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- June -
Finals are finally over! Mark Hamilton - the Third, but nobody ever mentions that part of his name - mentally rejoiced. This meant one full summer filled with nothing but hanging out with Holden Frazier at his pool and occasionally trying to pick up girls on the weekends.
He missed hanging out with Holden. Social Media Messengers and texts didn’t quite cut it when you needed your best friend. Sure, he’d shared a room with his current roommate since they were Freshmen, but Fredrick spent most of his time studying in the library and messaging back and forth with his own back home girlfriend.
A knock on the door made him stop in the middle of packing up his clothes. “Coming!” he shouted.
Pulling the door open, he stood face to face with the teary-eyed floor monitor’s wife. He’d never seen Mrs. Layton about to cry before in all the time he'd known her. “What’s the matter?”
“Your father sent you this express and your mother is downstairs waiting to pick you up,” she whispered. Pulling him into a hug, she added, “I’m going to miss you next year.”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, confused. Normally his dad was the one picking him up. They’d make a quick detour to New York City and pick up his mother a few ‘presents’ - Mark usually accompanied that word, in relation to his mother, with an eye roll - before boarding a flight headed towards Memphis. Then they would make another quick detour to the diner they would frequently visit before returning home, turning a typically twenty-four hour trip into a three day trip.
Still dabbing her eyes with a tissue, Mrs. Layton tearfully answered, “Your mother is downstairs getting your school records and other necessary things. You won’t be returning next year.”
“What?” Mark stammered. “Why?”
Shaking her head, she mumbled to herself as she handed over the package, “Doesn’t he already know?”
Feeling panic forming in his gut, he snapped, “Know what?”
“Oh, Mark...” she sobbed. “If you don’t already know I can’t be the person to tell you.” She hesitated before adding, “Just, open what your father sent you first. I feel as if it’s important.”
Thanking her, he shut the door and went back to his twin-sized bed where his suitcase was already waiting half packed. Everything else had already been packed in boxes and were waiting for a rolling cart to take it all downstairs.
He was tempted to tear into the package and see what it was his father had sent him. Something had to be wrong. His mother never came to pick him up. Mark knew his mother was downstairs waiting. She never had been fond of the idea of him being away at boarding school; if she had her way, she would enroll him at one of the local private schools for his final year. However, his dad wanted his son enrolled at his boarding school, the same boarding school he’d once walked the halls and snuck out of during weeknights.
He knew she was downstairs waiting, but he wanted her to wait a while longer.
Staring at the mailer for a moment longer, he finally placed it on top of the clothes already inside the suitcase and finished packing up the rest of his closet. With luck his mother would never find it on the way home. He could stick it in his favorite hiding spot when they were back.
Grabbing a cart before one of the other guys still at school could, he loaded everything up and pushed it to the service elevator only used at the beginning and end of the school years. On the first floor, he was greeted by a stony-faced Rosenstein. “I’ll get these, Master Mark,” he mumbled. “Your mother is in the office.”
“Rosenstein, how many times have I told you to just call me Mark?” he grinned, forcing his facial muscles to move. It was acting. He needed to act. He knew something was wrong that he wasn’t supposed to know yet.
“Your mother is in the office,” the stiff driver repeated. He would normally be cracking jokes with Mark if Gertrude hadn’t been nearby.
Taking a deep breath, Mark suspected what his mother was going to tell him. There was only one possible reason why his father wasn’t there to pick him up.
Pausing at the door, he hesitated before turning the doorknob and going into the empty room. That was something unexpected; Headmaster York had left them alone in the office. He never let anybody stay alone in his office filled with valuable student files and dog figurines.
“Mark,” his mother whispered, holding out her arms for the required hug and kiss on the cheek. “You just keep growing.”
“Thank you, Mom,” he smiled, giving her the hug and kiss all the while aware that he wasn’t supposed to know. “I was told you were pulling me out of school for next year.”
“Yes, Son. Sit down,” she quietly commanded. “This couldn’t have happened at a better or worse time, but... Mark, your father died in a car accident three days ago. I couldn’t tell you sooner because I knew you had finals and I didn’t want you to stress over something that you couldn’t change and...” she rambled on.
Mark went still as he listened to his mother calmly relate the details of his father’s car crash. “He’d been drinking.” “Not a high blood alcohol level was recorded, but apparently enough.” “Head on collision with a tree.” “I made an appointment for you with a psychiatrist.” All phrases that filtered into his brain and circled around the knowledge that his father had sent him something just before he had died.
There was no possible way that his dad could be dead. Somebody would have told him already. He would have seen it on social media or... only he hadn’t been on the internet. He had been focusing on passing his classes, classes he had slept through mostly because they bored him and he knew he didn’t have to listen to the teachers droning on and on when he could catch up in the library or his room later.
No, it was not possible that his dad was dead. Rosenstein would have told him. Or Holden. Or...somebody. Somebody would have told him.
Wouldn’t they?
