Not Again? || l.s

s e v e n

s e v e n | naive but nice

Routine keeps me in line 
Helps me pass the time 
Concentrate my mind 
Helps me to sleep

~ 'routine' by steven wilson

ツ

Harry's mom called him on Monday, between his second and third class of the day, when he was walking to the coffee shop to get something to wake him up. He tugged his phone out of his pocket, read her name on the screen, and hit the green button immediately.

"Hey, honey!" she said brightly. "How's my genius son?"

Harry smiled, stopped to plunk himself down on a bench. He pulled his Twix bar from his bag while saying, "Hey, mom."

"Are you eating Twix?" she demanded, just as he unwrapped the chocolate. "You are not sharing with me."

Harry chuckled placing the chocolate in his mouth, "You can grab one from the jar on the fridge. I already left some for you. And school is stressful."

"But you're keeping up your grades, right? You're attending all your classes, not slacking off?"

"Of course," Harry said instantly.

Like he could slack off. If he slacked off, he'd lose his scholarship, and they didn't have a lot of money, his family. In fact, he's the first to go to university, or college. Hell, aside from Gemma he was the first to graduate high school. He couldn't afford not to bust his ass, couldn't afford to slack at all, to miss classes or get behind on his work. If he lost his scholarship, he would lose his future. Not just the distant one, but the immediate one. He'd lose his monthly funding, he'd lose his dorm room. He'd be so, so fucked.

No one was expecting him to thrive with the best career possible. It's his life, after all.

But everyone would be so disappointed in him. He remembered when he got accepted, full ride, how proud everyone had been of him, how his mom had cried and his stepdad had patted his shoulder and said— I always knew you could do it. He remembered how his parents had thrown a huge party, invited all their closest friends to brag about it, how they'd saved up for months to get him his laptop and other supplies.

He'd be disappointed in himself, too. And it would have all been for nothing. The past four years of pushing himself to exhaustion, of giving up those years of high school where he was supposed to be a teenager, where he was supposed to go to parties and hang out with friends and skip class to smoke weed underneath the bleachers. For years, he had instead spent doing homework, doing extracurricular stuff because they looked good on applications. For years where he'd missed out on school dances and that one party he'd been invited to.

Not that he hadn't made some friends, only they were like Harry. They worked hard, and they were too busy planning for the future to live in the now. So while he didn't sit alone at lunch, while he had someone to work on projects within classes, to bitch about the other kids with, he didn't have someone to hang out with after school. He didn't have someone to call him in the middle of the night just to talk about their parents fighting, or their girlfriend breaking up with them.

Except for Jace. But, really, Harry didn't like to think about Jace all that often. When he'd graduated, left home, he'd left that part of himself, too. It's easier that way.

"That's good, then," his mother said, her voice getting thicker. "I'm so proud of you. You know that, yes? We're all so, so proud of you."

"Mom," Harry whined. "Don't cry, okay? I've been gone for months. I thought we talked about this. No getting emotional."