"You ready to go?" Mama asks, bouncing up and down on her heels.
It's seven in the morning. And we had packed the night before, only needing to load my four or five bags into the trunk.
It is a four hour drive.
I cross my fingers, praying to all the gods I've learned about that I don't get carsick.
I hate being carsick more than I hate frat boys.
Okay, maybe not that much. But I do hate it to the ends of the earth and beyond.
"Yep!" I reply, voice bubbly.
"Do you need some breakfast? I can whip something up." Mama asks, coming around the doorframe and fitting in besides mom.
She does make some great pancakes.
Mom's hand fits around mama's back and I gag in faux disgust.
"Shut up! You know what? Maybe I won't make you food!" She's playfully angry.
But sometimes the line between playful angry and real angry are blurred, and sometimes it is so easy to slip between the two that it's scary.
"Thank you for the offer, mama." I sling my backpack over my shoulders. "But I'm not hungry."
I've learned to deal with anger.
Also I'm less likely to throw up if I don't have breakfast sloshing around in my stomach.
I find myself fidgeting with chipping black painted fingernails. "I'm like super nervous?" I phrase it as more of a question than a statement, only further proving my point.
"Let's get you on the road before you change your mind then!"
I suppose they both know as well as I that working to get in there was some hard, elite level shit.
Mama grabs two bags, mom the other two. And I follow them with nothing but my worn-out black backpack, all three of us laughing but me out of anxiety rather than amusement.
••••
"We're here!" A bubbly mom says, turning down the radio.
Okay, it's not like I liked that song or anything. But I don't say that out loud, holding the annoyance in. My moms constantly turn down the radio or turn off the car just when the music gets good.
But she's right. There, in front of us, is a large brick building.
It has iron gates, and windows set in intervals on the side and front of the several-stories-tall wall.
It looks scarily similar to the school in Matilda. I can only hope that the dean is nothing like the principal in that movie.
It's super intimidating.
My breath hitches in my throat.
I am instantly transported to my Harry Potter loving days (ironic, right?) when my dream was to be a wizard and to get into Hogwarts.
I suppose I made it.
Not exactly the same, but still— this is my own personal Hogwarts. And maybe it'll be better.
Maybe this place will still make me a wizard. Even if it's not the same variety of wizard that book depicted.
Maybe I'll become a pretentious wizard.
