Rachel Bauer
August 17, 2012 10:19 PM
We come here, but then we disappear. by Rachel Bauer
On her second-to-last night at Sonora, Rachel had had trouble sleeping. Finally, she had rolled out of bed at five and, stiff and aching in every muscle, had went to get a shower and get ready for the day.It figured, she thought twenty minutes later as she put on mascara in front of the familiar mirror and nearly stabbed herself in the eye with the applicator as the alarm spell she’d set before bed the night before and forgotten to disable now went off, that just when she had nothing to do and therefore could take as much time getting dressed as she wanted, that was when she would start just getting up early on her own, without having to set multiple alarms in her room just to get everything done on time, the way she had needed to last year and the first part of this one. Blinking hard, her eyes watering, she lowered the mascara wand and looked at herself in the mirror, but the stuff lived up to its promise that it would only come off when she wanted it to come off and she had been lucky enough to not smear any on her face when her hand jerked, so she was able to finish her right top lashes without further incident. Once that was done, she stood back, adjusted her purple blouse slightly so it looked better on her, and headed to the Cascade Hall for breakfast, becoming one of the first people through the door.
She was, she thought as she served herself pancakes and strawberries and began to eat them while she looked around the room and listening to the soothing trickle of the waterfalls over the windows, really going to miss this place. It was the major drawback of going to boarding school: one spent most of seven years in a place, that place in a way became home, and then, just like that, it was over. No coming back, unless one happened to become a big donor or a teacher here, and she thought those things were as likely as the sky falling. She’d have some kind of future, since she had, pending proof that she hadn’t failed her CATS, been accepted to college, but becoming a professor wasn’t something she saw in her stars. She didn’t know what she wanted, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t that.
As for becoming a big donor…well, she knew her mother and stepfather weren’t going to give her that kind of money. They’d put her through school, give her a generous allowance, but really they were raising her and her sisters with the full intentions of sweeping them under the rug as soon as they were on their own feet as adults so they could focus on Isaac and social advancement. They didn’t really consider anyone from Momma’s first marriage family. Alicia, she knew, was still believing the lie that they could fool people about what they were, and she worried about her youngest sister because of it, but at some point along the line, Rachel had seen the light about that. Maybe a few people at Sonora who cared about that thing still thought she was a pureblood, but she thought they were in the minority, and she found it didn’t bother her that much. Even now, Rachel had no intentions of flaunting the fact that her father’s parents were Muggleborn, but she wasn’t going to get worked up about the issue. She was more worried about the Layne curse somehow striking in the next forty-eight hours than she was about someone realizing she was a half-blood.
It was, she thought, an improvement from first year. Back then, she had been worried about someone finding out she was a half-blood and the Layne curse at the same time. Two big family phobias like that, though, were just too much work at this point in her life. She guessed it was true what they said about not having the energy for things anymore as one aged or something.
She smiled to herself, just short of laughter, at that thought. If she was eighteen and already losing it, then she was going to have very serious problems when she hit one hundred. Turning her head so her straight blonde hair slipped over her shoulder, she looked around the Hall again with the smile still in place as she decided to enjoy these last two days more than she had any other time during her years at Sonora.
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Rachel Bauer
We come here, but then we disappear.
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Rachel Bauer
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