Afday. The last day. Tomorrow afternoon would be the exam. Frankly I didn’t know how I’d find time for all the fretting, ruminating, spiralling, and brooding I still had to do before then, but I’d fit in what I could. Oh, and I needed my other books too. I set the key on the apothecary counter since Robin was dealing with a family all sneezing in different pitches, and headed up.

  No Kaspar. Dormitory empty. Perfect. I shut the door behind me and my eyes fell on the mess of a bed I’d left so many days ago. The curtains weren’t even tied back. The realisation I’d likely not be returning here again hit me so hard I keeled over, and from my knees I started straightening out what I could.

  Sheets. Pillow. Curtain. Clothes down the trapdoor to the laundry facilities. It didn’t feel like enough. I did it again.

  Sheets. Pillow. Curtain. Clothes down the trapdoor to the laundry facilities. I couldn’t leave it before it felt right. It still didn’t. This place expected better than what I could do. I gritted my teeth and made myself do it again.

  Sheets. Pillow. Curtain. Clothes. I’d worn the inside of my cheek ragged over the last couple of weeks and I was pretty sure my lower lip looked a fright. Even after shaving, my face wouldn’t stop being too rough and scratchy. If nothing else, I needed to make this right. Leave it in a state I felt okay with. But it still wasn’t good enough. Nothing I did would ever be good enough for the life I’d pretended to live here.

  Sheets.

  Pillow.

  Curtain.

  Clothes.

  Sheets.

  Pillow.

  Curtain.

  Clothes.

  Sheets.

  Pillow.

  Curtain.

  Clothes.

  Sheets, pillow, curtain, clothes, sheets, pillow, curtain, clothes, sheets, pillow, curtain, clothes, sheets, pillow, curtain, clothes –

  “Hey, Leafy!” cheered the happiest fucking voice I least wanted to hear in the world right now. “How’s it been? Goodness, you’ve been gone so long, I thought about gathering together and putting out a search party to find our lost –”

  “Shut up,” I snapped, and I swear I heard the wince. “I’ve been keeping out of the way. Everyone was right. I don’t belong here. Tomorrow’s gonna prove it. I just wanna make sure none of you have to go to the effort of tidying my stuff up when I’m gone.”

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  “What? You don’t have to go.” She sounded hurt. I didn’t care. “There’s a place for you here.”

  Didn’t look at her. Couldn’t look at her. “Don’t act all innocent. You said it yourself, right at the start. I’m the only first-year Forester. I should have listened. Sure, if I’d been smarter and able to keep up with the studies and actually pay attention to the lessons and do the practice like I should have and not be overwhelmed the whole time. Or if I’d been stronger and braver like a good Forester should, stuck to the training, learned the axe and the blade, then I could have been a war hero. Instead I’m a waste of everyone’s time and space and everyone I meet is either disappointed in me, or their life gets worse because of me. Often both. I’ve failed enough times and I’m not walking myself blinkered into another failure. And I can’t even make a bed respectably.” I punched the mattress, and the resounding thwonk and the shape of my fist in the sheets barely helped.

  “...I’ve felt sorta like that from time to time. But Grove’s grandma says you can’t choose how smart or capable you are, but you can always choose to be kind, so maybe start with that?”

  I was an arm’s length from her in an instant. “If I have to hear what Grove’s grandma says one more fucking time I’m gonna kick their blasted cube into shards and see what she has to say about that.” I returned to my bed and gave up on fixing it and stuffed everything into the hessian kit bag, starting with what Kaspar had bought me. If nothing else, I was leaving financially up on where I started. Emotionally and physically be damned. “I won’t be lectured on how to act by people who never experienced a shred of what I did growing up. To keep giving your soul out and keep having it ripped into pieces – how many times can you recover from that before you accept it’s not getting better?” I stood again, stared her down. “It fucks you up in ways you can’t understand. You can strain a happy face over it but deep down, it doesn’t get better. My best friend nearly died from it and still he couldn’t get himself unstuck from it. The second time it bit, it finished the job. Well, I’m growing up and accepting it’s not getting better, and I’m getting out while I’ve still got breath in my lungs. Not all of us can be so fortunate.”

  “Aw, Leafy!” She sounded pained. “I’m – I’m so sorry to hear that, really I am. What about –”

  I shut the door on her and headed out.

  *

  I stood alone. The Institute behind me. The gatehouse to the right. The road twisting high up into the frozen forest to the left. Where to go…?

  The marble floor of the gatehouse squeaked even more than I remembered, but hey, Vick the clerk said I could drop in anytime, right? She emerged inquisitively from a rear door mid-sandwich as I strode into the middle of the room, both cloak and robe around me since they wouldn’t fit in the kit bag hoisted on my shoulder. “You were right,” I proclaimed loud from the centre. “What was it you told me? Half of us give up within a year, and half of the rest don’t make the grades to stay on?” She still had that look of a fox, but now one whose prey was launching into a polemic about her workplace – and sure I’d probably pronounce that wrong too, but Kaspar wasn’t here to correct me. Good. “You were right!” I cheered, almost chuckling at the ridiculousness of it all. At the astonishing gall I’d ever had to think I could make it here, where I so clearly didn’t belong, and where everyone had told me as such. I made a rude gesture at the bullish statue of Clement Dryadden as I passed it on my way out. He didn’t react. “You were all right!” I said as I left the place for the last time.

  I stood alone. In the couple minutes I’d been inside, a fine breath of snow had started on the breeze. The Institute to the left. Forest road ahead. Baronbridge below. And since I was too scared of what I’d do if I went back to the city or the castle right now, well, the forest road was the path for me.