With a lurch the train began to move. Uncertainly at first, but then with more decision, it glided from the Richmond station. Julian Drake looked out the window beside him, apathetically watching the people on the concrete platform, who were framed by his reflection. They all seemed full of purpose. Some ran to catch a train, some greeted friends or family, some were lost in tablets or phones, and some headed for the snack bar by the entrance.
They all know where they’re going, he thought. Unlike me. In his reflection, Julian saw a a pale face, brown shaggy hair, brown eyes. Nothing that gave any indication that he knew where he was going.
To be fair, that was not strictly true. He did know where he was going, at least physically. He was riding this Amtrak train, returning home from boarding school for his fall break. It was early October, and he was coming from the Virginia countryside, where his new school, St. Eligius, perched on the banks of a river. He was going to the suburbs of Washington D.C, going home to the house where he had grown up with his parents.
Except that home wasn’t the same anymore. Not since his parents’ divorce a year ago. His dad still lived in his childhood home, and he would be spending his four-day break there, though he lived with his mother at times as well.
He thought that he should be looking forward to getting home, but he was not sure that he was. Julian knew that he was happy to get away from St. Eligius. This was his first term at the school, and he hated it. Up until this August he had been in public school, in large classes with no dress codes, no morning prayer services, and enough students that he could disappear in the crowd. He knew he had been doing a lot of that in the last year. His mom and dad had told him that they were splitting up during the summer before his ninth grade year. Before that he had been a pretty good student in school, but when he began high school he just didn’t seem to care. The work wasn’t particularly difficult; he knew that success was something he could easily grasp. But he couldn’t find the motivation within himself to want that success anymore. It was not his success, it was success for someone else, on someone else’s terms. His parents had always expected him to do well, but after what they had done to the family, Julian didn’t see that they had any real authority over him. They had made such a mess of their own lives, of his life, how could they expect to guide him any longer?
So his ninth grade year saw his grades slip. He just wanted to be left alone, to vanish. He spent his time playing video games and reading fantasy novels, and doing little else. It was simple enough to get by on the tests, but he never did his homework, and it took its toll. By late spring, his grades were low. Not failing, but so far below what he used to earn that his parents stopped fighting long enough to panic over him. Their eventual response blind-sided him. Julian was smart enough to know that they were unhappy about his grades and his apathy, but he expected threats, groundings, curtailings of allowance. Instead, his parents picked him up from school one afternoon in April, and told him that they were going to visit another school.
The visit turned out to be an overnight trip into the countryside of Virginia, to visit a rural Episcopal boarding school where Julian’s great-grandfather had once taught. In spite of his apathy, he had to admit that the place was beautiful. A cluster of red brick colonial buildings on a hilltop overlooking a river, it was breathtaking, especially on that beautiful April day. But that was the only redeeming thing he could see about the place. It was so small; only 250 students, the dorm rooms were old and a little shabby, and worst of all, there was nothing to do out there in the middle of nowhere! He couldn’t imagine what his parents were thinking. The director of admission, a smiling, attractive Asian-American woman who had lived on the campus for twenty-one years, said that the school’s mission was to prepare kids who were having difficulty succeeding in large high schools for college.
“We’re not for kids who can’t or won’t work,” she said. “Our students all go on to college. But our job is to help our students find themselves. We give them a sense of place, a fit, so they can develop who they are and become successful.”
Julian remembered his reply: “The only place I want to be is home.” She said she understood his feelings, but hoped he would join the student body in August. In the end, his parents had not given him a choice. They enrolled him and he had traveled back to the campus in late August with his father. His mom met them there, and once he was settled into his room they had left.
As the train picked up speed and the urban grayness gave way to suburban sprawl, Julian thought about arriving home. His father had told him recently that he was planning to remarry. Julian wondered to himself if that was part of the decision to send him away to school: could raising him just be too much trouble with all the turmoil in their own lives? He certainly knew kids who were at boarding school because a stepparent didn’t want them in the house. Grinning ruefully, Julian thought of Cinderella, but then shook his head. His parents weren’t wicked, nor was his father’s girlfriend. It was more the idea that bothered Julian. The simple thought of living with a stepmother made Julian angry, but he didn’t want to be at his mom’s place all the time either. How long would it be before she married someone new? What he wanted was for things to be the way they used to be: comfortable, comforting. His dad’s recent announcement seemed to confirm that the old days really were gone. He was going home to his old house, but everything would be different. Julian wondered if it would be home anymore.
Still staring out the train window, he looked at the seemingly endless outback of houses, roads, fast food joints, gas stations, shopping malls. It all seemed so barren and the same. He might as well get off the train here; it was no different from the suburbs of D.C. where he was going. There wasn’t, he thought, any place for him.
A small billboard near a mall caught his eye, and he blinked, disbelieving.
“Has the system failed you? Consider St. Eligius Episcopal School. Small classes, caring faculty, beautiful setting: a place for you.”
All of his cynicism rushed into his mind, and he scoffed out loud: “tch.”
Certainly the school was a place like no other. The buildings were pretty, like a small colonial college campus, and the view of the river was sensational. There was a peacefulness about the place. The teachers were much more demanding than the ones in his public school. But really the difference from his old school was the relationships the teachers had with the students. They really tried to get to know their students. Even the headmaster, Dr. Stephens, knew everyone’s name and would stop and talk with Julian when he saw him. That was all great, but Julian didn’t want to be known; he wanted to be left alone. The people at the school all seemed to belong there, and he didn’t. The teachers and students all seemed to know the routine and fit into it. Amazingly, most of the students didn’t seem to mind it. The required breakfast in the morning, the two-times-a-week morning prayer services, which Julian found really boring. The assemblies in which the achievements of students were recognized in front of everybody. The classes, the required athletics after school, the institutional food. The required study halls if your grades slipped. In spite of himself, Julian found himself getting at least some work done, out of boredom. But while a lot of the kids seemed to like it, he didn’t want any part of all of this. The problem was, he didn’t seem to have a choice but to be there.
Part of him wished he could like it, but most of him just wanted to be home. Where that home used to be was approaching faster than he was ready for: the train was already entering the outskirts of the Washington, D.C. area. He tried to shut all these thoughts out of his mind. Pulling out his phone, he tried to drown it all out with music.
When the train pulled into Union Station, Julian pulled his bag down from the overhead rack and walked out into the huge, ornate marble lobby to meet his father. He wasn’t ready for another change in his life, but if he had learned anything in the last year, it was that he couldn’t run from it. Sighing, he shouldered his bag and walked out to face another place he couldn’t call home.
Copyright 2021, Alfred Reeves Wissen