I'm not really losing my best friend.

We're just going our own ways. We're scattering ourselves to different winds, but we'll come together again. We are exploring a globe in different directions. Like Columbus and Magellan, boldly going where no stinky sixteenth-century European explorer and his crew of scurvy men has ever gone before! Except one of them died of fever, and, like, mutiny, I think, and the other was pretty much a racist bastard who enabled hundreds of years of genocide, so in a fit of good judgment I decide to nix that metaphor entirely.

"Thank god," Kayla breathes. "Can you get out now?”

-5-

3 Years

45 Weeks

0 Days

I've come to the very original and unique conclusion that leaving home sucks ass. No one else has ever, in the history of humanity, come to this conclusion. No one except me. I am special.

"Isis, we're late!"

And late. I am very late.

Being late doesn't deter me from being proper about farewells, though. As Mom starts the car, I stand in the doorway and breathe in the musty air of eighteen years worth of angst. I didn't spend all eighteen years here, but all the shit that happened in the last year and a half made it feel like that long.

Goodbye, little room.

Goodbye, girl I used to be.

I hug Ms. Muffin close, and leave.

Mom drives slow and carefully. I sip ginger ale and watch the highway flash by. Suddenly, a terrifying thought hits me upside the head with its sweaty palm.

What the hell did I do with my teenage years?

I didn't volunteer, or do sports. I didn't become a radical warrior princess on my sixteenth birthday, complete with a talking cat and magically-appearing clothes. Hogwarts didn't even send me a letter and I haven't actually forgiven them for that. Wait until I go to London and find Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters and slip through to the other side and unleash my rage. I'll make Voldemort look like a sock puppet. And I'll make-out with Draco. And I'll train a bunch of house-elves to fan me and bring me grapes -

I stop when I realize I'm writing mental Harry Potty fanfiction on my way to college. Focus! I need at least seven whole focuses if I'm going to make a fabulous impression. Or any impression at all. I'd rather make a bad impression than no impression.

As Mom pulls onto the exit, I sigh.

I didn't even kiss a boy. For realsies, anyway. Not-drunk.

I did other things. I held hands, and hugged. Nameless pretended real hard to be nice using hugs and hand-holding. Once or twice he even hinted he thought I was pretty. But it was an act, just to build me up before he tore me down. And it was all before the big it. Little it. It's not even worthy of a prefix. It's just 'it'.

I have to leave that behind, too. There's no room for that. Not if I want to move on with my life. I've done my best to bury it, ignore it until it goes away, and it's sort of worked. I got far enough to sleep in a bed with Jack without freaking out. So I'm getting better, and that's real good to know.

It gives me a little bit of hope where there used to be none.

Jack helped me realize that I'm not unloveable. I'm not hopeless.

I'm not all ugly.

Or maybe I realized it on my own. Either way, fighting with him helped me realize lots of stuff. I grew up all kinds of ways.

A sharp pain radiates in my chest, but I brush that dirt off my shoulder and watch Mom's smile.

"There's the sign, sweetie. Get the map out, will you?"

OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY looms in green and white on the side of the road. I pull out the brochure map and direct her onto the campus. Trees and rosebushes bloom like crazy, the emerald green lawn dappled with buttery, late-afternoon sun. The buildings are all old brickwork, ivy sprawling across windows and roman columns. The dorms are shabbier, but just as big. Hundreds of kids are walking around, their parents walking with them, or standing outside the car and hugging them one last time, or helping them carry baggage into dorms.

Mom parks and gets out and my stomach drops with excitement as I fumble at the door handle. This is it. This is how my childhood ends.

I finger the cigarette burns on my wrist, and make sure my sleeve is covering them. I take it back. My childhood ended a long time ago.

Mom can't really pick up my heavy suitcase or backpack, so I drag them up the stairs and she follows. The room is tiny and white-washed and on the second floor, right next to the fire escape. There's no carpet, just cold tile, and the beds are so high up they seem made for, at the very least, Hagrid. Two beds are tucked into opposite ends of the room, a window glaring between them. Two desks are just beside the bed, with ass torture implements of the highest caliber - wood chairs. Two closets wait to be filled with shoes or condoms or failed exams or whatever else college kids fill empty spaces with. Broken dreams, maybe.

My roommate has already claimed the left side, so I plop my stuff on the right. Mom fusses around with the bed sheets she packed, and makes my bed. I watch her work, knowing I'll miss the sight of her doing little things like this. I inspect my roommate's closet - a guitar, lots of army surplus jackets and hiking boots. She's littered her desk with silver jewelry - studs, rings with skulls, necklaces with spiked orbs of death. Yep. We'll get along just fine.

Mom finishes the bed, and we walk downstairs and sit on the lawn, soaking in the sun. Mom holds my hand, stroking it with her thumb.

"I'm sorry, Isis," She tries.

"For what? Not birthing me a week or two later? I SO wanted to be a Leo. None of this Cancer nonsense."

Mom smiles wryly. "No, not that. For...I don't know. I feel like I didn't do a very good job. But I suppose every parent feels like that."

I squeeze her hand. "You did the best you knew how. Auntie understood. We both did."

She nods, and squeezes back. "I'm just glad I could be with you for your last year at home. Even if...even if it was difficult."

I know what regret looks like, now. I saw it in every line of Jack's face at the funeral. I'll never forget what it looks like, even if the Zabadoobians abduct me and bleach my brain. Mom wears it like a shawl, lightly, but holding it around herself, drawing it taut. I throw my arms around her, and bury my head in her shoulder.

"It's okay. I had fun. It was hard but I had fun and I learned stuff, more stuff than I ever learned in my life, so I'm real happy I came to live with you. Thanks for being the best mom ever."

She puts one arm around me and into my hair, and starts crying.

"I love you, Isis."

"I love you too!" I laugh, the tears springing up. "I'll miss you."

I'll see her more than Kayla, but it still stings. I'm about as good at goodbyes as Tarzan is at wearing clothes.

At least Leo's in jail. She'll be safe for a few years.

I watch her go with a sinking heart that sort of dovetails into a swoop, and lifts back up as I face the school again.

I'm alone.

Nobody knows me at Ohio State. I have to start all over. Hundreds of freshmen stream past me on the sidewalks, trampling green lawn and my pure maiden heart as they look right through me. I’m more faceless than Emperor Palpatine before he took his hood off. A massive banner over the huge glass-faced library reads; WELCOME BUCKEYES!

“More like welcome f**keyes,” A voice to my left groans. A girl with seven earrings in one ear and a round, stocky face stands beside me. She’s heavy and tall, but not fat, her hair dyed bright pink and shaved on the sides. Her combat boots and flannel shirt tell me everything I need to know. Badass Supreme. I simultaneously want to be her and fight her just to be able to say she punched me. She blinks hazel eyes thick with eyeliner at me.