Peer Pressure Read Online Free

disinfectant, while the huge windows taunted the building’s inhabitants with the knowledge that there was a whole world out there.
    It was always the same, five days a week. Six if you were to count Sundays, which never really felt like a day off due to the dark cloud of Monday morning looming over your head. The students all knew they lived for Friday nights and Saturday mornings. Yep, nothing had changed.
    Nothing ever changed.
    It was with this frame of mind that Jodie started her last year at Brushwood Academy.
    She had already gathered two Higher Grades the year previous, for English and Mathematics, which had earned her an ‘A ‘and ‘B’ respectively.
    This year she intended on gaining three more, in Art and Design, Drama and Geography.
    She had planned it that way, really. She had wanted her last year to be creative, freeing and fun; to be a perfect send off to her secondary education and a welcome pre-cursor to the next step, University.
    It was this step in particular that had led her to apply for sixth year studies in English, sort of an extra credit that would involve in-depth discussion and study of serious works of literature. One week you would be assessing the prose style of Hardy, the next breaking apart the structure of Dickens.
    It was perfect for Jodie, who had a vivacious appetite for reading as well as a genuine desire to study English Literature at University in a year’s time. This class would make that desire a lot easier to satisfy.
    Entering through the large double doors of Brushwood, Jodie took a deep, uncomfortable breath, as did every student that day, all left with no doubt that the summer break was truly a memory and that the next few months would primarily take place within this large, grey building.
    She stood for a moment, scanning the reception hall for familiar faces. None to be found, she made her way over to one of the large notice boards on the wall, absorbing any information that might be important or relevant to her. She didn’t get very far with this though, as her sight was suddenly obscured by a pair of hands that wrapped round her head from behind.
    “Guess who?”
    It was a female voice, warm, familiar, a slightly sarcastic tone.
    It had to be Laura.
    “Mum?” Jodie replied, wryly.
    “Close enough.”
    She removed her hands from Jodie’s eyes, allowing her to turn and face her. They shared a friendly hug.
    “Morning loser,” was Jodie’s way of saying that she had missed her this summer.
    “Morning bitch,” was Laura’s.
    Pleasantries out of the way, the two friends began to walk slowly down the hall, falling back into the never-ending conversation that had existed between the two of them since they first met four years earlier at a play rehearsal. And while they hadn’t seen each other in the last five weeks, thanks to Laura’s father living in Milton Keynes and it being his turn to spend the summer with her, it felt as though no time had passed. A sign of true friendship.
    “And so it begins,” said Laura, with a melodramatic head tilt.
    “It’s only one more year.” Jodie said this to be consoling, but really it sounded more like a judge passing a criminal sentence.
    “Says you, little miss perfect.”
    “Laura, we’ve been over this. If you fail sixth year, they don’t make you re-sit it, they just throw you out.” Jodie laughed and gave Laura a gentle nudge with her shoulder.
    “Well, that’s comforting,” she replied, with a roll of the eyes.
    “So, you’re really doing this, are you?”
    “Doing what?”
    “The whole sixth year studies thing?”
    “I kind of have to. The head of department called my mum about it. They seem to think it would be ‘beneficial’ for me.”
    “Listen,” Laura added, “if we’re going to hang out together this year, can you stop using big words like ‘mum’?”
    “Ha-ha!” Jodie humored her, “Did you get your timetable yet?”
    “Yeah, take a look.” Laura pulled out a freshly laminated piece