Touch of Hellfire (Original Version)

☕️21☕️

"Now girls, this is the Golden Age of television," Mom smirked. "Look at all the costumes..and the sets," I was fawning over it.

"Who knew that they'd be musically talented," Rory laughed. She got up to check the mail box.

"HEZZY!" Rory yelled from outside. "Is she getting murdered?" I frowned and I went outside to see her with two big envelopes. "What are those?" I asked her. "My application for Harvard and your application for Columbia," she told me. I held it in my hand. "It's so thick, why is it so thick?"

"And heavy," Rory added. "I just hope that we won't get asked what we're doing when it arrived," I pouted. "You could have said you were reading IT," Rory sighed.

"We could always lie," I shrugged.

We sat down as we opened the applications. "Holy crap, that's a lot of instructions," I mumbled.

"A majority of yours is instructions," Rory gasped. "What's your first question? Apart from your personal details."

I scanned the pages, letting my eyes skim over everything. "There's literally a whole page asking me if any of my relatives have attended Columbia, which is a hard no," I grumbled.

"Have you visited Columbia?" Mom read over my shoulder. "Yes," I ticked the box.

"How has your interest developed? Tick all which apply," I started laughing. "Well there's my essay sorted."

"Okay legal names," Mom said. "No getting it wrong."

I shot her the death stare. "Mine asks for a nickname, if any," Rory told her. "Mine doesn't," I muttered. "So Miss Heather Victoria Gilmore."

I flicked through the application page and I let out a hoot of laughter. "Look at this Ror."

She read over my shoulder and laughed.

I looked through the essay topics. I liked the one where I had to write about a person who's had a significant influence on you.

I didn't want to write about an author or publisher. I wanted to write about my mom.

***

Me and Tessa sat with Rory and Dean in Luke's before school. "You have to hand that in to Charleston?" Rory asked me.

"Yup, everything else I'm confident I have in the bag," I smirked. "I'm praying for that scholarship," Tessa said.

"Have you guys picked out essay topics?" Dean asked us. "I'm doing Hillary Clinton," Rory piped up. "I'm writing about Mom," I murmured, playing with my pancakes.

"Oi, bus," Rory slapped my back and we ran outside. "See you later," Tessa called after me.

"You're really writing about Mom?" Rory asked me. "Yeah, I wanted to do something different, not bore them with freaking Faulkner," I said.

"Well we have that seminar today so they'll tell us what we need to know."

I sat down next to Andrea who was fidgeting. "What's up?" I asked her. "I got an application today, but it wasn't Dartmouth," she sighed. "What was it?" I asked her.

She gave me a big smile. "Columbia."

"Really? You're applying? I thought Dartmouth was the dream?" I cocked my eyebrow.

"Yep, to hell with Dartmouth, I have relatives who went Columbia anyway," she smiled.

We both listened to the panelists. I was taking down notes of what they were saying. Perfunctory answers, big no-no apparently.