100 Themes Challenge
by Purple Snowstorm

8. Gateway
Rating: T (depression and abandonment)
Pairing(s): -none-
Summary: Jerome's thoughts through the years as he entered school each year.
Point of View: First person; Jerome
Characters: Jerome
Genre: Angst

~Year 1~

I was only five years old the first time my parents left me at that gateway. I was young and naïve. There were only two other five year olds at the school, but I didn't care. I thought it was an adventure. That's what mama had called it. I didn't see my parents again for a year.

~Year 2~

By the time my second year came around, I was slightly more cautious. I had spent my last year nearly alone, though had managed through thick and thin. But this year was different. I was the only six year old at the school, and I was often left to my own in a house meant to hold eight. I was the ninth person.

~Year 3~

During this year, I developed a deep hatred of my parents. As I stood at that gateway, tears were in my eyes because my parents had swiftly thrown me out of the car and driven away as soon as they came. I grudgingly entered the school as it began to rain.

~Year 4~

I was eight at that point, and able to understand what had happened to me when I was five. I had been completely abandoned by my parents and they meant for me to either die or become a completely different person. Only, that didn't happen. Therefore, as I stood at the gateway in my fourth year, I found myself plotting ways to make my years at the school worthwhile.

~Year 5~

I guess, at that point, I had completely given up hope on my parents and family. School had become my home, and a very bleak home it was. Luckily, some sensible parents actually sent their nine year olds to boarding school, and that's when I began to actually make friends.

~Year 6~

I was the outcast as I stood at the gateway. The other ten year olds, most of them first years, stood clustered in a corner, occasionally pointing and always whispering. I was on my sixth year, five years ahead of them, and completely emotionless.

~Year 7~

At eleven years old, I finally understood. I was the freak; the weirdo. I didn't belong and everyone knew it. So, as it stood, there was a large amount of new first years my age that year. I confined myself to my room, which I shared with only one other person, and he was never around. My antics began that year, but that was also the year I began to be depressed and completely alone.

~Year 8~

I was nearing my teenage years as I stood at the gateway in my eighth year. I hardly told anyone how long I had been at the school; I lied and said I was a first year a year before they came. Not too many people stayed for more than one year for inexplicable reasons. Maybe it was just a bad or creepy school. To me, as I stood at the arched gateway, it definitely was a bad place.

~Year 9~

Screw it. Just screw it all. When I turned thirteen and returned to the school for my ninth year, I hardly blinked when no one paid attention to me. They never did. However, when one boy began acting out and I was blamed for it, I drew the final line. I was invisible. I cut class and hung around the hidden areas of campus all day. And that's when my life began to take a turn for the better, when a certain other prankster entered and light entered my previously hidden soul.

It was the gateway to new possibilities.

Word Count: 605

Okay, this one is weak, I admit it. Sorry~!