Heavy is the Head

Snow-White - 3

Chapter 3

The week was over in the twinkling of an eye and before she knew it, Snow White was once again sitting at Table 1 in her Geography lesson questioning the purpose of life. Today, the cause of Mr Hunter's headache was Table 3 who had taken it upon themselves to make a tower out of the glue sticks. The tower of glue had come crashing down to the ground within 5 minutes and Mr Hunter took it upon himself to stand over them all giving a long lecture about maturity while they picked all the glue sticks up. He had called for complete silence since, and had begun to write down names on the whiteboard whenever he spotted anybody talking while pacing around the classroom angrily with his hands behind his back. Cloud's name was in bold red ink at the top of the list. Snow White wondered if Northuldra Academy would be anything like this.

She couldn't stop thinking about how in 2 weeks, she would be in a completely new environment with no friends, no family and probably an extreme case of home-sickness. Before, she had tried to blot it all out and "live in the moment", cherishing her last few weeks at Black Forest Comprehensive, and it hadn't been easy but she had managed it. Plus, there was the welcome distraction of trying to befriend Eve (which she had managed, making Eve an official lunch partner!) Now, the day of her departure was a tall shadow looming around the corner, and it was much more difficult to pretend she wasn't terrified of leaving everything she had ever known behind. 2 weeks. 14 days. 336 hours. 20160 minutes. 1209600 seconds.

Snow White closed her eyes and began to take deep breaths, steadying herself. Was it too late to decide not to take the scholarship? If she decided not to go after all, would she regret it for the rest of her life? She held her head in her hands and began to have an existential crisis. Would she be able to manage it all? What if everyone was really horrible and she couldn't cope? Snow White shook her head. She couldn't do this. Why had she ever listened to Hilde? Why did growing up have to come with such difficult decisions? She was still torn between whether she wanted to be a psychologist or a vet when she was older, so why did she have to make the decision of whether she wanted to stay in the place where she was comfortable or go out to a completely new realm where she knew nobody, and nobody knew her?

Over the course of the week (with Hilde's help of course), she had managed to create a checklist of everything she would be taking to Arendelle with her and packed one suitcase already using it. She had crossed out the items on the list in red pen and to an outsider it would be just that - a list of items crossed out. But to Snow White, each item was a reminder of the life she would be leaving behind: The red hair bow that her father had given to her on her 6th birthday, the horse keychain that Florian had given her when he first started working at his uncle's stables, the small pocket mirror that Hilde had gifted her when the letter from Mrs Oldenburg came in the post saying she had been accepted into Northuldra Academy.

It had all began a year ago when the headteacher of Northuldra Academy, Mrs Iduna Oldenburg, had made a visit to Snow White's school and done a short assembly for all the girls about Northuldra Academy, the prestigious boarding school for young women in Arendelle. Naturally, Snow White's first inclination was to throw away the pamphlet and complain to Hilde about how they had all missed lunch-time because Mrs Oldenburg had gone over time. But somehow Hilde had persuaded Snow White to apply, and so she did. There had been no expectation of her application to even be considered once Snow White clicked on the website and saw what kind of school it was. The pictures were of glamorous young women in all sorts of positions of work, and the success stories were filled with accounts of going on to make all these massive differences in the world and receiving global awards. She didn't think she stood a chance.

It wasn't as though her grades were particularly bad. She was a good student, who kept on top of her work (mostly) and didn't get in trouble often. It was just that she had just always thought of herself as fairly average. Having to keep up with everyone from Northuldra Academy made her feel exhausted just thinking about it. Speaking of exhaustion...