darker_london | First day, first week (Cai, Zoe)

I’m not wearing my gloves to school thought Cai as he pulled himself together for his first day back. I don’t need them. I don’t want to need them.

It was not so much a stubborn thought as a bit of a pitiful one – with his old friends still presumably avoiding him as much as he was avoiding them and his new friends not in school any more Cai didn’t think it was necessary. He didn’t expect to talk to anyone today, let alone touch them. And he could keep himself to himself in the hallways.

He didn’t really want to talk to anyone. He didn’t particularly want to be here.

It felt wrong to be back, after the feeling of freedom at the end of last year. He’d been so sure that this chapter of his life was over. The world had been full of new things – a new relationship with Danny, new friendships with Rachel and Zoe, a whole entire new world opening up around him.

So to come back to school for another year…

It felt wrong. It felt like he’d failed. Like he somehow hadn’t risen fast enough to meet the new world and it had passed by right over his head. The feeling of failure sat like a lump in his stomach. He should have been out there, he should be anywhere other than this. But it was for Dom.

Dom was his real father, not Ross. Dom was all he’d ever needed, but it had taken till recently to see that. Cai could suck it up and bear school for another year. He could do that.
Cai left his hands bare, squared his shoulders and walked through the gates of London College.

~

Meanwhile, Zoe’s first day was starting late. Her first class wasn’t till eleven, but Liz dropped her off on campus early so she had time to absorb the energy before she had to find her lecture hall.

She was absolutely terrified. In some ways seeing someone she knew would have helped, because seeing someone from her school life would remind her how to be her school self, and her school felt would not be terrified. What was scary? Thousands of unfamiliar faces? Zoe began to list other terrifying things in her head – but she stopped at ‘thousands of unfamiliar faces’ because she could not go any further.

Thousands of unfamiliar faces.

How did people learn in this environment?

Zoe was not the only person to have a panicked breakdown on their first day of university classes. Zoe was not the only person to spend a large chunk of time in a toilet stall trying to remember how to breathe. She never did see any of the others who freaked out, though. It might have been easier for her if she had. Zoe was used to feeling alone but it had never felt so isolating before.

She missed her first class entirely, but by the time she was due at her second she hated herself for cracking so much that she forced herself to attend.

Tertiary education should not be motivated by self loathing, she thought.

She should be motivated by all these things: the desire to learn, to make herself into a better person, a person who will make a difference to the world. The desire to be smart enough and knowledgeable enough to be important.

She shouldn’t be attending class because the other option was hiding in a toilet for an hour being an enormous failure.

And yet, that’s what forced her to class. Time after time, for the whole of her first week.

Attend class or be a worthless failure.