Taking The Chance [A Niall Horan Fanfiction]

// Chapter Nine //

“Wake up, Mara!” Eleanor’s voice rang painfully in my ears as I slipped out of a blissful slumber. Opening my eyes slowly, I saw her leaning by my bed poking at my cheek. Sunlight streamed from the giant iron-paneled windows over our beds. She was already dressed in the Mullingchire Heights Academy uniform. Her bed was neatly made, not a single wrinkle found on the sheets. My eyes widened as I registered how ready she was… and how ready I was not.

“Crap! Am I late?” I scrambled to get out of bed, sitting upright throwing the sheets off me. I dashed to my side of the closet and grabbed the uniform off of one of the hangers. Yesterday, Eleanor helped me unpack and organize my stuff, as well as arranged my uniform for today to match her uniform. I figured I would trust her judgment on how to coordinate the different polos, button-ups, blazers, and bottoms to look presentable, since she has been attending the school for two years already. She was a third-year also, and she wants to be a model when she leaves Mullingchire, but still wants to attend university. As far as I’m concerned, she has the looks and the body to be a model, and she has to be intelligent enough to make it into Mullingchire in the first place.

Behind me, I heard Eleanor giggle. “No, you’re not late. I’m just a morning person. I woke you up before your alarm went off.” She pointed at the yellow digital clock I had placed on the dresser next to my bed. It was only 6:15 AM, thirty minutes before I originally planned to wake up. “I forgot to tell you this last night: other girls wake up at around 6:45 AM too, so the lines for the shower could get long and you could possibly be late!” I gulped, hearing the word late. I wanted to avoid being tardy so I would have no more confrontations with the Dean. “So waking up now would be a preferable time.”

I narrowed my sleepy eyes at her. Although it was frustrating to be woken up so early after a restless night of sleep (imagine how tough it is to sleep in a foreign place without familiar company), I was happy that I had a roommate that helped me and didn’t make me figure these things out on my own, considering how lost I was yesterday. After Eleanor helped me unpack, she introduced me to a handful of girls she knew on our floor—girls whose names I scarcely remember—and showed me the bathroom… excuse me, the water closet.

And I thought the lobby and the dormitories were impressive. At the very least, bathrooms should be clean. They don’t need to have the nicest fixtures and upgrades, but they should be spotless.

The bathroom—I mean, water closet—was more than spotless. It looked like one from a million-dollar mansion or a fancy Las Vegas Strip hotel. Marble tiles covered the floor—heated, so our toes wouldn’t freeze in the morning. Tasteful beige paint covered the walls. Classic iron chandeliers hung from the ceiling. A gigantic mirror with a gold-painted Victorian frame hung on the whole wall over several sinks on matching marble countertops. The fixtures were modern, with automatic sinks, hand soap dispensers, and hand dryers. Porcelain automatic toilets were contained in solid wooden stalls; carved on the doors of each stall were different intricate patterns. The walls and floors of the showers were covered with tiny, textured marble tiles, matching the earthy tone of the rest of the campus. The thought of sharing a toilet or shower with strangers usually made me feel uncomfortable, but after seeing this restroom, I don’t feel so uneasy anymore.

When I finished admiring the gorgeous bathroom, we went downstairs, through an enormous hallway branching off the dormitory lobby, and into the eating hall, which largely resembles the Great Hall in Hogwarts, except the buffet is placed where Dumbledore and the rest of the professors sat to eat.

Yes, I said buffet. For every meal. The menu changes every day for every meal. A dream come true, right? 

The walls exposed the original white brick used for the building, and the floors were the same wooden floors found in other parts of the academy. Elegant chandeliers hung from the high vaulted ceilings. Iron-paneled semi-circle windows brought light into the room, reaching from floor to ceiling. The Mullingchire Heights Academy crest was embroidered on large banners that hung on the walls. Four rows of long, almost-black wood tables line the hall. Students sat clumped in the tables with their respective social groups. Being the new girl, I had that typical problem of who to sit with at lunch. Luckily, Eleanor was completely fine with my company at dinner. It was only us two, anyways.

“Do you sit with anyone else,” I asked her, putting down my tray on the table and taking a seat next to her near the doors of the eating hall at a middle table, “Or do you always eat alone?” Since this was my first time in England, I had to try fish and chips. I have an excuse for getting the most stereotypical thing on the buffet line.

She giggled, shaking her head. “No, I usually sit with other people. They usually just sleep throughout this dinner and wait for breakfast. I would rest throughout dinner too, but I thought you shouldn’t eat your first meal at Mullingchire alone.”

We ate our dinners with little conversation as I continued to absorb my surroundings. It’s been a long day—I missed my train, met and said goodbye to the cutest boy I’ve met, rode in a car with a sassy driver, got in trouble by the Dean, and worried for nothing about my roommate—but I’m finally at Mullingchire, the place where I’ll be spending the next school year.

After dinner, we walked around the third floor dormitories, which also housed girls. Eleanor had no real reason to bring me here, but we needed to kill time before curfew… which was at 10PM. We couldn’t leave our floor after curfew, so she thought we needed to explore for a bit. The third floor looked just like the fourth floor, except the rugs on the wooden floor were maroon, and the water closet was slightly bigger than the one on our floor.

As we exited the restroom, I accidentally bumped into a girl much taller than me, with medium-length voluminous curly hair. Her nose was fairly large for her face, but she had piercing eyes and a wide mouth. Her build was fit, like one of a dancer. When I looked up at her, she looked at me, irritated and eyebrows furrowed. I apologized quietly and blushed in embarrassment before running to catch up with Eleanor.

We made it back to the room just before curfew started. “The administrators come around every night to check that we are in our room. They have security on every floor to make sure that we don’t leave to do stupid teenage things over the night. There’s no curfew on the weekends, though, so don’t worry about Friday and Saturday nights.” She explained, lying back down on her bed.

As fate would have it, Dean Payne was the person checking our room.

“Hello, Miss Calder. Miss King.” She nodded at both of us. “I’m happy you have settled in, Miss King. I hope you’ll feel at home here.” She raised her eyebrows at both of us; Eleanor kept a sweet smile on her face as the Dean continued to talk. “Keep an eye out for each other and don’t get into any trouble.” 

“Thank you, Dean Payne. We won’t be troublemakers.” I managed to keep my voice steady as the Dean bid us a good night.

For the rest of the night, we just talked and got to know each other. Friendship-y girl things… the usual. She declared her drowsiness at quite an early time: almost midnight. Weak. I didn’t actually say that to her, though.

Then fast forward to the present, where Eleanor woke me up just as the sun rose—early to bed, early to rise!—and I forced myself to get ready with very little energy in me.

I returned back into the room after taking my early, emphasis on early, morning shower and changing into the academy’s uniform that Eleanor had picked out for me, which exactly matched her uniform for the day: a khaki pleated skirt, the navy blue sweater vest with the crest embroidered on the chest over a white button-up shirt, white knee-high socks, and black Mary-Jane flats. I hadn’t worn a uniform since elementary school. I remember hating them back then; now the uniforms look cute, in a preppy and classy way.

“You look so adorable in the uniform! Uniform chic really suits you.” Eleanor gushed when she saw me wearing the uniform.

I laughed, looking at my reflection in the mirror on our closet. “Thanks. I didn’t expect uniforms to look this good on me. On anyone.”

“The school may be old,” she said, flattening a crease on the sleeve of my button-up shirt, “but it doesn’t mean the clothes have to look old.” Smiling, she checked her uniform for noticeable creases. “Now, let’s go downstairs for breakfast?”

I followed her downstairs, through the enormous hallway, and into the dining hall. The smell of maple syrup and fried breakfast meat filled the air. My tummy clenched in hunger as we approached the buffet line. There was nothing more I wanted than some pancakes or bacon.

But I stopped dead in my tracks despite my hunger.

As I peered over the line of students waiting to get food, I saw a boy with a familiar tuft of blonde hair with exposed brown roots leaving the line with a plate full to the sides of food.