Drowning Lessons (Frerard AU)

One - The Drums Of The City Rain

Hammering down on the window, the rain, really made me feel a lot worse about coming to boarding school, I hadn't wanted to anyway. It must have been at least four years ago when I told my Mom I wanted to come to boarding school, as every ten or eleven year-old does, I surfed the internet for boarding schools. My sister Jamia and I had always talked about boarding school, I had wanted to go since I was seven, and she changed her mind just before I found out about Waveney Academy, but I stuck to my plan. Maybe it was different for her, or maybe I had just completely forgotten I was on the waiting list, but she had pulled out and I hadn't, or maybe the whole Harry Potter novelty had worn off for her, she just didn't want to go to Hogwarts like I did.

My parents and I had many conversations about it, then they tried to enrol me, but the school was fully booked, like any eleven year-old Harry Potter obsessed child that made me very sad, possibly why my parents just kept trying. Apparently I had been on the waiting list four years, since I was twelve, a slot had cleared and so there I was sad in a cold cab, in the pouring rain, on the outskirts of London on my way to a stereo-typical British private school, where no doubt I would come face to face with everything except Harry Potter. I wasn't someone who was in for the stereo-types, I didn't like to stereo-type, but it was incredibly hard not to, when your sat in rainy London – just like everyone claims London always is – on your way to fucking boarding school. Because what is the first thing that comes to your mind? For me, it was well-educated, articulate and stuck up English boys and girls – who would almost have to be rich because this cost my parents a shit ton – and I was sure not everyone would be like that, but I could help but expect at least one person I came across would be.

Moving school wasn't too much of a problem, I had done it enough times to know what was good and bad, how to react to different types of people, but when I was across the ocean away from my family and I had to share a room with a stranger that was a little different. I was sure I would be fine though, what could possibly go wrong. The worst possible thing would be I had no friends, or my dorm mate hated me, I could cope with that, it was only a year; I had my friends back in Jersey I could talk to in the evenings at overlap times. It wouldn't have been that bad if I was still in with the illusion of that it would be just like Harry Potter, but at fifteen, I knew that was nothing like real life – no matter how much I wished it was, but I was there and I couldn't change that, I was sat in a little black taxi staring out at the rain and pretending like I wasn't scared. With all my family and friends three thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean, it wasn't even like I could ring them easily with a five hour time difference. Boarding school just seemed like the most fun school ever, at twelve, but for a happy fifteen year-old who hates change, it was suddenly the worst thing that could possibly happen.

Maybe what sucked the most was the difference in the school systems, because we had a whole week before my birthday off timetable, when no doubt everyone would go home and see their parents, but I couldn't. The same thing happened again at the end of February and yes you guessed it, in May too, when the English school system had a week's break, but I couldn't go home, because my parents were working and all my friends were in school. At least I could go back at Christmas and Easter too, but my holiday would be shorter than all my friends and I would have to fly back as soon as New Years was over, because I started again on the fucking fifth of January. Worst of all, I was in England, where the holidays are English, and what don't the English celebrate? That's right, Thanksgiving, so who was missing the biggest celebration my family had in the entire year? Me!

What could join as almost the worst, was that even compared to Jersey the weather was fucking terrible here, I hated the snow at Christmas in Jersey, but I can imagine it's worse here. Fucking London, I never thought I would actually be shipped out here, if I had there's a high possibility I never would have suggested it. Rain, is horrible, disgusting even, just the littlest bit was horrible, but pouring as much as it was now, was worse, much worse. Just imagining snow doing this made me want to be physically sick, the snow heavy in New Jersey was bad, but if it was like this here, I don't know that I would cope. Sun wasn't exactly a common thing in Belleville, but that didn't mean I liked clouds, cold, snow and rain, nope, I hated them and according to Google, British weather was as bad and sometimes worse, that was not going to be something I would enjoy.