Exchange

Chapter 8

The next four weeks turned into some kind of distorted blur, where days ran into nights and nights ran into days. I had been moving through the month like a mechanical robot, high on adrenalin, and how I hadn't totally combusted yet was unknown.

It was the month before I left for Exchange, which meant everything had to be organised in those last few weeks.

As I was leaving for half a semester, I would miss a whole syllabise in each subject, so I had been attending extra lessons each day to help me get slightly ahead. This meant that every free afternoon I'd had in the last month had been taken up by math and biology and old, substitute teachers who were three times my age.

Mason and I were then sent all of the details about the school we'd be attending and its location. The school was called Prescott Boarding Academy, co-educational, and was based in a small town twenty minutes out of London.

I looked up the school's website and was met with a grand, red bricked structure which looked very similar to that of a castle. Reading more about the school, I found out that it was over one-hundred and fifty years old, it had 11 different fields used for sport and whatnot, ten tennis courts, two swimming pools, an astro turf, a rock climbing wall, a gym, an indoor centre and even its own stables and arena for horse-riding.

And that was just for physical activities, I couldn't imagine how advanced they were when it came to academics and music.

Mason and I would both be boarding at Prescott, as both of  the exchanges we would be switching places with were boarders.

I discovered that I'd be swopping places with a girl called Annabel Lesley. She seemed nice enough from the few obligated emails I'd had to send her. Thus, her current roommate, Molly Colton, would be mine for the next three months. 

Mason would be boarding in the boy's dormitories, obviously, with an assigned roommate too. However who he was sharing with, I didn't know.  After stumbling across the photographs in Mason's house that day, I had avoided him at all costs.

Well to be fair, that hadn't been my initial plan. The day after, I found Mason in the hallway.

~4 weeks earlier~

He was leaning against a locker and chatting with a bunch of his friends. I had stood a couple steps away from them and watched him as he talked, having a mental debate in my head. I still felt guilty about what had happened, because hey, I did have a heart.

So I decided to stall in the hallway and wait for Mason to finish his conversation. I must have looked like a creep, hanging around a random locker and shooting him impatient glances every couple of seconds. Had they even heard the bell?

Right before I was about to give up and sprint to class, Mason and his friends finally dispersed and breathing a sigh of relief, I quickly pushed myself from the locker. I caught Mason walking down the hallway alone, hands in his pocket, whistling nonchalantly, and not caring whatsoever that he was ten minutes late to class.

"Mason!" I called, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.

His whistling stopped and he turned around in surprise. When his eyes fell on me though, they instantly turned into a dry exasperation. "And once again, I'm graced with the presence of Rose Pierce."

I narrowed my eyes and held my books tighter against my chest. "I'm not here to argue Mason, I just-"

A mocking laugh left his lips and his eyes glinted. "What else do we do?"

I curled my hand into a tight fist.

"Look." I said tightly. "I just wanted to apologise. That's it. I'm sorry."