Hold Me Closer

Part One

I drummed my fingers against the back of my phone, trying to imagine each and every worry pouring out of my finger tips. Long deep breaths. You're being irrational, I thought, this is going to be fine. You're happy you're doing this. It was the right choice. Somehow, repeating the mantra didn't really make this any better.

This morning I had sat in the tiny kitchen that I had called home for nearly seventeen years and watched as my mother bustled around me, waltzing around to open cupboards and check my bags and print out registration forms from her laptop. It had only been outside when we were getting into the car that she had turned to me and wrapped me in a bear hug and whispered into my hair, "You don't have to do this."

And it was true, I didn't. I had had about fifty other choices to pick from and there certainly wasn't some maniac with a gun to my head making me do this crazy, crazy thing. In fact, it would be more reasonable to suggest that there was at this point. But I wanted to, or at least I thought I did.

"It's the right choice," I had said, smiling at my mum and knowing that it was only a little bit forced. "Plus the bags are in the car and we're supposed to be there in a few hours, so we'd better get going!"

"It's not too late to turn around and change your decision, honey," my mother said, looking at me earnestly. "No one is going to think any less of you for dropping out."

"I know. It's not that. I want to go, really I do. We've talked over this, remember?" I moved to haul one of my duffel bags into the trunk of the car and my mother watched me like I was carrying my own coffin.

"I know you do, honey. I'm proud, really I am." She gave me a tight smile and a squeeze on my arm as I walked around the car to grab the shot-gun seat.

"You know you're going to have a lot of fun!" My mother gushed, pulling out the glossy brochure to Arundel Academy from the glove box and plopping it on my lap.

It showed a picture of two kids leaning against an archway, talking over a couple of folders filled with work so that their faces were illuminated from the paper. Later pictures had a girl horse riding, and another had a group of friends in matriculating gowns laughing and posing. Ugh. Everybody who went to Arundel Academy looked straight out of a yoghurt or fresh cream commercial and I was wondering how it was possible to look so healthy and glowing in English countryside weather. 

"They have a ton of fun extra-currics that you can join, maybe you can even take up running again, or join a team sport. I read through their website a little bit and apparently they even have an indoor pool, so you could join the swim team or-"

"Mum, I'm going to school not to a summer camp. I will be fine with just classes and managing to make it through the day!"

"Hon, if a school has an indoor swimming school, you take the indoor swimming pool. Your last school didn't even have enough cheap wine for parents evening."

My mother had never particularly warmed to my last school, to say the least, and I was pretty sure that was the sole reason she had allowed me to pick up my stuff and move to a boarding school in February, even though the school-year had started nearly half a year earlier.

"And yet you got drunk on it anyway," I said drily, giving her the side-eye.

My mother blushed a little at that. "I was not drunk!"

"Oh yeah, for sure. You soberly signed up to go to Parent's Prayer for the next year even though the last time we went to Church was two years ago. And by accident, because you needed the toilet!"

"Olive! I would like you to know that I really enjoyed Parent's Prayer, the people there were all very..."

"Cultish? Obsessive? Psycopaths who chose plain cookies over chocolate chip ones?"