My parents kept telling me that I was a unique child, even though I was now twenty years old. With brown hair that always looked towards the sun and green-brown eyes, I was a normal person from the lower classes.
We were never particularly rich, but we usually had enough to survive. We lived in a poorer neighbourhood of London, a council flat. Even though the neighbourhood was violent, our family didn't mix in it. As almost the only family, my father worked as a secretary and my mother as a part-time cleaner. We were never greedy for anything bigger, but the longer we worked, the weaker my parents became. The main thing was for me to get a good education, which I did. However, they didn't realise that social classes were also taken into account here.
Not a day had passed since I arrived at Broxten Middle School, a state school, when the second and third year sluts started bullying me. Specifically the teenage girls and teenagers from lower class families. I was happy not to be categorised by social background like I had been at my old school and now this was waiting for me.
Like all of us, I had to follow the school's dress code, but the bullies had found out the students' addresses by accessing the school's intranet. That's how they found me. Let me introduce you: Ava Rivero. The young model and singer from second grade opened the door to our classroom during the long break. Completely unaware of what was about to happen, the long-haired brunette entered with her two friends Caro Nola, also a short-haired brunette, and Sophie Brown, a black-haired bodybuilder.
They came over to me, Ava talking about the daily protection money with gum in her mouth. I looked up at her briefly before looking down at my phone again. I hoped they would leave, but that's when Sophie hit me with the surface of her hand, grabbing me and throwing me onto the cupboard behind me. I grabbed her and tried to hurt her, but that didn't happen. She kicked me, humiliated me and hurt me. Ava and Caro laughed because they knew they were spreading fear and terror. I gave them my lunch money until the end of the break. Ava counted through. 'You understand what this is about.'
I had never felt such hatred inside me. I should have got rid of the girls straight away before they got me into even more trouble. On the second day at the new school, I got away with a little pain. Once again the three girls came and pulled my hair, slapped me or told lies that were never real and nobody did anything about it. Why should they when I was from the lower class?
At first, the three women beat me up every day so that I would learn to be afraid of them, so that they could do what they wanted to me, but I didn't give up. I kept trying to get out of their way, or to accommodate them, but their arrogance of belonging to a higher social class didn't go away. Over time, my classmates stayed away from me because they were afraid of the girls violent behaviour.
I was alone.
I knew that I had no chance of fighting them. And if I did, others would come and others would come and nothing would change. I also thought about changing schools, but even there they had contacts with other classmates. One day, in the third year of secondary school, they came to me again in the corridor and, predictably, they hit me again, this time with blood coming out of my nose. Ava grabbed me by my hair and looked deep into my eyes. The look of hatred that I had.
'Don't overextend yourself, we still need you.'
She came closer to my ear: 'After school at the karaoke place on the corner!'
After school, I went straight to Uncle John's Karaoke on the corner by the school. This is where the most popular gang members of our school congregate. 'Here you are, Oscar,' Caro greeted me and immediately put me in a headlock.
'We have to introduce you to someone!'
She pulled me into a room and immediately threw me to the floor. I looked up briefly when I saw the whole group. They were all sitting there, one after the other in order of hierarchy, quietly and with a quick glance at me. At the very back sat Tracey, a brunette with blue eyes and an oval face, her cheeks standing out with make-up. She was kissing the school's Though guy called John Scott. He was rumoured to be dating the Queen Bee and beating up the mob himself. That's how powerful he was.
'What are you looking at?' he stared at me. I was confused as to why I was here. He kissed his girlfriend again before getting up. He stood in front of me as he enquired what I was doing here. 'He's your present.' As soon as he heard this, he punched me in the stomach until I felt my own heart.
Now I was lying there. On the floor of a karaoke club, beaten to death by the strongest bloke I'd ever seen and that's because I was poor. I was breathing heavily by now. The others in the room were watching. He grabbed me by the collar and punched me in the face a few times with his fist. It swelled up so that I couldn't see out of my right eye. Blood was coming out of every hole. Still conscious, he let me fall to the ground.
I looked up at the gang members again, how they were celebrating with joy at having beaten up a nothing. I felt the hatred inside me and wished for revenge. A pool of blood gathered beneath me and I began to choke on my own blood. Was this the end of my life?