Dahlia's whole life is flipped upside down when her eccentric aunt enrolls her in a prestigious university in England. She is forced to make friends with a rather eclectic group of people and adapt to her new lifestyle all while trying to find the a...
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Harry Styles
The floors in Hyacinth Manor have always been cold. The whole house has always been cold, but I specifically remember how cold the hardwood floors felt under my feet as I would wander the halls as a child. Every hallway seemed infinitely longer when I was smaller, tiptoeing quietly in socks so the sound of my footsteps wouldn't echo in the empty corridors. Even as a young child, I felt like an outsider, sneaking around my own house, but I tried to view it as a game- ducking into doorways to avoid getting caught by the staff on the many sly trips I made between my bedroom and the library. Sometimes, Maria would catch me in the hall with armfuls of books, but she would turn around and act like she didn't see anything, yet I knew if anyone else in the staff caught me, they would've told my parents that I was fooling around or evading my French tutor. But, the best part of sneaking around those hallways with cold floors was sneaking out of the house with Gemma, mostly to go to the old, abandoned greenhouse. We would talk and I'd bring my books to read. If there were any words I didn't know the definition of, I asked her, but she usually didn't know the definitions either because I always read books far above the reading level of most people my age, so I'd consult my dictionary, eager to learn new words to add to my vocabulary. Some of my most thrilling childhood memories could be associated with those ever-cold floors- the fear of being caught mixed with the adrenaline rush of deliberately disobeying as I snuck around- but the frigid hallway floors could never manage to retain the warmth of those memories.
And so, there was a distinct chill on the floors as I walked down the hall, about a half hour after Niall left. I took careful steps out of habit, not wanting the floors to creak and break the silence I was so accustomed to for years, but now, the house wasn't so silent. The loud dissonance of clanging glass echoed through the halls, drawing in my curiosity. Following the noise, I walked down the stairs, through the foyer, and to the dining room, where I found Maria standing in front of the liquor cabinet, the doors of the cabinet thrown wide open as she pulled bottles out of it and threw them into the large garbage bag she held. The bottles crashed and clanged in the bag, but the sound would've been amplified if the bottles weren't halfway full- she was throwing away liquor bottles that weren't even empty.
"What are you doing?" I asked her.
"I'm throwing these away," she responded, not even sparing a glance in my direction.
"You can't do that," I said, knowing that she was just responding to what had happened earlier- with seeing me laying on the floor unconscious- yet still, I couldn't help but feel aggravation begin to creep up my spine.
"I can, and I will." She still wouldn't look at me, continuing to throw away the bottles.
I watched in horror as she roughly discarded the only things that I thought could help me- the last dregs of my sanity. I needed those. "No, you can't- you can't do that to me- you don't understand. I need those."
