The clock on the wall looked like a picture. It seemed that it had been frozen on the same time forever now, and the more I stared at it, the more frustrated I became.
It was a Friday afternoon, and like every Friday afternoon found me, I was in my math class. Math had never been my strongest subject, the numbers never did what I wanted them to do, it was like they were beings with minds of their own. It never made any sense.
To make matters worse, my patience was being stretched even thinner today. The moment the final bell rang and excused me from the prison that was class, I would be free to leave not only the school, but the state. I was going on vacation, the annual family vacation that happened every year. It was an escape that I had been looking forward to for a long time now.
Finally, the numbers turned, and the picture changed. The bell rang, sounding annoying in my ear, but I didn't care. The irritating sound meant freedom.
Before anyone could tell me otherwise, I jumped out of my seat and ran to the door, ready to taste freedom with my tongue, see it with my eyes, feel it with my hands, and hear it in my ears.
The door flung open, I ran down the already busy hallway, sprinting to my locker. I ran into about five people, but I said nothing close to an apology. I wasn't going to waste my time with that sort of thing.
I finally arrived in front of my locker and flung it open, throwing my books sloppily inside and slamming the door. I wouldn't need them for awhile, not where I was going.
I took off down the stairs and out the front entrance of the school, out to my car. There was a slight breeze that played with my hair, making it move in unnatural directions, but I ignored it. Nothing could bring me down.
I had gotten out of the school fast enough that I beat all the traffic coming out of the parking lot, allowing me to speed home.
'Home' was probably one of the fanciest and expensive homes in the school district in which I attended. It was a mansion on a hill, no exaggerations. It belonged me, my many sisters and parents.
I may have had many sisters, but the truth was that besides Elizabeth, who was close to me in age and was my junior, and my older sister Lorina, I didn't talk to them very much. Lorina, Edith, and I were the closest and we spent endless amounts of time together.
My parents were Henry and Lorina Hanna, both of whom were very well off and successful. My father was a college dean, a very intelligent man.
I pulled my car into my part of the garage, which was up a driveway that was definitely steeper, hence the hill.
As I closed the door to the car behind me, the garage door closed behind me, taking all light from the day away with it's closing.
I walked into the house where I found Edith sitting at the kitchen table, eating Oreo cookies. She was pulling them apart and licking the frosting off before dunking the chocolate cookies into a glass of milk.
"Why do you eat them like that?" I asked, sitting down next to her and helping myself to her cookies.
"Because there's no proper, well reasoned way to eat Oreos, and I decided to eat them this way. Do you have a problem with that?" She asked.
"No, just curious." Without tearing open a cookie, I dunked it full on in the milk before standing up and walking away. "For the record though," I said with my mouth full, "it tastes better if you do it this way."
I left the room, but not before watching Elizabeth take my suggestion and dump the cookie as I did.
I smiled as I walked up the grand staircase that took me to a long hallway with all the bedrooms. Edith was pretty cool when she thought about being that way.
At the very end of the hall was my bedroom, in which I had already started packing for the trip east to Oxford. I was excited, it would be the first time that I went anywhere near my birthplace of the Westminster area.
The only thing that I had left to throw into the large suitcase that sat on the top of my bed was a few shirts and toiletries. When that was done, I zipped it shut and set it by the door. I was very excited to be able to return that close to home.
It wasn't that I didn't totally love the United States, I really did, but there was something about Europe that just couldn't be remade in the States no matter how hard architects tried.
I flung myself back on my bed and stared up at the smooth ceiling. In just a few hours, I would be on an adventure, where I had the potential to meet new people, make new friends, and see sights that hadn't been there when I was younger. I only wished that we were leaving this very moment.
My eyes sunk closed and my lips rose in the corners as I imagined the beautiful sights and sounds that I would soon be sensing.
I couldn't believe it. I was on a plane that was just about to land, a plane that was just about to put me in my most favorite place in the world. I looked out the window and with excitement noticed that we were close enough to the ground that I could see the buildings, homes, and other features that the ground had to offer. It was just as beautiful as I had remembered it.
"Glad to be coming so close to home?" Lorina asked from where she sat next to me.
"So glad," I answered without tearing my eyes from the window and the beautiful sights. I had dreamed of this day for so long and now it was no dream, it was reality.
"I am, too. It's been too long since we've visited," she said from behind a magazine. She turned the page. "I'm most excited to see the church. It really was beautiful, and I hope it's as nice as I remember it."
"Of course it will be," I said, shocked that she could be so disbelieving in the beauty of it.
"You never know," she pointed out, sighing over some actor in the magazine.
I rolled my eyes and continued looking out the window, counting down the minutes until we landed and I could run out of the gate and out into the world. It would be one of my happiest moments of this year, I just knew it.