19. Breaking point

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‘Susette! Susette! What is wrong with you girl?’

Jane’s voice fell like dull rain on Susie’s ears. She could get lost. They all could. She wanted no part of whatever it was here at The Academy. She just wanted to go home, wanted to go back to a place where she could do what she wanted, where she could speak her language, use her own name. She didn’t care about this place, didn’t care about these people.

They had told them several times that there could be no contact with home while they were here, that it was in order to help them focus on becoming their best, that their parents and schools had consented to that. ‘But what about me?’ Susie thought. ‘I haven’t consented to any of this’. She didn’t want to be a model citizen or a highly skilled computer programmer or any of the things they were trying to make her.

She had to concede that, were she to have been told about this place before she came, it would have sounded ideal for her. She would have loved an environment to nurture her skills without the detraction. Her peers back home were all into drinking and sex and music and parties and staying up late, and she had never been into those things – she loved to study and she worked hard. Had she been asked to sign up to The Academy, she may well even have chosen to. But she was not asked, she was not informed, she had no say in her own life.

‘Susette. Get up’.

Jane was one of the staff members most respected in The Academy. She was firm and disciplined, yet had a warmth to her that indicated she genuinely cared for the young residents. But she was not someone to be crossed, and the tone of her voice showed she meant business.

Susie stood and dumbly followed Jane down the corridor and into a small meeting room.

‘So. What is wrong with you, Susette?’

Susie looked at Jane, looking for the flicker of compassion that could often be seen behind her eyes. But Jane looked tired, and all that was there was a steely coldness, a resolve to get through the day and do her duty.

Susie looked down at the floor and muttered softly ‘I just want to go home’.

‘Now, I know you might sometimes feel like that’, Jane replied, ‘but you know we have a contract with your family and you have to fulfil the full term’.

‘But not with me’.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘The contract is not with me. I didn’t choose to come here. I want to go home’.

‘I’m afraid that’s not possible. Don’t you realise how privileged you are to be here? You’re one of the most gifted young people in the world. Don’t you think there are hundreds, thousands of others who would like to be here?’

‘Then let them’.

‘Susette, stop being silly now’.

Susie tried to reply but the words came out as a choked sob.

‘Susette, I don’t have time for this today. I just can’t have this. Have ten minutes to straighten yourself up and then go back to your studies’.

The sobbing took over Susie’s body and she couldn’t stop its wake. For all these months now she’d held back from crying, held back from showing how she really felt but now she couldn’t help it. It was as if something had been loosened within her and there was no stopping it.

‘Susette?’

The sobs became heavier, denser and her cries turned to screams. She couldn’t do this any longer. It had broken her. She couldn’t bear it, she just couldn’t.

Jane knew that on another day she’d have been able to give more of herself to the crying young woman in front of her, but not today.  Today every sob set her shackles up. Today she had had enough of teenage tantrums, enough of the acting up. She couldn’t even bring herself to reach out to the girl, she couldn’t muster up the strength. She had a class in five minutes, she just didn’t have the time or patience for this.

With a sigh, she shrugged her shoulders and dismissed the girl. ‘To Macy’s office. Go’.