Read A Life Plan Without You. Online
Authors: Christine Wood
Tags: #bullying, #longing, #first love, #lonliness, #ballroom dancing, #insecurities, #age differences, #80s disco era, #family fudes
A Life Plan: Without You...
Book One of the Life Plan Series.
By Christine Wood
Copyright © by C Wood 2014
Published
at Smashwords
Any
resemblance to people, events and places,
Written
within the pages of this book is purely coincidental.
As this is a work of total fiction. As this is a work of total
fiction.
There are
significant sexual references and uses of language unsuitable for
people under the age of eighteen…
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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author
The story is told in the main, through the eyes of Michelle
but Sam’s point of view is given too, but in
slightly different text, Italic, please enjoy…
Introduction…
I dance here at Ridgley’s Dance Studio every Friday night and
have done for the past nine years. It’s my wonderful world away
from the worry and strife in my young life. I love this place and
the dancing I do, because it’s such a great way for me to relieve
my stress. I leave my care’s and woe’s on the other side of the
studio doors. This was something both my sister Becky and I had
started to please our Great-Aunt Elizabeth, who lived next door to
us. She loved to dance and encouraged us to take it up, nay
demanded it almost.
“All proper young ladies have to learn to dance girls. It adds
grace, poise and helps with one’s posture…” She said as she signed
us up to dance lessons, it was the best thing she ever did, well
that and her cheese and onion pies… Dreaming again… That seems like
so long ago now; she’d also paid for all our lessons, examination
costs and presentation outfits every year too. She is just the
perfect person to have in your life and she is also my saviour from
mum, how her door hadn’t been slammed off its hinges by now beggars
belief…
So, ballroom dancing became a big part of my life away from
home and school. There were only a few at school and college who
knew about my dancing, mainly because they were having lessons too.
It’s considered to be old fashioned and nerdy, but this is my
reason for living. I loved it, I lived for it and I was really
quite good at it.
I normally have my private lessons with Ellie Frost, my
partner for the last couple of years. However, I’ve been alone for
the last few weeks, she has a suspected broken ankle from her ski
trip with her new best friend, Karen-Bloody-Manning, she is the
bane of my life and the biggest bitch-troll-ho I know her and her
bloody equally bitchy thug like sisters, the Manning
Maniacs.
I had people in my school life who were there just to make it
and my life there intolerable, it was shit they’d succeeded and
Karen-Bloody-Manning was the final ringmaster of the bullying
circus that was better known as secondary school. I probably could
have sorted all my problems there by just by hitting the one bitch
that made my life so bloody miserable, but hell that wasn’t my
way.
Besides, she was Miss-Flipping-Popular and if I’d have hit her
the others would only want to have a go at me too. Plus… Quite a
big plus actually, her big sister Lorraine, she was built like a
wrestler and fought like one too. She was something else, a mean
and nasty piece of work… She was the hardest of five Manning
sisters, she was number four of the five Manning girls and all of
them at some point had managed to get a kick in, sometimes
literally, them in their expensive designer trainers, I knew very
well the imprint of their flashy Sergio Tacchino trainers by the
end of any given day at secondary school, they were all forever
taunting me and abusing me.
Fight back people said, yeah right, given that even most of
the lads in school gave her sister Lorraine a wide berth, I wasn’t
about to piss her off any time soon by smacking her beloved little
sister Karen. Karen was the fifth and final one of the Manning
bitches. Lorraine was the retiring year five bully, when I was in
my fourth year, so I then had only to deal with Karen, great I
thought, Karen I can handle but Lorraine didn’t go far, she only
went next door to Stockton Technical College, to do mechanics, damn
the girl didn’t need a jack to lift the car, she could probably
pick the thing up, such was her strength!
Gosh, her mum was a busy lady, five girls in five years. She
had my deepest admiration, or my sincerest sympathy, I’m not sure
which choice was more appropriate accolade to award her with? If
the rumours are true, her husband had her trying for a boy. Why he
needed one, when all his girls fought like shipyard dock workers
was a mystery?
Karen therefor was handed the crown by default of name in year
five; she was the last of the fighting Manning’s to attend Stockton
Secondary Modern. She and her sisters for nearly seven painful
years had been my enemies and worst nightmare. I really wanted to
knock her senseless, because I could and easily, but with a
criminal record I couldn’t go in the Royal Navy, so I kept my head
down and carried on.
Karen followed in all her sister’s famous footsteps to the
title cock of the school, or was that head hen? Her older sister
Lorraine, she retired last year and was both cock and hen of the
school, the year before her was Monica, such a proud family they
must be, before Monica came the bullying sister called Elaine.
Elaine, she followed on from the very first of the Manning Maniacs,
Rachel. So for the five years I attended Stockton Modern, I had
been the focus of bullying by all the Moronic Manning Mobsters at
one time or another.
Rachel Manning, was the one who started the bully ball
rolling, she was the one that ducked my head in the toilet on that
most memorable of days, the day she and her four sisters, actually
started making my senior school days horrid and for a fair
percentage of the time I spent it miserable and wet, how did I come
to be the focus of the Five Bitch Troll Sisters?
That was not an easy day for me to forget, it was the worst
day ever in all my years at school and one they still talk about
today… Some snigger, whilst others still pity me. It’s now a story
they use to frighten every single newbie year one girl with, as
they enter those big bad school gates on their first day in big
school.
Since time immemorial there has been a laughed at rumour, an
urban myth, a whispered legend that really does exist, the one were
the head school bully threatens you with the welcome to big school
treat … Yeah that’s right I know of its existence because I was the
girl who actually received that initiation test…. After that day I
was mocked and abused for weeks, after I received the time old
threat of the push of your head down the toilet whilst your head’s
held there as they flush the chain. I became a school yard joke,
what caused that particular day to be so hurtful and memorable,
Rachel-Bloody-Manning…
I wasn’t looking where I was going, I was in awe at the sheer
size and sounds within the big school, no longer was I sitting in
one chair all day each and every day, today I had to walk from
classroom to classroom for a different more grown up lesson. I was
happy excited and yeah really nervous, it was different because it
was cool, fun and all new to me and the hundred or more first year
kids, most of whom I had never seen before. I was busy looking at
my new timetable and desperately trying to remember where the art
classroom was, I didn’t see her and wam, I barged straight into
Rachel making her spill orange juice all over her new head girl
shirt.
It didn’t fit her anyway, the buttons didn’t fasten and she
needed the next size up and she didn’t appreciate me wetting her
through nor telling her that her boobs were way too big to wear
such a small blouse and perhaps she should get her mum to buy her a
bigger one. I should have kept my big mouth shut, because I learnt
that lesson the hard way, my head down the loo and the toilet
flushed.
So, as a consequence of my actions I would need reminders
often that I needed to learn how to shut-the-fuck-up! That was the
day my years of bullying at the hands of all five Manning Sisters
began… Karen was left alone, she wasn’t as hard as they were, but
her sisters still looked after their little sister, she is under
the mistaken illusion I am frightened of her, she’s so wrong, so
bloody wrong, them yes but her no.
I’m told karma is a bitch, I have to hope so, I pray for it to
happen quickly… I’m often told, by my close friends and I do have
them, to use what God has given me, my powerful opinions, (err no
thanks, because using that is what started my seven years of hell
at the hands of the Manning Sisters.) My clever mouth and quick
wit? (See reason number one, why this is also not another good
option.) My awesome right hook would to give them payback for what
they did to me. (I didn’t want to piss off any of the Manning
siblings, one I may be able to handle but all five, lord no they
came together like a pack of baying wolves when any of them were
challenged.)
I don’t like to fight… I can, but I just chose not to, I’ve
had boxing lessons for years with my daddy, proper ones in a gym
too, with gloves, head guard and mouth guards, I’m good at it my
trainer says, my fighting name is the ‘Fighting Princess,’ I
haven’t had an actual match because I’m doing them for fun and
self-defence reasons, the nick name came about when I decked a man
who pushed a button on the wrong day, happy days, but dad stopped
me going after summer was over, my trainer said nobody wanted to
hit a lady! Damn it getting these boobs cost me my place at the
gym, because dad said I needed to be a lady not a brawler, ha I
wish.
Whilst at school and college, I am very quiet my head is
always in a book, I’m never late and I’ve never missed a day or a
lesson in nearly seven years. I studied and got on with my life,
despite the bullying I had to endure, I went in day in day out not
knowing what joys the day would bring.
The
bullying was near non-existent, apart from the cat calling and
bitching; as I don’t see a lot of Karen-Bloody-Manning her minions
don’t bother me in college. (We’re on different courses thank the
lord.) The bullying is now down to name calling and the
backstabbing, which I can handle with ease, my smart mouth here is
witty and way smarter than theirs!
My group of friends, who despite our odd fall out and
boyfriend troubles are amazing and we are all still close friends,
we have stood together through thick and thin, (body issues were a
constant moan and bitchfest!) Good boys and bad boys, spots, bad
hair days and yes, we doled out the chocolate and sympathy to
whoever was on her period, comfort on those bitchfest days was well
received and much needed, yes there were a lot of those days,
cuddles weren’t necessary for me, what I needed was a heck of a lot
of restraining, they were the worst days ever because I snapped
back at whichever troll was goading me, then I’d spend the breaks
in the library, in fear of a reprisal attack.
Even through all those trials and tribulations of secondary
school bullying hell for me, they were there for me and helped me
up when I was pushed over, dry me when I was wet or passed me a
hanky and dried my tears, they had long since stopped telling the
teachers I was being bullied, because I denied it time after time.
I said nothing had happened it had been my clumsy fault. They had
said they would hurt my sister or friends if I said anything, so I
kept my silence, even from my friends…
The bullying finally ended when me and most of our group moved
on to college, where we still continue to be the best of friends.
We were at school collectively known as the Goody Goodies,
Teacher's Pets, Swot Grots, The Nerds or rather imaginatively and
because of my hair, the Hair Bear Bunch, that nickname was used the
most, it even followed us to college because it was used by the
immature Neanderthals that most of my group had dated.
We are just normal nice and friendly girls and an eclectic mix
of old friends, most of who had shock horror been in our band of
buds right from nursery school, we added a couple of new faces in
secondary school as we were willing to be friends with anyone nice,
(no bad girls were allowed though.) Our tight knit group still
consists of two Mandy’s, a Tasha, a Sophia, two Debbie’s, two
Kelly’s, one is Welsh Wasp, Kelly Pepper, two Sharon’s, two Julie’s
and finally the three Michelle’s, the three M’s known as, the
blonde one, the frizzy haired one, or the quiet one, when anyone
asked which Michelle they were talking about. I was the one with
the frizz! There was an awful lot of name confusion for the
unknowing, but there was also a lot of love within our
group.