Jealousy

• Lyndsay Miller, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2011

As the bell sounded for lunch Prunella Perkins or Pee Pee as her enemies called her, threw all of her writing tools into her old, tattered bag. She walked out the door and headed to the oval.
Prunella was not rich. Prunella wasn’t pretty, cool or smart. Prunella was Prunella and Prunella was different to everyone else. She liked to use the word ‘unique’ instead of different. Prunella was fitting in quite nicely at Walker State School (Prunella called it Torture State School) until something changed. On the 29th of April last year a new girl moved to school. She was everything that Prunella wasn’t — Smart (you could say a genius), amazingly pretty, and she was the coolest girl, she wore designer labels and changed her clothes about seven times a day. She was extremely rich. She was spoilt rotten. She was Sacha Huntington and Sacha was perfect.
Prunella opened up her plastic bag only to find a boiled potato, a half rotten apple and fifty cents. This amount of money would get Prunella two blues. Prunella barely ever got money. As soon as Prunella sat down Sacha walked past with the very cute Liam Lewis. Prunella adored Liam but he treated her like something he had just found on the bottom of his shoe. It was every girls dream to go out with Liam. Not many dreams come true. While Prunella was daydreaming about Liam she didn’t see Sacha reach into the hole of Prunella’s bag and pull out Prunella’s best pen.
Prunella or Pru was devastated when she reached C Block without her best pen so much so she caused a huge stir in Science and stopped the whole class to look for it. When Pru went outside to re check the oval Sacha quickly slipped the pen back through the hole. Prunella returned in tears- she just couldn’t find her favorite pen. She had checked everywhere.
The teacher- Miss Rawlinson- told Prunella to check in her bag again but when Prunella picked the bag up the bottom fell out. POP! The pen falls out with Pru’s apples core and a variety of other things. “Is that your pen?” asked Sacha snootily.
“My Pen!” exclaimed Prunella.
“Well if you looked properly the first time you wouldn’t be wasting our learning time!” replied Sacha nastily. Trying to suck up to Sacha the class chorused “Yeah!"
Prunella hoped Miss Rawlinson would step in but instead of a short lecture about ganging up on other students her words were: “Prunella, you have detention.”
At lunch there was more teasing. At play there was more teasing. On the bus there was more teasing. Every where Pru went there was teasing. And now detention!