Sprigs from Ice

Part One// 3. Crystalline

Mum was standing in the kitchen in a purple night robe when I walked in, stirring her cup of tea. She turned to me with a tired smile and raised a brow asking, "What're you doing down here, Tricia?"

"I came to get water." I replied, walking towards the fridge.

She peered at my face. "Were you sleeping?"

In any normal family, if your mother asked you if you were sleeping at 11pm, the right, obvious answer would be 'yes'. But in my family, normal rules flew out the window.

I shook my head in response to the question. "No."

She laughed lightly. "It's alright. I used to doze off a lot too when I tried to pull an all-nighter. With a bit of discipline, you'll get used to it." She said in encouragement.

After taking out a bottle of water, I shut the fridge and turned to her. "Actually, the Debate Club asked for my help with some research. I got started on it after I finished studying, but I had no idea it would run this late."

She raised her brow and tilted her head to the side, and the action made more of her locks fall onto her shoulder. "Are you sure you have time for that? You're too busy with your classes and all your other responsibilities."

"But what if I made time for it? I'm sure I could manage it just fine."

"If you think so, go ahead." She shrugged. "We won't stop you. Just know that at the end of the term, we are expecting your grades to come back up, so that it won't be too much of a struggle to push you into a good university afterwards. But if I may be honest?"

"Please."

"I think this is just an unnecessary distraction." She took a sip of her tea and smiled. My heart sank. "Your school's Debate Club hasn't done much in recent years. Trying to help them is like fetching water into a basket. On the other hand, look at all you have achieved through Model UN and the STEM club. I want you to put more of your focus in those areas, to become more productive in those fields. They are your areas of expertise, anyway."

"Oh." My resolve to help Astrid had been shredded and scattered in the stillness of the night. "I had just wanted to try something new."

"Mm." She pushed off the counter she was leaning against and walked towards me. "Focus on what's most important, Tricia. Our dream is not for you to just spout meaningless words to face-off with others. We just want you to be happy."

"Okay." The water bottle suddenly felt too heavy in my hands.

"Goodnight, love. Turn off the lights on your way out."

...

One subject that always came surprisingly easy to me was Social Studies. It was one of the few subjects I was inherently good at and ironically, one of the few my parents held no regards for, despite pushing so hard for me to join a club that was primarily centered around its topics. Since it was one of the four core subjects, they didnt bother me when the saw me looking up world news or paying more attention to political conversations than I ought to.

Our teacher had decided that the best way to welcome us back to school after the break was to give us a quiz, to make sure that we could remember everything we had studied in the first half of the term, and perfectly understood it.

I breezed through questions about youth and development with ease, the tip of my pen gliding across the paper as I wrote in a stream of consciousness, pouring out definitions and concepts I didn't need to memorize and ideas that had actually been interesting to ponder.

I handed in the test without having to fake my confidence, and was filled with a small sense of satisfaction as I waited for Math to begin.

My confidence didn't last as long as I expected it to. That small sense of satisfaction disappearing with each step the math teacher took into the classroom. No one noticed as I gripped my pen tighter than usual, trying to recall everything we had studied before the mid-term break had begun.