A Year of Winter

eight

November 19th, 2012

About a month sped by, which felt like nothing more than stumbling through tests, quizzes, and college applications. It hadn't even reached the middle of the year before the thought of college was again drilled into our mindsets, and kids from the senior classes were plucked one by one to attend meetings with their guidance counselors.

Andrew got called quite early on. He didn't say they chatted about much; Andrew said he thought he was going to go to some school in Maine and play soccer. Noelle said she would go with him. I wasn't surprised. The idea that the two would run off together somewhere after high school was inescapable. They were that one in a million couple, the pair in high school that went onto be just as inseparable after they graduated. And the farther and farther into their relationship, that fact seemed to grow stronger; I'd never get my chance with Noelle.

I tried not to let that thought burrow its way into my head so often, though. I tried to focus more on my studies, and the task at hand: graduating.

I, unlike Andrew and Noelle, was called into the guidance counselor's office on more than one occasion in the later days of November, where my counselor, Mrs. Dawson, asked me what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go to college.

As if I had an answer for her right there on the spot.

I looked at her, nervous, holding the informative pamphlet about colleges in my hand, which I'd later stuck in my book as a bookmark in my copy of The Decampment.

Her eyes were on me, and I didn't want to slip up with a silly answer. "I think I want to be an author," I eventually told her coyly, standing awkwardly in front of her desk, fiddling with my thumbs.

She just stared at me, like she didn't believe me. I knew it'd happen; counselors want "the best for you," which I supposed translated 99% of the time to which job makes you the most money; not the happiest. Trying her hardest to look nonjudgmental, she went back to her computer and typed a few words, her eyes glued to the luminescent screen, entranced like a moth to light.

"An author?" She said finally, her voice skeptical.

I just nodded.

She nodded back, and licked her lips. "That's very bold of you, Harry."

I cringed, "It's Henry."

Her eyes flickered to meet mine, but she said nothing. She just nodded, again, and typed away at the keyboard once more before clicking a tab shut, and turning her swivel chair to face me, her hands folded over one another.

"Alright, Henry." She said with a forced smile, "Have you applied to many colleges so far?"

"Um, a few," I told her nervously.

"Are there any in particular you'd like to enroll in?"

"I'm not really sure," I told her quietly. She eyed me peculiarly, and I scratched the back of my neck awkwardly. "I, um, have been thinking about NYU."

"You've got quite the transcript," Mrs. Dawson said suddenly, her eyes growing wide at the screen. She looked almost surprised, "AP Physics? Algebra II Honors? Chess club, two years? Four years of Italian and French?" She trailed off, murmuring on and onto herself more and more of my achievements over the past for years. I nodded to her, and she turned to me, looking me straight in the eyes, a serious look seeming to have taken hold of her usually careless demeanor, "Henry, with such a transcript, you could go onto be a very successful businessman, or a lawyer, or a doctor...Why would you choose to be an author?"

I looked at her dumbly, like it should've been simple. The answer was in front of her; she just had to reach for it.

"Well," I said quietly, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, "because more than anything, it makes me happy."