Reality Bent School

Jessica always imagined that by 19 she would be working towards her dream career as an architect. What she didn't expect was that, in order to combat the rapidly rising unemployment rate, the government would legislate another three years of mandatory general education for young adults, starting with her age group. Even worse, the process of finding an "institutional college" was out of her control, and the system had sent her to a boarding school that was hours away from her parents’ home. It was early September, and she found herself walking into the great hall of St Catherine's Institutional, skinny body fitted into the college’s drab grey uniform.

"This has got to be cruel and unusual punishment. We didn't have to wear ties at secondary or sixth form but they us back into education and now want us to wear them?"

Will, the only person at St Catherine's that Jessica knew, tugged at the shoddily tied knot around his neck. The two of them sat down in one of the neatly arranged rows of folding chairs filling the room.

“At least you get to wear trousers. I can’t believe the school can get away with only letting women wear skirts!”

Her dark, pleated skirt came down to just below her knees. Jessica did like wearing skirts, but taking the element of choice away from her made her feel uncomfortable. She was an adult now, and should be able to wear whatever she wanted.

The hall grew silent as a middle-aged woman stepped to the podium facing the seated students. As she began a boring speech about exactly how grateful all the newcomers should be that they could attend such a wonderful place of learning, Jessica found her mind wandering to thoughts of how she was going to survive the next three years without going mad from boredom.

Still, eventually the speech ended and everyone marched off to their first day of lessons. Amongst other, English, Maths, Science, History, and even Music were mandatory subjects for everyone. Most of these Jessica thought she had been done with a long time ago. With each day the feeling of emptiness, of being held back from what she truly wanted to do grew inside her. Only one thing caught her interest: when she woke up in her private bedroom, sometimes things were a little different to how she remembered them. Clothes she had washed the day before were still in her hamper. Her timetable never seemed to match her memories, but her friends had no trouble memorising theirs.

After a couple of instance of this, Jessica was always on edge, looking out for anything unusual. Her friends didn’t believe her when she talked about it, so she tried to squash down her paranoia. She chalked it all up to déjà vu, and being in an unfamiliar environment.

Even so it was easy to settle into the routine. After a couple of weeks, whenever she departed the common room to her bedroom for the night, she found herself wishing that something – anything – would happen to make her life a little more interesting.