I knew the day the school burnt down that I was different. Like a penguin amongst a group of seagull. Totally out of it.
Now when I say different, I don’t mean something like I have blue hair or walked to my classes backwards, I mean really different. I’m a mutant.
I don’t particularly using that word but I searched the entire contents of my dictionary and couldn’t find anything apart from the word “freak”. So mutant will have to do.
But I am getting ahead of myself. The school burnt down and all the fingers point to me, Sven O’Riley; bush boy, outback Jack, Mr-doesn’t –wear-a-jumper-in-winter-because-it-is-not-cold. That’s me! Like I said, totally out of it.
I wrote all these names down because I knew that eventually I would write a book about what had happened in my life since the school burnt down (which, by the way, has not been rebuilt after a year) and how much danger the rest of the world is if they don’t here my story, so here it goes….
Just an hour after I watched the school fall to pebbles I found myself squished between my mum and my dad in the back of my principal’s car. We weren’t going anywhere. Just sitting. Principal Higgins looked at us uncomfortably from the driver’s seat as he explained the situation to my parents. How fifteen year old Sven was using high explosive chemicals in Science and then turned into a big ball of flames when some of it landed on his skin. Despite the fact that it is a completely unbelievable story (although it’s true), my hippie parents hung on to his every word, typically.
It didn’t hurt and it only happened for a fraction of a second, but it was enough to bring the school down. On the outside I looked scared as we ran to the emergency meeting place on the school oval, but on the inside my laughter tickled my ribs cage trying to get out because I hated the school and everyone within it. I had no friends, so it didn’t really matter.