.