New Miss was angry. Nobody was sure – or particularly cared – why; New Miss was angry most days.
It was obvious that New Miss hated kids. Previous Miss had been different. She’d celebrated their triumphs and commiserated with their defeats. She’d never have said it, but they all knew she cared.
The only time they saw New Miss smile was when she saw them fail really hard at something. Then a brief smirk would cross her lips before the shouting started.
Today, the shouting was having little effect. This had become normal. They’d long since stopped bothering to try for praise.

This one might need a content note for… I don’t know. Emotional fucked-upness.

The only correct answer to “are you alright?” is “yes, thank you”.
She learned that lesson long ago.
She also learned that happiness meant keeping any sadness from impinging on others’ lives.
That courage meant not bothering anyone with her fear.
That anger was a privilege afforded others, not her.
Soon, she could only read her emotions on the faces of others.
When she was completely alone, with no faces around her to read, she found that her soul spoke in a language she no longer knew by heart.
Still, in the silence of solitude, she could hear it screaming.

The planet is certainly compatible: spinning and shining in the middle of a Goldilocks zone.
The ecosystem a delicate dance of creatures, my temptation is to call them plants, mammals, insects, birds. Actually they’re all and none of these. And there’s ice-caps. Both poles. Seeing that was like looking in a history book.
The last vestiges of humanity could thrive here.
All I have to do is turn the shuttle back around and report to the ship that our search for an unspoilt habitat is over.
Those ice-caps, though.
That delicate, perfect system.
I don’t think I can do it.

Wow. 5000 words down, 5000 to go.
Thanks to Frank for the prompt.

A balloon.
Her house had human young in it: she knew balloons.
But this was new. Not pastel rubber but lurid foil. Not the usual bulbous form, but a dainty heart. And a miracle: it fell upwards, not down. Her eight eyes widened.
Soon enough, it floated to her corner of the ceiling: its ribbon released by a grubby fist. There wasn’t long. She leapt, lashing herself to it with skeins of silk. Soon she had it trussed up like a fat fly. She’d always envied flies.
The window was open.
The breeze caught her.
She was up and away.

Thanks to @chromesthesia for the idea to write about annoying books and bad films!

She read unofficial celebrity biographies, misery memoirs, paranoid conspiracy novels. Third-rate erotica and salacious books about serial killers also featured heavily on her bookshelves.
With films, the lower the production values the better. She devoured badly researched adaptions of badly written historical novels, sci-fi sagas with wobbly sets and clunky analogies. High-concept, high-budget blockbusters with low-ability actors and scripts that sounded like a primary school pageant…
She watched them all.
Art, she believed, should elicit a visceral, heart-pounding response. Nuanced films and elegant novels left her cold. Those she could only analyse.
But the irritation, scorn, disgust; these were real.

The little girl was willful. This was a bad thing.
She was also kind. This was a good thing.
She had a saintly but absent father and a mother conveniently dispatched by consumption. She was looked after by a cruel, repressive woman who punished her flaws (willfulness). However she had one friend: a kind, patient mentor who saw her good points (kindness) but who suffered a non-specific affliction with angelic forbearance. However this friend languished and died (possibly under the care of aforementioned callous guardian) leaving our heroine suitably chastened, docile and no longer in need of any external repression.

I can’t remember her face anymore. That’s something that I thought was happened to old fogies.
At my age dementia seems unlikely.
I haven’t got any photos of her. She wouldn’t be photographed: I’d never have been able to capture that smile.
My parents hated her. Unhealthy, they said. Sick. But we were each other’s forever. Until, one day, we weren’t. One day she was gone, and nothing could bring her back.
Four years ago today. I’m 11 now.
It was my fault: Only I could see her. What did I think would happen if I looked away too long?

He wears a white shirt and grey trousers and a tie. He tugs at the collar; it’s too tight.
He’s four.
He’s got a test today, numeracy. The pressure’s on to perform, because he knows that school is expensive and he is very lucky to go there and get such a good start, so he’d better not waste it. It’s funny to think of mummy giving his teachers money when he has to do all the work. He wonders if it’s more than the train to the seaside costs, more than a new scooter.
He tries to think of sums.

Beatrice and Marek sit in a faux-French patisserie eating an English approximation of a continental breakfast.
They smile at one another over the sugar packets. The French food here isn’t a patch on the French food back home.
(Back home is Riga, back home is Ljubljana. They’ve never been to each other’s back home. Yet they share a nostalgia for better pastries, another approximation of Gallic sophistication that somehow seemed more real.)
The waiter, channeling Maurice Chevalier by way of Warsaw, drops the accent, grins self-consciously.
Old ladies tut into their frothy coffees. Where are all these foreigners flocking from?

Me and her, we’re like like sisters. Not too close. She wouldn’t want you get any funny ideas.
She has other best friends. Josh, for example: she loves going clubbing with him to, you know, his bars; he’s so cute. Such a waste.
And there’s Chantelle, sassy, hilarious and …articulate, which surprises her.
Naazira (she calls her Naz, it’s affectionate) is actually a colleague but she felt the need to set an example. She’s liberating the poor love.
So when she says those things that people get so sensitive about, we know it’s OK.
We’re some of her best friends.