Martha's decision (inspired by the book "Prep" by Curtis Sittenfeld)

It was the little things that made Martha want to leave home. It was the way the whole house could hear the fifth step creaking on her way upstairs, it was the worry lines forming between her parents’ eyebrows like kneaded dough, it was the way her friend Emily seemed to roll her eyes at everything Martha said. It was the way Martha’s heart twisted whenever she walked into school, like she knew it was a place she wasn’t supposed to be. 

Also this: a snippet of conversation at lunch. Martha’s friend Daisy—the beauty of the group, with tumbling golden-brown curls and tanned skin despite the East-Coast climate—was talking about visiting weekend at her brother’s boarding school in Massachusetts. Ault, she said the school was called, and the name alone sent a delightful shiver up Martha’s spine. She imagined gleaming hallways lined with torches, a chandeliered dining hall full of chatter, sun slanting through a room she shared with someone who’d come to feel like a sister. She thought about the boys, too, a little—perhaps lacrosse-playing, their pullovers tucked up to their elbows—but didn’t linger on it long, since she’d never cared as much for romance as her friends. She, more, was looking for friendship, newness, learning. 

At home, Martha researched this strange, fascinating school on her slow computer. She waited an eternity for the sight to load—red Ault crest, spinning again and again on her screen— pored over photograph over photograph, stared at the beautiful, gleaming students in front of the beautiful, gleaming school, and she didn’t feel intimidated. She only felt a longing to be there, to let the sun dapple her hair the way it did for the girls in a photo she especially lingered on, reading together under a sycamore tree. 

Martha was going into ninth grade, and she knew her parents were unsure about what exactly to do with her—most of their time they were too focused on her younger siblings, on their long work days, to pay her much time or attention. They’d miss her, but would also be secretly glad too see her gone. The tuition price was high, and Martha’s family wasn’t rich, but with financial aid, they could definitely afford it. Martha closed her eyes against the elation: here was a secret, shimmering way for her to get out of her parents’ hair, and to be free of her hometown and all the tired, sad little things it dragged along with it. 

As she’d expected, it didn’t take much convincing. Martha’s parents said an enthusiastic “maybe,” mulled it over with each other and with Daisy’s parents (Daisy herself had applied to Ault, it turned out, but didn’t have good enough grades), and within two weeks had agreed. Martha spent the last months of school focusing on her grades, cringing at every wrong answer on tests or assignments, joining more and more sports teams. She’d always been both studious and athletic, but never this much. She began to realize  that she was already becoming an Ault girl—transforming before her own eyes, and it both scared and excited her down to the core.

When Martha’s letter arrived—an inconspicuous cream-colored envelope, buried under the bills—she tore it carefully, taking her time, letting slow, staticky seconds pass before reading: We are delighted to inform you…

Martha screamed, Martha who never had big emotions, or at least showed them. She called her friends, she called her mother, she cried. She began to feel scared, more scared than she ever had been for the idea of boarding school. Because that’s what it had been, until now: and idea. Now it was real, solid and concrete, in the form of precise words on a folded piece printer paper marked by the Ault crest.