Better Than Dreams

First Day

About a week later, it happened. The letter I'd been waiting for. The stamp of Harrow Secondary was printed on the cover. It was terrifying, that the little slip of paper contained in this envelope could change my life. For the better, or for the -more probable- worst.

"Mum! Dad! Scarlett! It came! It came!" I was scared, excited, happy, and nervous all at the same time.

"What came, hunny?" My mum called from upstairs.

"Oh, god. Ella, don't call the boy 'hunny'. He's a man now. Goddamnit, he's not your pet!" I heard my father's gruff voice retort. I winced. My father had been abusive, a drunk, and the worst part of my life. I don't even remember a time he hadn't been yelling or hitting me in a drunk fit. I still had scars from some of his worse days.

"The letter! It came!" I cried again, a little bit of the excitement drained out of my voice.

I heard my father's loud footsteps echo through the old heritage house I lived in a child as he came down the stairs. Then, behind him, my mother's light dainty steps, her slippers dragging slightly on the hardwood floor. My little sister, Scarlett wasn't far behind. She was clutching a group of mismatched pencil crayons and was covered in paint and marker smudges. There was even dried paint streaked in her frizzy blonde hair.

"What does it say?" Scarlett asked quickly, her small eyes wide.

"I- I haven't opened it yet."

"Well, why not?" my father cut in, impatiently.

"Greg! He just got it! It could change his life. Go on, Tim, we're all right here if the answer... isn't what you were expecting." My mother replied.

I wasn't sure how that was meant to make me feel better, but I just nodded and looked back down at the envelope in my hands. I peeled the letter open, my hands shaking. I carefully slid the slip of paper out of its pocket and stared at it for a long while before Scarlett finally said, "Oh, give it here!"

She unfolded the paper roughly and I winced, preparing for the worst.

"Dear Mr. Timothy Nunez," She scrunched up her nose at reading my full first name. "we are proud to--"

"Yes! Oh my god! I did it!" I yelled, grinning like a little kid on a sugar high.

"To inform you that you have been--" Scarlett tried to continue, annoyed at being cut off.

"Yes! I know, Scar! I got in!"

And that's how our story really starts, standing frozen, gazing up at the gigantic building before me. Harrow School. My school. It didn't feel right then. Like this was someone else's story that I had somehow stumbled into. Quite literally. I already tripped twice in the stream of high school students bustling about the great campus, all in a hurry to get who knows where.

There were a few benches outside the school, so I decided to take a seat. It had been a long walk from my house to the college, and my dad refused to drive me. Said something like 'you don't get enough exercise, man up and walk somewhere on your own!'. The usual.

"My bench." A voice said lazily, as if he'd had to repeat the same thing multiple times before.

"Hm?" It was all I could think to say. Sue me.

"My. Bench." I looked down. There was a tall lanky boy sitting on the pavement at my feet, his mop of unbrushed, curly dark hair resting on the edge of the bench. His eyes weren't even open. How did he know--

"That is your cue to leave. Leave, depart from, go away, withdraw from, retire from, go from, take one's leave from. Must I go on?"

"I know what the word leave means." I mumbled, annoyed.

"Oh, really? Then prove it and leave!" The boy finally cracked an eye open to glare at me. He had ice blue eyes, with not even a tint of grey. They were a pure light blue, and the way the light caught them made them look almost luminous. He narrowed his remarkable eyes, and I realized I was probably staring. "Why don't people get it? I'm not a bloody animal at a gooddamn zoo!" Yep, he definitely noticed. "'Sebastian Brooke, the little freak. Oh, Sebastian, don't smoke. Don't skip classes, don't do drugs, don't waste your mind on things nobody cares about! Fit in! Act like all the other kids! Assimilate, as if college students are the fucking Borg!'" I didn't get the reference, and he seemed to have gone off on a tangent. A rather passionate one at that. I decided to do as he said, and leave him to it. I didn't want to make enemies on my first day, after all.