"I went to bed thinking that if people were rain, I was a drizzle and she was a hurricane."
-Looking For Alaska, by John Green
It was August 27th, 2014 that day. Ally remembered it very well, actually. That was when she was still Alison Hernandez, a long name for a small person. That was also her last day of summer school, the day before she'd get five days of summer vacation and then school would start again.
To say she was excited would be an overstatement; she was as far from excited as one could be. None of her summer school classmates were very excited, either - after everyone had finished their tests, which they knew they were passing anyway, nobody even seemed happy to get out of the building.
"Hey, Morgan," Ally said, catching up to one of her only friends.
"Alison. Oh, hey," Morgan replied. Morgan wasn't one for words. None of her friends were. Actually, none of them were when Ally was around.
"So, maybe I'll see you around next year?"
"Yeah, maybe." Morgan hadn't even looked Ally's way before she ran off to go talk to someone else that Ally didn't know. Ally wasn't surprised, though; this was how it always was where she was concerned. Her "friends" were more like smoke screens - if she hung around them, then nobody would bully her for being a loner, even though she really was lonely.
She was a small person with a large empty space inside of her, and even a large name couldn't fill that gap.
**********
"Are you sure you want to do this, Alison?" her mother asked. Ally's suitcase had been entirely packed, but her mother still felt the need to ask.
"I just want to do something bigger," Ally said. "And this is it. My life here - I love you, mom..." Did she, though? "...but my life here just isn't enough anymore. I want to find something I care about." As long as Ally had been alive, she'd been searching for the Unknown. Here in Texas, she knew everything. So, yeah, maybe flying over to Arizona wasn't really what she had planned, but it was Unknown, that's for sure.
"I want you to promise to write every week," her mother continued, but Ally was already turning away, not even giving her a goodbye hug. "Okay?"
"Yeah, I will," Ally said. "I promise. Love you, mom." Both of them knew she wasn't.
She walked out the door without another word, getting in the taxi car silently. She didn't like to talk when she didn't need to - what if those words were her last, and they meant nothing? English philosopher Thomas Hobbes' last words were "I am about to take my last voyage, a leap into the dark." They seemed to apply well to this situation (hopefully she'd need nothing else after this) so she let Mr. Hobbes do the talking.
**********
The first thing Ally noticed about Grand Canyon Boarding School For Girls was the size. The whole building was like a circle, with wings of concrete enveloping a large garden in the middle. Students were already milling about in that garden, but Ally didn't join them. Too many of them for her. She'd get stepped on. So instead, she tried to navigate her way through the campus and found herself in her dorm room.
The smell of smoke blinded her and the indie music blew out her eardrums as soon as she walked in the door. A girl was doing push-ups in the middle of the floor, a couple suitcases around her with stuff lying all over the place. A still smoking cigarette lay beside her. "Hey!" Ally said, trying to get her attention, but she was forced to shut off the music before she got any reaction.
