The Boarding School | h.s

fifty two

Summer's POV

Harry and I were sitting at a round table by ourselves during dinner and, for the first time, we didn't even talk about the people around us. We knew they were glaring at us as if we were dangerous animals inside a cage, we knew everyone was avoiding walking near our table, but I couldn't care less, and neither could Harry.

Throughout the whole dinner, I couldn't take my eyes off him. He was pale, expressionless, and looked rather lost. He had expressed to me how aimless and how physically sick he felt. I knew that the shock of his mum being in a terminal stage wasn't what was making him like this, but the fact that he desperately wanted to go but was staying because of me. I had cried because of it, telling him that I was the one torturing him and acting as an anchor, sinking him. However, he did not accept that, which was driving me insane. The truth was, no matter what he said, no matter how scientifically correct and rational his words were, I couldn't live with myself. No matter how many times he denied it, I was the one who was making him miserable.

"Harry?" I dared to speech. He hadn't spoken to me once that evening.

He looked up from his food.

"You haven't eaten anything," I observed, studying his plate which was practically full.

"I'm not that hungry," He said, playing his fork.

"I can see that."

There was no use in trying to persuade him to eating a little bit more. I knew exactly what he was feeling, and forcing him to swallow something down wasn't going to help in healing his sadness.

"Do you want to go outside for a walk, it's a lovely night," I said a little bit more enthusiastically than before. Harry's stiff features softened and he managed to give me a smile before getting up, leaving his food almost untouched.

I followed him out the canteen, eyes surely on our backs as we made our way out.

"Tomorrow is Sunday," He stated as we walked down the stairs.

"And? What about it?"

"It's letters day," he said, glancing at the gate of Hudson far into the dark distance. "I just hope that my mum sent me a letter, or else I don't know what to think."

"What do you mean?"

He stopped in his tracks, and with an expression of bewilderment, he said: "What do I mean?! I mean that if she doesn't even have the consideration of telling me with her own words what is happening, that if she doesn't have the courage to tell her own son that she is terminal, what kind of mother is she?"

He didn't raise his voice like I knew so well he could when exasperated, he simply held a certain accusation in his tone that I totally understood. He was afraid, like the rest of the students at that boarding school (including myself) of being forgotten, of becoming a person of no importance, connected solely to their parents by blood and not by affection. He had all the right to be nervous about letters day, I know I would be, too.

For a second I put myself in his shoes: I would be terrified at the idea that, if my mother was extremely ill, she wouldn't tell me directly what was going on. After all, Harry found out his mum was going to die through Mr Hansen, and himself through a letter from the hospital, which was something so formal, so banal, certainly far from making up to such an important declaration.

"A letter will arrive," I stated with confidence, in hopes that I could spark that feeling in him. "Don't worry."

He sighed, running his fingers through his hair "It's so hard... There are so many things on my mind, so many things to worry about... I thought that after making a decision, I would stop thinking about this, and I am trying, but it's so hard."