Patron Saint of Lost Causes

chapter 1: your heart is an empty room

Burn it down, till the embers smoke on the ground
And start new when your heart is an empty room
With walls of the deepest blue

And all you see is where else you could be
When you're at home
Out on the street are so many possibilities
To not be alone

--"Your Heart is an Empty Room," Death Cab for Cutie

"Don't look at me like that, Emily. It won't be that bad."

Emily gritted her teeth, her fingers locking around the strap of her carryon bag. The airport was freezing and she was regretting the choice to not bring a jacket. "Easy for you to say, Mom," she said. "You're not getting shipped off to boarding school on a different continent."

Elizabeth sighed. "Honey, this is for the best," she said. "St. Thaddeus is a great school. And it's about time for you to spend some time in America with normal kids, instead of getting dragged all over the world with me."

"But I like getting dragged all over the world," Emily argued. "And I love Italy, I want to stay here. I have friends here, Mom, and-"

She stopped abruptly. She hadn't told her mother about Matthew yet, and she wasn't about to now.

"...and I want to stay here," she said instead.

Elizabeth leveled her gaze. "You know that's not an option anymore, Emily," she said.

She shrugged. "You could pull some strings."

Elizabeth shifted her purse from one arm to another. "Not anymore, not at this point. I don't know what's been going on with you, Em, but trust me. I'm trying to do what's best for you."

"You could always send me to live with my dad," she said flatly.

"Enough," Elizabeth said, cool and clipped, and Emily bit back a sigh. Conversations were always over when her mother used her ambassador voice. Elizabeth glanced at her watch. "You should get to your gate. Your flight is going to start boarding in twenty minutes."

Emily's shoulders slumped, the fight draining out of her. She had already known deep down that she wasn't going to win this battle- she came by her stubbornness honestly- but she still didn't want to give up without a fight. "Mom, I don't want to go," she said. "Please don't make me."

"Sweetheart, you have to," Elizabeth said, touching her cheek lightly. She kissed her forehead. "Be safe. Call me as soon as you land. A driver is already scheduled to take you from the airport to the school." She pressed the boarding pass and passport into her hand. "I love you, Emily."

Emily nodded. "Love you," she echoed.

She shouldered her carryon and made her way towards her gate without looking back, her heart beginning to thump in her chest. International flights were nothing new, even traveling alone wasn't new. She was adept at finding her own way, forging her own path. She was sixteen years old, she could handle this.

But at the same time, she was only sixteen years old, and she was about to spend the next semester in a different country, at a new school, and for the first time in her life she didn't have the lodestone of her mother anchoring her in place.

Emily waited quietly at the gate until her boarding group was called; she was one of the first to take her seat on the plane. She sat alone by the window, fiddling with the cheap silver locket around her neck.

No going back now, she thought. You'll be fine, Prentiss. Suck it up.

JJ stood quietly next to her mother as she chatted with her new resident advisor, surreptitiously gazing around the main hall. When she agreed to go to boarding school, she didn't think it was going to be this large. There were more kids here than in her public school back home in Pennsylvania.