By Design

The Beginning in which Cookies Start

I, Teresa Willows, was currently chewing on the tips of three fingers plus my thumb because I finished the tub of cookies my mom baked for me in the first five minutes of my four-hour train ride to the Big City.

Because cravings are simply terms of endearment teenagers, young adults and pregnant women use to disguise that sinful longing in their hearts (which is connected to the stomach) known as greed.

In my defense, however, this was no ordinary gree--craving. This was a craving borne from the pleasure nerves seem to take in wrenching guts and giddying hearts during moments of new starts. One of the worst kinds of cravings, after pregnancies and monthly code reds.

So I took the window on my right as an opportunity to distract myself from this confounding turmoil inside me.

It's fascinating, really. How the view evolved from my humble hometown with short yellow houses to a towering city teeming with stacks of buildings, hovercrafts creating chaos in the air and clusters of people scuttling around in all altitudes. The fact that I would soon be engrained into this scene and lifestyle had been a figment of my imagination when it had no boundaries.

And yet here I was. Clutching my scholarship letter (dotted with brown drops from my tea from an hour ago) from the extremely prestigious Holson Towers and drumming my fingers on an empty and rather shabby ice cream tub, after I had taken them out of my mouth. Replace me with a real Holson Tower student in the image and you'll find yourself a picture depicting the epitome of irony.

The train was gradually coming to a stop, signalling for me to heave my backpack on my shoulders, drag out my suitcases and fit the ice cream tub snugly under my arm. The picture continues.

You can imagine that the taxi driver wasn't pleased to somehow wrangle my bike into his cab and fit all my luggage as well as my physical self into his cab. He did have the courtesy to omit the profanities though as he told me, 'you should be careful in this town, kid, or you'll get bitten. Folks here don't take to time-wasting kindly.'

'What do you mean?' I asked as I squeezed into the passenger seat and fastened my seatbelt.

'To put it plainly, if you have a bloody bike then use the bloody bike.'

'But what about the luggage?'

'Should've figured that out before you dragged the stupid thing out here.'

I turned my head away from him and fixated my gaze on the surreal sight of the city outside. I knew it was best to remain silent at this point and that silence lingered for the rest of the journey, and was only broken by a grunt of acknowledgement when I gave him an extra tip.

***

Huh. I'd seen pictures of the school of course, and it appeared several times on TV, but seeing something on screen versus actually experiencing it in real life were two completely different things.

Holson Towers was...grand.

Really really grand.

The I-want-you-to-look-at-me-and-I'm-not-gonna-be-discreet-because-I'm-sexy-and-I-know-it type of grand.

Perhaps not as crude as that description though, because the school was magnificent in both a flashy and tasteful way. The main building twisted around the two towers in the middle (which I presume was done for modern artistic value), all of them following a colour scheme of white, beige and black.

The school gardens, which were bursting with an array of colourful flowers and dramatic, twisting fountains, enveloped the school neatly and extended through wall plants all the way up to the rooftop gardens.