Brookside Academy

1 - Welcome to Brookside Academy

Quick A/N: i'm too lazy to do the actual math about the distances and all that, and considering this is a work of fiction set in places that don't really exist, please bear with my minimal knowledge of a plane's average speed. also i literally went on Kayak.com and found a real flight so the times better be correct 😭 okay read now xx.

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I pull my aviators over my eyes and lean back in my seat as the plane begins descending faster. Only a few more minutes and we'd be on the ground after over five hours in the air. Going to school almost 2,700 miles away from my parents means that the last day before summer ends is full of checking suitcases and organizing flights.

I don't mind it though. I've been going through the same process for the past six years. Now, going into senior year, I'm fully used to it. The process is all the same, since my first year as a tiny sixth grader. Except then, my parents still came on the plane with me. Took an almost 6 hour flight just to do it again a few hours later once I was settled. Now that I'm a functioning teenager, it's unnecessary.

Lost in my thoughts, I felt the landing become more prominent. Only about ten minutes until we touch ground, only about ten minutes until I'm back after almost three months of being away.

I stare out the window. It's breathtaking to see the buildings and cars and things slowly begin to take shape below me, like the past six hours never happened. While I was above the clouds, the various structures remained. There's something poetic about that, I'm not sure.

I can finally make out the landing strip of Boston Logan International. Every year, the jet lag always makes it a bit fuzzy around the edges. When I left Los Angeles, it was 9:22 pm pacific time, but 12:22 eastern. After almost six hours, the clocks in Boston will tell me it's 6:03 am, when my brain is still in pacific time, thinking it's only 3:03 in the morning. Time zones make no sense to me. They never have.

Regardless of what I think, it's 6:03 a.m., and flight attendants are ushering people off the plane. Rather, they're ushering me off. I insist, against my parents' wishes, to fly commercial alone when I fly to school. They'd prefer me to fly private every time, but for school it's always been commercial with a chaperone. I started this fight freshman year, and they finally caved with the stipulation I only sit in first class. So, being one of the only first class passengers on an overnight flight from LAX to Boston, I get to deboard first. I suppose my parents' weird rule comes in handy when I'm this tired and don't feel like elbowing past people.

I make my way out of the plane, finding the baggage claim I've grown to recognize so well. My dark blue suitcase is beginning to circle around the carousel, and I easily grab the handle. The fluorescent sign above me points to where passenger pickup is, but I don't need it. My feet always seem to have a mind of their own, a muscle memory when I'm here. I begin making my way to the pickup area, waiting for my driver, Nick. Despite the jet lag, despite the layer of grime on my clothes that just comes with travel, I'm elated to be back home.

Yes, Los Angeles is where I grew up, it's where my parents raised me, but it's not really home. Boston is. It's ironic, since both of my parents come from old money New England families, that they chose to move across the country to sunny California, raising my brother and I in modern luxury, not traditional, yet their old home is where I feel most myself.

My mother and father are both alumni of Brookside Academy, 6th-12th grade, just like I will be after this year. Despite their move to California after getting married, it was always the plan for my brother Alexander and I to attend Brookside. It's a boarding school even for those who live ten minutes away, so it's no different than if my parents had chose to stay in Massachusetts.