How is it that life can never be just simple?
Ever since I can remember, I have known that when I reach secondary school age, I would get my letter telling me which magic school I had been selected for. Today is that day and I am so ready for this. With tingling fingertips and a racing heart, I am praying for Oxbridge - the most prestigious academy in the whole world. With my parents both being executives of leading magical product manufacturers, I was guaranteed a good spot at either Oxbridge, or at the very least, the next best, which was Mancaster.
So why is it that a dark forboding cloud has settled round me like a cloak? I am a good kid. My parents are smart, well respected and ambassadors for our community, so what is causing me to feel so reluctant to open the envelope?
I sit down on the bottom step of the stairs, turn the envelope over in over in my hands and come the conclusion that my question cannot be answered unless I open the envelope up. I break the wax seal, lift is the flap of the envelope, place my thumb and forefinger around the parchment and slide it out. I unfold the creamy stiff paper and drop it in horror.
Wastelands Academy? WASTELANDS ACADEMY? Why the hell has my fate set that monstrosity in my path? What did I do to deserve such a falling from grace? That school is for those with weak magic, waster parents and no hope for the future. It must be a mistake. A very grave mistake indeed when my parents find out! There will be hell to pay at the Council for Education. Heads will literally roll.
I wait all day for my parents to finish work and come back through the front door. I am comforted in the knowledge that they are powerful, strong and connected, so this will get sorted and I will be placed back on the right path. They should be home any minute. I replay over in my mind what I think their reaction will be and it is not pretty. It is seven o’clock and they are late. They are never late, yet here I am sitting and waiting in the dark for the sound of the key sliding into the lock and turning.
The sound never comes and they never come. I am alone in the darkness, clutching the letter containing my future and terrified at the prospect of facing it alone.
I have quite often thought that advertising via pamphlet drops through the letter box were a complete waste of time, money and trees until I picked up the bundle of post this morning. I hastily separated the wheat from the chaff and was about to throw the latter in the bin when an image caught my eye and my breath was held back as a failed to exhale.
The pamphlet was in the form of a newspaper but A4 size and on the front page was a familiar face. It was a photograph of my daughter Lucie from about a year ago and she was looking radiant, wearing her hair down, with a red colour running through it but the tips were left blonde. It was not the fact she was in this pamphlet that stopped me in my tracks but what I saw on closer inspection. Lucie was holding a syringe against her inner elbow joint, her eyes were rolled back slightly, she was drooling a little from the left side of her mouth and she looked at peace.
How I had initially thought she looked radiant is absolutely beyond me because the image was horrific. My little girl was shooting drugs into her vein. My little girl was on the front page of this brochure as a feature and I was utterly shocked to the core.
With shaking hands I dropped all the post with the exception of the pamphlet and with trepidation, I started reading the article Lucie was featured in. How could this be? What the hell is she doing? Where is she right now?
Questions flew through my mind but the answers were right there in front of me. Unbeknownst to me, Lucie was an addict and she was now being featured in the promotional material for a new drug and alcohol withdrawal service! New questions. How did I not know? Why would she not come to me? What the hell?!
I am broken. My heart is broken. My beautiful little girl is broken.
