Can't Let You Go

I don't know if my parents fought about everything, but they regularly fought about how to raise my brother and I. Where we should go to school, what we should study, our extracurriculars and even how to take care of us when we felt ill. 

Our mother was demanding. She expected us to excel at everything we did. Our father was distant. He had his plans for us, but we didn't see him much. When he was around, he wavered between being strict and being lenient and over indulgent. As much as he could get away with behind his wife's back; she definitely ruled the roost.

"Honey," Dad had poked his head into my bedroom one warm night after I'd already gone to bed, "are you awake?"

"Yes, is everything okay?" I was fourteen and, until that night, my father had never come into my room.

"I have a present for you. I wanted to see you open it." He handed me a parcel that had been sent through the mail.

"Dad!" I squealed after I'd removed all the packaging. "Really?"

He nodded and patted me on the head before leaving without another word. The box he'd brought to me contained uniforms to Hightower School of the Arts. For me to attend there meant he'd won the two-years long argument with my mother about which high school I'd be enrolled in. It was the first, and maybe only, instance I can recall him getting an actual win on a big parenting issue.

I started school knowing only one other person there - Ashton Scott. We'd been at middle school together and had been somewhat friendly, but I had a major crush on him. Unfortunately, I was far from the only one with a crush on the boy many considered to be the cutest one in school. The trend of Ashton having a fan club continued into the new school.

Fate was on my side though and we kept being paired up in our core classes. Despite his popularity, he was shy so he seemed to appreciate the familiarity of our partnerships. I steeled my nerves and made steps towards building an actual friendship with him. Other than that, I didn't talk to many people. Fortunately, my shyness didn't deter everyone.

"Oh. My. God." A jewelry clad hand snatched my sketchbook off the table in front of me. "I can't believe you did this in the last ten minutes. Practically everyone else is just blocking or making color wheels. Teach, come see what this girl has done for the contrast assignment."

That was how I met Zayan Patel, who quickly became my best friend. Chatty and observant, he saved me from dissolving into the background in our principles of design class. Ashton was a film student so he was in a different department for his afternoon classes. Zayan and I were in visual arts. Like other students who were primarily interested in fashion, Zayan stretched the limits of what was allowed with our uniforms. I didn't dare do anything that would further anger my mother beyond what she tolerated just by me attending this school.

The great irony of course being that as an accomplished stage and film actress, one would think this type of school would be held in high esteem by her, but the opposite was true. Maybe she would have approved if I had any talent for acting. Whatever the case might have been, the fact was, she believed I ought to focus on something that would be useful to my father's business instead of art. Dad believed that youth was the time to do the things one enjoyed.

Ashton, Zayan, and I also had another thing in common - we all lived in the same neighborhood. Along with sixty five thousand other people. Still, given that kids came to this school from all over the city of Alaris and its nearly ten million residents, I'd say that's a little significant. Being close geographically meant that we were able to commute to school together. 

By the time the first semester of our sophomore year was over, the three of us were an established set. Whatever combination we were in, anytime it was possible to sit together or work together, we did. We always had lunch together as a group of three. Ashton had private tutoring and after-school programs otherwise we would have spent a lot of time outside of school together, too.