Stolen Girl Read Free Page B

something to say.
    The classroom was silent except for my fumbling voice. The teacher waited. I looked either side in the faint hope that someone might help me and whisper the answer. But I knew they wouldn’t because I didn’t have any friends here. Lauren was my only friend and she was in another class – I was on my own.
    ‘Katie, I’m waiting,’ the teacher said, still tapping her fingers. I squirmed under her gaze. By now sweat was prickling across my forehead. I desperately searched her eyes in the hope that I might be able to read the answer from them but it was useless.
I
was useless. I didn’t have a clue and everyone knew it. My silence made the other children restless. I heard stifled giggles in front of me and felt my face begin to flush red. I was stupid and now everyone knew.
    ‘Loser,’ a boy called out from the back of the class. The teacher pretended not to hear him, which made the others call out even more.
    ‘Dumbass,’ one boy scoffed.
    ‘She’s doesn’t know, Miss, ’cos she’s thick!’ a girl holleredfrom the other side of the room. They laughed out loud. My face felt red hot as I burned with shame, but the redder I became, the more they laughed.
    ‘Look, her head looks like a beetroot. She’s a thick beetroot!’ a boy chipped in. By now the whole class was in an uproar.
    ‘Shush, be quiet!’ the teacher scolded. But the damage had already been done. They’d seen it. They all knew I couldn’t do maths and now they’d make it their business to chip away at what little confidence I had left.
    ‘I bet she doesn’t even know what one plus one is,’ a girl hissed sarcastically, loud enough for me to hear, as I packed my books after the lesson had finished.
    ‘Yes I do!’ I insisted, but the girl wasn’t listening anymore, she’d turned away and was giggling with her friends. I never felt so alone in my life.
    ‘She’s dumb,’ the girl said, momentarily turning back to face me. ‘I think we should call her Dumbo or something. Dumbo or Thicko!’
    ‘Yes,’ said another, ‘from now on we’ll call her Dumbo!’
    I didn’t know what I’d done to make them so angry and nasty towards me. Whatever it was, I decided that if I couldn’t be good at maths then I’d try my best at everything else. Thankfully, I loved English and discovered that I had a natural talent for it. At home, I was a real bookworm. Mum and Dad were always buying me books and would encourage me to read as much as I could. I read so much that my head was bursting with ideas of my own and my nose was never out of a story. When I read, it helped me escape my own world and become part of another inside the story. The more reading I did, the better I became at writing my own stories in school.
    ‘Very good, excellent in fact. Well done, Katie,’ the teachersaid one day as she placed my exercise book back on the desk in front of me. My heart was in my mouth as I flicked open my homework page. I’d spent ages on this story and I’d hoped for a good mark. As soon as I saw the ‘A’ at the bottom of the page in red ink, I felt so happy I thought my heart would burst. But the other kids weren’t quite so impressed.
    ‘Look at her,’ one girl said to another at the desk behind me. ‘She thinks she’s it just because she’s teacher’s pet.’ They’d both noticed the ‘A’ in my English book.
    I ignored her. She was only jealous because I’d found something I was good at, something I enjoyed doing. But the higher my grades in English, the more the bullying intensified. I’d been Dumbo in maths, yet here in the English class I was called ‘swot’. I was a ‘Goody Two-Shoes’, even a ‘saddo’, for getting things right.
    ‘Clever cow,’ one girl sniffed at the end of the lesson one day.
    ‘Yeah,’ her mate chipped in. ‘You’re well gay, writing stories.’
    Both girls knocked into me as they barged past. I couldn’t believe it. I was in a no-win situation. I was either too thick or too