Emma sat absentmindedly staring at her ceiling, she knew that it would be another hour until Ben and Ron woke up. They had spent the summer at her house with her parents, a cozy little two floor home; she let out a long sigh. Normally the friends would have been at the farm (the friend’s laughable name for Ron’s large home in the country), chatting happily as they watched the geese being chased by Ron’s overanxiously happy dogs, and ate over-syrup-ed pancakes; however this summer was anything but normal, and had been the summer that had changed Emma’s quiet life forever.

The summer had started pretty normally, the first weekend home the friends spent at the farm, enjoying the long lazy afternoons in each others company, or rather; they had spent that first weekend consoling Ben. He didn’t seem in good enough emotional condition to go begin his new life. You see all three friends attended St. Holy-Oak, a private catholic school set far in the hill of England. Kids were sent there for only two reasons, the amazing academics, and full ride scholarship they offered to bright children, and the reform program that they also sponsored.

Ben, and of course Emma herself were sent there on the academic program. St Holy-Oak’s theory was to teach the kids who wouldn’t get he opportunity they deserved and making the screw-ups pay for it, since everyone else had been paying for the screw-ups mistakes except them. Of course, actually, it was their parents who paid for it, but they seemed to go temporarily deaf when someone brought the subject up.

As for Ben, well, his mom had died a few weeks after he was born, and he never knew his father, and so he had spent most of his life with his grandparents, who raised him and loved him as if he were their own child. He loved them very much. They had both died near the end of the school year. Ben was devastated. He spent so many nights awake and staring out his window in absolute misery, Emma wanted so many times to talk to him, just get him to open up to her about what was going on inside his head, but at the same time she was terribly afraid. She was afraid that he would tell her. That he would tell her everything and she wouldn’t understand, or even worse, she would. She was afraid that her friend was slipping away from her and that if she tried to catch him he would drag her down with him. She watched him swirl helplessly in despair, from a guilt ridden platform far above.

As for Ron, anyone who looked at him, and talked with him for a minute would assume that he was there as part of the scholarship program, and orgininally he had been, and officially he still was. Those that knew him best (only Emma and Ben really) knew that he was actually there because he had admitted to his parents that he was openly gay, and they had sent him as a part of the unofficial ‘pray out the gay’ program. The three had been at school together for three years before Ron had told them that. Emma remembered the day vividly, not because it was so much of a shock, but from the sudden guilty pang of self pity. Ron had always flirted with her, and even though she had never even considered pursuing any kind of relationship, he was the only one who ever really flirted with her, or made her feel feminine at all. She hated her self pity, and surged against it with a fiery passion, trying to burn it form her mind, but like some kind of horrible black ooze no matter how she tried to burn it out it always oozed back into her thoughts, staying firmly there on the edges of her consciousness.

So the morning passed slowly by, as Emma stared up from her bed trying to process all of the changes in her limited world. So many things had gone wrong, so many things had changed. She wished with all her heart that things could go back to the way they were, happy and carefree, without real pressures, without real decisions to make. Alas things can never truly go back; things we’ve lost can never truly be regained. If only Emma could understand that.