Andante

CLXXXI

Eddy had been so happy, so very, very happy the whole night that the happiness seemed to have seeped into all of his cells and driven out all of the gloom he had been feeling for so long now. He was almost skipping along the sidewalk as he walked home from Brett's, and he wasn't even thinking about the fact that it would be a while before they would be together like that again.
Nah. That didn't matter so much, because he was almost going to Perth with Brett, wasn't he? So he had all that to look forward to. And he had the beautiful memories of last night to keep him going until they did.
Yeah, he was going to be just fine, thank you very much. 
He walked into his street with his beatified smile still playing on his lips. 

"Hi, mum!" he called in Mandarin as he kicked off his sneakers and put his bag and violin case down at the foot of the stairs. "I'm home!" 
"Good." his mum answered from the living room. "Can you come in here first?"
There was something in her tone. Oh shit, there was something in her tone, and he didn't like it one bit. His heart was already starting to pound again and he could feel the smile slide off his face like an avalanche off a Swiss mountain side as he took the first hesitant steps towards the living room.

Fuck. 

"Is everything okay, mum?" he asked quietly, demurely, not quite managing to keep the tremble out of his voice.
She was sat at the table, and she turned around and nodded at him. Then she pointed to the chair across the table, where there was a small stack of papers.
Oh God. What were these papers? But there was a small mordicum of relief, as he stepped forward, and his heart slowed down some. Because at the very least these were only papers. So at least that meant that they hadn't been outed by Angelica as yet, he guessed.
He sat down slowly and gave her what he hoped was a kind and passive smile. She didn't smile back, she just stared him down with fierce eyes.
"We need to talk about your med school application, Eddy." she said then, with great finality. "There will be days on weekends you can go to next year at the university, and apparently attending them helps your chances of getting in. So I want you to go to every one of them. And then you will take the entrance exam before the end of next school year."

Eddy blinked in shock. What was he going to do? What was he going to say? He wanted to shout at her, and he could feel the words bubbling up inside him, almost as if he were really saying them. Shouting them.  
"No, mum. I'm not going to these introduction days. I'm not going to spend my precious weekends away from music, away from Brett at some stupid uni I have no intention of ever attending and I'm not going to take any difficult tests I'll have to spend hours studying for. In fact, you might as well know that I have decided that I'm going to become a violinist, and nothing you can ever say will stop me."

She would ground him. She would ground him and stop him from going to Perth, and then she would stop him from seeing Brett next. He could feel it in everything. So he groped around in a blind panic for something to say that would be acceptable right now, something that would buy him time, time until he was closer to being eighteen, time until he didn't feel like the world was sliding away under him. 
He cleared his throat softly as he shuffled the papers and pretended to look them over. 
"Okay, I will look at them, mum." he said then, his voice soft and almost shy. 
She nodded, got up abruptly and walked back to the kitchen. He stared at her receding back, holding on to the sides of the table for support. 

She hadn't even asked him how his weekend had been.