Eleven years later.

As the woman in front of me spoke, I found myself fascinated with the color of her sweater. It was made up of multiple colours. There were soft pinks interwoven with bright oranges, similar to the color of freshly ripened peaches, with hints of minty green strewn throughout. Any single one of the shades alone might have made for a nice sweater.

However, all three of them combined created a rather horrible shade of cat vomit.

"So Ms. O'Reilly..." She looked down at her file. "Heather, is it? What are you thinking you want to take?"

My gaze focused on the academic advisor's strained smile. She was well over forty, her teeth stained from prolonged nicotine use. Her hair, a light heavily bleached blond, was fried to the point is settled into frizzy, crimped waves around her head.

My lips tugged up into what I hoped was an apologetic smile. "Excuse me, could you repeat the question?"

Oh, shit. Her smile thinned out slowly into a frown. I straightened in my chair, trying to focus on the conversation.

"What major are you thinking of applying for?" she asked again, her tone losing some of its chipper quality.

"Oh, I'm not sure. Probably General Studies for now."

Her eyebrows lifted, looking back down at my high school transcript. "It says here you excelled in mathematics and most sciences. Why not a major in one of those fields?"

I yawned, slapping my hand over my mouth at the last minute. Getting to the school for ten in the morning had been a terrible idea. Though, it might have been a bit easier if I hadn't worked until one in the morning the night before. The academic adviser's expression—or rather, Barb's, as her name tag indicated—was turning more and more strained the longer this meeting took.

"I don't know. I want to keep my options open."

Well, more like I didn't care and was still planning on not actually attending this 'University-College' anyway. But, I felt like if I said something to that effect—things might get a bit tense. People were like that. Always getting worked up by unnecessary things. I couldn't relate. I tended to be unimpressed most of the time by everything.

Well, maybe a few things did catch my interest. Namely, people I should not be concerned with. Just not most things.

Barb's pursed her Revlon-pink lips as she regarded me. She looked more like a Barbie, I decided.

"You know, the General Studies program is actually quite unique. We can tailor it specifically to you. What career path do you find yourself interested in?"

I stared at her, my expression turning blank. I was bloody nineteen, why did everyone always expect me to know the answer to such a big question at nineteen?

"I was hoping to try out a few different things and see what piqued my interest from there. Maybe sometime later we can talk about it again?" I replied after sorting through several answers that might break what remained of Barb's patience. I wasn't lying. We could discuss it, I just wasn't planning on it. I plastered a polite smile on my face in an effort to appear genuine.

I had a feeling if I told her the only thing that excited me in the near future was that I was getting drunk tonight after work, she would likely combust. I was only at this meeting because my mother would have killed me if she found out I wasn't. She had even placed my dad as an unenthusiastic spy, since she was stuck working at the hospital. He was driving me home after his lecture. My father just so happened to work at this particular University-College, whatever that even meant.

Yeah, yeah. First world problems—here I was forced to get a post-secondary education. The thing was, I just had a hard time thinking so far ahead into the future. I was more of a live-in-the-moment kind of person. My mother, however, thought the sky was going to fall if I even uttered I wanted to wait another year.

She had already given me two, which was a very large compromise in her eyes.

Still, the thought of toiling away in university for the customary five years to get a degree basically everyone already had... seemed pointless. After I would go and get a job I would have for the rest of my life, meet some respectable guy, get married. have kids...

I wrinkled my nose, inwardly cringing. I still wasn't sure I wanted any of that.

And if I somehow strayed even slightly from that predetermined path towards success and happiness, I was a failure.

I didn't know what I wanted, but I just knew I wanted... more. There had to be more to life than this.

Maybe that's why I had loved my Gran so much, because she let me believe there could be more to life. It was something I think always bothered mom. She had never liked Gran's faerie tales.

Gran had always believed there was magic in the world, and I couldn't help but prefer her warped world filled with faerie folk and darkness. Back then I had wanted nothing more than for it to be a real portal to the world of Faerie. That had all been smashed when I tried, and got a wolf instead. Just remembering it made a chill raise along my skin.

Gran had been right to avoid anything to do with the fae. But it didn't mean I sometimes still wished I could escape this world and its monotonous reality.

I returned my wandering thoughts back to the interview to see Barbie frowning at me. She was probably used to keen, overenthusiastic prospective students. They likely came in, fresh and shiny, jumping right out of their high school convocation and into her little office—or, well, cubical. Then there was me, a smear of last nights mascara still lingering under my eyes and a strange tendency to fixate on her awful sweater.

"Well, I suppose your first semester should be easy to plan, you'll need to get some credits out of the way first—" she pointed with a hot pink fingernail to a mark on my transcript, "—where a C in English is usually satisfactory in high school, I do recommend taking a qualifying course in order to keep your options open."

I stifled a groan.

"I'll need good English grades to get into 'Intro to Mathematics'?" I asked, unable to help skepticism leaking unbidden into my voice.

"Well no, dear. But most of the other classes, especially those in the Arts—"

"No Art, please. Just sign me up for the easy stuff. Math, Physics, Chem—you know those."

Barbie's brows furrowed.

After a moment she seemed to wrap her head around my request and showed me some courses she recommended. I would have to do the actual course picking online when registration started. After a few more attempts on her end of trying to push English down my throat, I conceded. Hopefully I would find a way to get out of it when the time came.

Finally, I left Barbie's cubicle, several papers and forms in my hands with course information and a timetable we had drawn up. I tapped on my phone to check the time just as my father's blond head popped into view. His twinkling blue eyes were hidden behind wire-rimmed glasses which highlighted the flecks of grey in his hair and short-styled beard. A little grey did nothing to diminish his otherwise youthful appearance. He was holding a thick file, his expression tired—likely from the exams he had been up all night marking. He grinned as soon as he saw me.

"What's the story?" he asked, breaking off from the student who he had been talking to. My dad—or rather Dr. Callan O'Reilly, had never taken well to the arts either. Hence why he had met my mother back when she was attending University in London—where he had also been studying for his Ph.D.

Yeah—I have some good genes.

I glared at him in mock affront. "Stop being mom's spy. It was fine, I don't know why this was necessary. I can't even register for another month."

My father frowned. "I not a spy," he replied, his never fading accent still growing up in Ireland. "Plus, don't be giving me all that. It's good to get a head start on these things. Those first-year classes get eaten up quick, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," I replied with a shrug as we stepped out into the overcast parking lot, walking over to my dad's stylish, yet somewhat outdated, car. Anything big, metal, and run by an engine just wasn't his cup of tea. He would rather surround himself with books inside the house, trying to crunch complicated equations he had made up based on a TV show.

He was a bit of an oddball, but I loved him.

When we got home I stopped outside the house. My dad had been gardening again, and I cringed. Blooms sprouted from the small patch of dirt next to the steps leading up to our house--I had no idea how long they had been there. They created a small burst of color, pinks and soft lavenders lightening up our otherwise dreary yard. He had never understood why Gran had hated flowers other than blue butterworts, and even those she only grew to ward off "unsavory folk". I gazed at them a moment, unable to help but admire them, then pulled my gaze away.

Feeling a bit guilty, I bent down and plucked up the sprouting buds once Dad had gone inside. Sure, it was probably silly, but my Gran's superstitions had remained with me after all this time. I knew better than to try to entice faeries to our home, be them real or not. I threw the flowers into the nearby trees, and brushed off my hands, looking around before I went inside.

I made a beeline for my room as soon as I stepped in the door, hoping my mom was still sleeping after her night shift at the hospital.

"Heather?"

Shit.

"Mom," I replied, making my voice light. I turned and smiled up at her. She was already dressed in her scrubs. Or—most likely—she had never even had the chance to take them off.

My mother was an exceptional woman—she worked as an emergency physician at the local ER. My mom saved lives. She then came home, cooked, cleaned, cared for her aging parents who lived down the street with her sister. My mom was always going, she never stopped, always taking care of someone or something. Some would say she was the closest thing to a superhero that existed in today's day and age.

And I was also absolutely nothing like her.

"Are you heading back to the hospital?" I asked. She started walking down the stairs, ignoring my question.

I watched her move towards me, then she crossed her arms and pinned me with narrowed dark-eyes, appearing taller than me even though we were about the same height. Angela O'reilly might not be a very large woman, but man, she could be intimidating. Her dark hair, which matched my own, was pulled back into a bun, a few loose wavy strands escaping to brush against her pale skin. Mom didn't mess around.

Sometimes I wondered how her and my easy-going father had ever ended up together. Where Dad was ready to let most things slide, Mom was on my case about everything.

"Well," she prodded impatiently, the remainder of her old London accent sneaking into her voice. "How did it go? Did you pick all of your classes?"

"Fine," I said with a shrug, turning back to the staircase leading down to my room. "Nothing exciting. Just a few intro classes and a qualifying English course."

Well, it wasn't exciting for me, anyway.

"Nothing exciting," she repeated, her tone rising in pitch, and I knew I had hit a nerve. "How is going to university 'nothing exciting.'"

I let out a slow exhale to try and not let her get to me. We had been going at it for weeks now over this same argument. I was tired of it.

"You know how I feel. I went, I chose some classes. I can't register for a few more weeks. Otherwise, I'm ready to go."

My mom's frown didn't disappear, but I turned to go anyway.

"That's it? No 'thank you?' How did I raise such an ungrateful child? All you do is party at that awful place you work at. Staying out until early in the morning. Going to school is important, Heather."

She just wasn't going to give up. "I know, mom," I said, trying to put all of my patience into my voice. "I'm trying. I am grateful, I just don't see the point if I don't even know what I want to do yet. It's a waste of money and time. Most people with bachelor degrees get [paid the same as I do working in the bar anyway."

Her lips were still tightly pursed. "Heather, you can't continue on like this. You need to think about your future. What are you going to do? Work at that bar for the rest of your life?"

I felt my patience slipping. Why couldn't she just let it go?

"Mom. Seriously? I'm still young, I want to live my life instead of wasting away in some classroom studying stuff I don't even care about. Why do you have to keep forcing this on me?"

The change in my mother's expression was instantaneous, her dark eyes sharpening. "I am not forcing anything. You think educating your mind is wasting away? Then what are you doing all night when you don't return until the next day? You think I don't know? Stop being so reckless. That is not living, it is dying a slow death and one of these days you're going to end up on my gurney, and I won't be able to help you."

Her words stung, and I recoiled as if she had physically slapped them across my face. It was as if she had sensed the same lingering fears I found lurking deep inside of me where I pressed them down and tried to ignore them. But my pride would never allow me to say she was right. If anything, it only fueled my anger. I felt my skin heating, my eyes prickling with tears.

"You'll never understand, Mother. Neither of you do. Only Gran did, and she's dead now." My voice wavered, but I forced it to be steady. "Maybe if I die then at least I can be with her instead of stuck here with you."

Without waiting for her reply I started down the stairs to my room in the basement. Silence rung on the air, even as tears gathered in my eyes, hot and angry. Part of me wanted her to come storming down the stairs, and match my words with hurtful ones of her own. But they never came. Instead gnawing guilt was left behind in the wake of what I had just said.

I paused before continuing down the stairs, lingering in the shadows near the bottom. I could hear my parents still talking. I glanced back to see them, lingering just where I could see them but they couldn't see me. My Dad had moved from the doorway, where he had hovered silently during our fight. He stepped closer to Mom.

"I got called into work. I won't be home until tomorrow morning," Mom said, her voice measured and calm as she addressed Dad. Most people would think nothing had happened, but I knew better.

"Already? Didn't you just get home this morning?" he asked, moving closer to stop her where she was gathering her purse and keys. He grasped her wrist, stopping her. For a moment she just stood there.

"She takes after you. The partying, and wild nights. I don't know what to do. It's getting out of control," she said to him, but her voice was resigned instead of angry.

Dad's eyes turned soft as he drew her to him. I watched as her stiff posture slowly collapsed in his arms, like she just let out a deep sigh. The memory of my words tasted sour in my mouth, and I already wished I could take them back.

It was too late now. Maybe tomorrow I could smooth things over.

"But then I met you, and all of that changed."

Mom let out a short laugh. "Don't try and sweet talk me. You need to help me, I'm worried about her, Callan. Every night it's overdose after overdose." Her voice broke, the only hint that she was affected at all. "One of these days she's going to take it too far and never come back."

Dad sighed and leaned down to place a kiss on her brow.

"I don't like these long shifts, a mhuirnín. You need some rest. You're around too much sickness and death, you need to take care of yourself too."

Mom let out a heavy sigh. "Perhaps."

She placed her hand over his, and her hard expression softened, a rare glimpse of her vulnerability. She rose up on her toes to press a kiss to his cheek, craning up against his tall frame. I darted my eyes away and continued down the stairs, feeling like I had intruded on an intimate moment. With a deep breath, I pushed back the tears and wiped my eyes. I needed to get ready for work.

I swallowed my emotions down, then glanced at the time.

Shit.

I was going to be late.