Oblivious To Him

Chapter 1 -Tongue Tied

I...

am a coward.

Now I may seem all confident and strong, but underneath all this athletic facade is a girl who gets tongue-tied and nervous when things start to get hard. My tongue turns to wool and my anxiety spikes so high that I can never bring myself to follow through with what I want to say.

Maybe one day I will learn to surpass this and be honest with the people I love. To learn to confront people when needed and ask those questions that I'm too afraid to know the answers to.

Sadly, today is not going to be that day.

. . . . .

I was pulling into the passenger drop-off section of the airport, getting ready to say goodbye to my mom. She's finally decided to go back to work and follow her dreams, flying to England to work there for an entire month.

If I told her now, she might not go and that made me feel so much worse about the whole situation.

I have been homeschooled all my life and she has been the best mom, teacher, and friend a girl could ask for. She let me follow my passions, including rock climbing, which has turned into a carrier. Its what's going to set me apart from the rest of my peers when applying to college later this year but I'm worried it's not going to be enough.

I owed my mom everything and here I was, about to go behind her back and blindside her. She would be upset beyond belief and I felt the guilt of the situation creep up my spine.

I felt like an idiot for letting this go on for so long and it was only getting harder as the seconds ticked by.

I hopped out of the car to help unload her luggage from the trunk but she had beaten me to it.

"Well don't just stand there and stare! Hug me you goofball," she laughed as she opened her arms wide.

I slid into her warm embrace and squeezed her like there was no tomorrow. I was going to miss her so much, it took everything in me not to cry and beg for her to stay. She has been talking about getting back to work for over a year now and I would never forgive myself if I didn't let her follow her dream.

I loosened my grip on her so that I could hold her at an arm's length. I needed to do this face to face. If I didn't tell her now, I wouldn't get the chance to do it in person like I wanted too.

Come on Lana, she will be furious if you don't tell her before she leaves.

I was so scared that I was about to disappoint her, I didn't even know where to start.

How do you tell the woman who raised you that you wanted to go to public high school for Sr. year?

She would think that I didn't appreciate everything that she has done for me. I knew where she stood on public education and that she would never let me attend the local high school. She believed that they would corrupt my character somehow and make me loathe learning as much as she thought my peers did.

All I wanted to do was sign up for one class during the day. How much corrupting could people do during a theatre class?

Seriously, all I wanted to do was go into the building for an hour, be taught something my mom knows nothing about and leave. My goal is to get into Yale, my dream school, and I knew the statistics of a homeschooler getting into an ivy league was slim to none. I had to do something to make my application stand out and this was one of the ways I was going to do that.

The words were on the tip of my tongue but she broke our hug and bent down to pick up her bags.

Looking back at me with melancholy eyes, she said, "I'll be back in a month for your next competition so stop looking so worried. We will talk every night, and if you ever need me for an emergency then I will be on the next flight home."