CHAPTER FIVE
Our final year at Bennington went by at lightning speed. Bennington, above anything else, was a preparatory school, and anyone who went there was required to have and to maintain an exemplary grade point average. Thus, even at the best of times, it was competitive. That final year, though, was a very different atmosphere than it had ever been before. Everyone seemed more serious and more focused. Tempers were hotter and there was a lot less general messing about on campus. There were many students that attended Bennington College that were wealthy. Some were beyond wealthy. And then there were others, like me, who came from working class backgrounds. Students like us only had one chance. We were not about to budge over and allow someone to take away our grants. Every scholarship student there wanted their futures as much as I did. Therefore, I found myself in constant competition for marks to win money for university. I was not about to have to leave Great Britain to continue my education because I could not pay to attend Cardiff University, nor was there really another college I wanted to be read at since Oliver had his heart set on Cardiff University and I had my heart set on Oliver.
Realistically, I knew my father could have set aside enough money to put me through at least the first four years of university, but I had plans that went beyond four years. Daddy had always worked as a journalist and editor, but his income had never been a steady one. The money that paid for mine and Lucy’s education, I knew, came from my mother. More specifically, it came from her death. She had a decent life insurance policy, I had gathered, but I knew something that my father had thought was a secret, too. I knew how my mother had died and I knew that he sued the people who were responsible for at least a million pounds. However, I knew that he was sued for liability over an article he wrote years later and lost a portion of that money. Take that and consider the two houses he bought for us to live in, the one in Edinburgh, which he refused to sell, and the one in Denbigh, which he had paid too high a price for, and the cars he had to buy along the way, and then add the cost of Lucy’s and my private education and the answer was that I really did not know how much was left for Lucy once I finished up. I didn’t want to take all the money and leave her without enough.
Anyroad, it didn’t matter. I had always been a good student. I had always worked hard and studied. I didn’t see any reason why I should not finish ahead and go to school where I wanted. There would be nothing--and I meant nothing--that would stop me.
That scholarship became an obsession. I worked harder than I ever had. I fretted over every detail of every essay, hounded the Profs for extra credit, tested and retested myself before exams and destroyed and recreated any of my project assignments that were not utterly perfect. I slept very little and worried very much. I even skipped meals sometimes. It was not long before I was tired and cranky and so completely stressed out that no one wanted to be around me. I don’t know how or why Oliver put up with me, but he did.
“Look at her,” He whispered to Alexander as I studied in our common room on a Friday night. It was just before Christmas and I wanted to do well on my exams before we went on holiday. Everyone else in the room was singing Christmas carols and dancing around with bottles of soda in their hands. “Bless her! She’s like a bloody hound! Nose down to the paper, sniffing for facts! Oh, where, oh, where has my Little Sil Gone? Oh where, oh where can she be?” He sang, softly nudging me under the table.
“See that, Ollie? She didn’t even look at you! No sense of humour anymore, that Silvia!” Alex shot a rubber band at me. It landed in my hair and hung there. I flicked it away and ignored them. “Come on, Sil!” He begged, “Give us a smile!”
I looked up at the two of them. “Stop it! I have to study!”
“All you do anymore is study!” Oliver returned. “Come on, Sil! Why don’t you take a break and we can…”
“Your parents may have the money to put the two of you through Bennington and then pay for you to attend Cardiff as well, but my father more than likely does not!” I snapped, “I have to study! I don’t have a choice!” I didn’t mean to sound as cross as I did.
They looked at each other with wide eyes and expressions that mocked a child who had been scolded. “Wow!” Alexander pointed at me, “Don’t anybody stick a pin in her!”
“Right then! That’s it!” Oliver reached over and flipped my text book shut.
“Why did you do that?” I squealed. I slammed my hands on to the table.
Alexander yanked the book away from the front of me. I made a grab for it, but Oliver swooped down and scooped me up from around the waist. “Hey! Put me down!” I cried as he lifted me and out of my chair. “Hey! Hey! Stop it! Put me down!” I screamed again as he hoisted me over his shoulder and began to carry me out of the room. “I’m in a skirt, You Twit!”
He clapped his hand on my bum as if to keep the skirt decent and continued walking. The crowd roared and cheered. I could feel my face burning blood red. I looked up through the hair covering my eyes to see everybody in the room laughing and pointing.
“Bring her back safe!” Alexander beamed as he called out over the clapping and howls that filled the room.
“Oh, I will, don’t you worry!” Oliver replied. Without looking back he continued through the door, down the corridor and straight out of the building.
“Put me down!” I hit him on his back. It had no effect. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I wasn’t angry, exactly, but I was a little more than annoyed and confused. Oliver ignored my protests. “Put me down or I’ll scream!”
“You’re already screaming,” He told me. “Nobody’s coming, eh?”
Oliver walked with me over his shoulder all the way to the lake before he set me down ankle deep in snow. “Don’t you say a word!” He put his fingers over my lips. “I know it’s cold. Just give me a minute-like.”
“Can I go back in where it’s warm if I do?”
“Yes.”
“All right, then, make it quick.”
He put his hands on my shoulders, “We’re playing a game. You do what I say.”
“Doesn’t sound fair.” I crossed my arms in front of me. I was freezing.
“Trust me, Sil. Shut your eyes.” I did. He walked around me and wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Now, relax and take a few deep breaths. Not like that! That’s more like hyperventilating! Do it for real! Deep, long breaths. Feel the cold air in your lungs.” I took a few deep breaths, “Let your shoulders fall. Relax your neck,” He put his chin on my shoulder and moved us in a half circle. “Now, pretend that Cardiff University does not exist. Pretend that nothing exists at all. Pretend that nothing is real but you and me, Sil, standing in the snow on a cold December’s eve just before Christmas. Just you and me in the still keeping each other as warm as we can. Let yourself be quiet and listen to the night. Tell me what you hear.”
We stood there for a long time. “I can hear an owl,” I whispered. “What’s that creaking?”
“It’s the ice on the lake,” He whispered back.
We stood there for another moment. “I can hear you breathing.”
He laughed quietly.
“It’s like I can hear the air. It’s like I can almost hear the cold buzzing in my ears.”
“Good. Now I want you to open your eyes and look up, but remember that it’s just you and me…just us…”
I opened my eyes. The sky above us was unbelievably beautiful, filled with millions of stars. In the middle of it all, right above us, was the largest, silver moon I had ever seen. Without thinking about what I was doing, I lifted my arm and reached out to touch it.