Fifteen Lanes - S.J. Laidlaw Page 0,2

would capture it nicely, except that would imply that I had a sense of foreboding, and honestly I hadn’t a clue.

I knew I wasn’t in for a great school year. We’d been back in class only three weeks but that had been long enough to get a pretty good idea of what I was in for. I’d been trying desperately to ingratiate myself with a group of girls who’d made it very clear I wasn’t welcome. Madison, the queen bee, questioned my motives. According to her, I was a snob who, in the three years we’d all been together at Mumbai International School, had never shown the slightest interest in being friends until I had no other options. She wasn’t completely wrong.

I was never under the illusion that I was too good for Madison, or anyone else for that matter, but it was true that for the first time in my fifteen years I was out of options. The summer break had seen not only the departure of my über-popular brother Kyle to university but the move of my best and only friend, Tina, back to her home in Singapore.

Tina and I had been inseparable since our very first day of school, when we’d met at orientation three years earlier. Ours was by far the longest friendship I’d ever had. To be perfectly honest, it was the only friendship I’d ever had. Losing Tina had been a painful and unexpected blow. I’d had time to get used to the idea that Kyle would be leaving, but Tina and I had always talked of graduating together. In fact, we’d made a lot more plans than that. This year, for example, we were going to start dating. I wasn’t entirely sure how we were going to find boys to date, since none had ever shown the slightest interest, but that didn’t faze Tina. She said the only thing we had to worry about was finding boys who got along well with each other since we weren’t going to sacrifice our own time together just because we had boyfriends. We also had to find boys who were serious about school. Both of us were in the International Baccalaureate program, which was mega-challenging, and Tina said we only wanted boys who would not hinder our studies. She was mainly talking about me when she said that because Tina could pull straight As standing on her head. Tina was determined I was going to get good enough grades that I could apply to the same universities as her. We were going to apply only to the top schools. Like I said, we made a lot of plans.

The one thing we never planned on was the possibility of her moving away. It never occurred to us, though I don’t know why. Before Mumbai, my family had moved every couple of years. I’d gone to four different schools on three continents by the time I was twelve. I was so used to the idea that relationships, like schools and homes, were at best temporary that when we first arrived in Mumbai and Dad announced we wouldn’t move again until I graduated I thought he was joking. And I was not amused.

To my mind, spending five years in one place was unbelievably risky. What if I didn’t like the school? What if no one liked me? The latter was a distinct possibility. At my previous schools I’d always hung on the fringes of groups, never really fitting in. No one ever picked on me; it was more like I was invisible, which at the time I thought was almost as bad as being bullied. I knew it was my own fault I had no friends, especially since Kyle slid into every new school like he’d been there his whole life, proving it could be done. I was just too shy.

The one thing that kept me from giving up completely was the chance that things would be better at the next school, that I’d hit the right combination of kids, or I’d figure out the secret to fitting in. Moving gave me hope. Dad’s decision to stay in Mumbai meant the end of hope. Perhaps that’s what gave me the unprecedented courage to make the first move with Tina.

I liked the look of her immediately long black hair tied in a messy knot on top of her head and cherry-red, horn-rimmed glasses. She looked dorky and bold at the same time. I didn’t approach her immediately, though. I waited