The Years of Blue [2]

Chapter 25: My Future to Dread

The weather had gotten nice and warm since the end of break. April showers had brought the flowers in bloom as the month of May started to peak over the horizon. And with May inbound, all of our teachers started to pile homework on everyone's spare moment. For this reason, the girls and I had made a habit of sitting out in the garden, where the air was sweet and fragrant of moist earth and crisp air.

"Ava, another letter for you." Marie announced as she came to join us from the patio, her book bag in hand, two letters in the other. One addressed to her from a relative, and another addressed to me.

"I don't know how I'll be able to handle the stress of this course work let alone adding these pestering letters to the pile," I retorted, tearing the unopened letter in halves and throwing the ends into my bag.

The girls watched my dauntingly from where they perched.

"So sure that the letter was from Malfoy?" Rosalie asked cautiously from her opened French book. I nodded absently, turning back to my work with my quill in hand.

"What about instead of ignoring his letters you just write and tell him to leave you alone," Rosalie continued. Her idea was met with silence as I started to write again.

"Ava..." I looked up to see Ana with her pixie blonde hair in a tuft from running her hands through it so many times.

"This boy should not be ruining your life just for writing to you. Far worse things have happened to girls and they still kept on living happily."

She had a point.

"I know," I began. " I hate the idea of him thinking of me and than writing to me as if we were close or something... and I don't feel like writing to him," I explained.  "After all, he told me he would stop writing to me."

"Until he had news, which he does. It can't be bad to read them back and see what's going on," Mila spoke up.

"Well I don't have any of the other letters so I can't do that, now can I?" I snapped back, slamming my book shut on my essay and quill. The girls went quiet though Marie was shaking her head again. I felt the disappointment weigh into me, making me stop what I was doing.

"Don't hate on us. We're just worried about you. We left each other for less than two weeks only to come back to find you worse than where we last saw you," Ana said.

"I know," I responded. "But if you're trying to tell me my family is bad for me, great. I already know this. But I don't know how you expect me to avoid them since they're all I've got this summer, call order and all." I grabbed and stuffed my book back into my bag and stood up.

"What if you stayed with one of us over the summer?" Ana proposed, optimistic. Looking at her brown eyes I saw worry clouding her judgement. She would do anything to help, I knew this to my core. But she hadn't thought through me crashing. How her parents would respond. How my parents would respond. It would all just come crashing down, and all caused by extending an olive branch.

"You have no idea how much I would love to do that. But I think after what happened at winter break, I can say that my parents would never let me."

Ana seemed to deflate at my words, just realizing the truth of it all, while Marie avoided my gaze. I hated how I couldn't read her in this moment. I usually felt like I could.

"I'll just walk this off. Merlin knows you all have dealt with my mood swings enough this year," I said sympathetically. "See you guys at dinner."

I left feeling their eyes on my back as I made my way up the garden. When I made it back to my dormitory where Oliver was hiding, uncomfortably quiet, I dropped the mood swing and placed my bag in front of me.