Head Over Heels ✓

18 / the heart wants

october, age 17

As much as Lucas liked the structure of working to a deadline, the security of having a date by which things needed to be done, things that he could order into a timely list, he was on the cusp of tearing his hair out with the latest stage of his university applications. Although that wasn't something that most of his friends were worrying about yet, he was following in his sister's footsteps with his sights set high. While Asher had yet to write his personal statement or narrow down the universities he wanted to apply to, Lucas had had to get the ball rolling early with his application to read English at Cambridge.

Having already sent in his UCAS application and the extended questionnaire, there was less than a week to go before he was due to sit the ELAT, the admissions test for English literature. As comfortable as he was with the skills, confident that he knew what he was talking about, he couldn't help but find the stress a little overwhelming sometimes. He had studied past papers, carrying out analyses of the texts they provided that his mother and Audrie had then read over, adding notes.

There was little more he could do to prepare. Now he was just playing the waiting game, counting down the days until he was due to head into school to sit the exam that would decide his future. It was just one of the nerve-wracking stages he needed to suffer through to head to the university he had set his eyes on from the start: he had spent all summer writing and rewriting his personal statement, only happy with it on the day that he had submitted the application four months later. That essay and this exam would determine whether or not he got an interview. That worry was for another day, though.

There was no denying that Lucas was book smart. He was beyond book smart with a genius IQ of 148, his brain easily spotting connections and patterns that others missed, and he had excelled in his last two sets of exams. After months of tormenting himself with GCSE revision and an agonising summer waiting for his results, he had come out with eleven A* grades and when the AS-level results had come out two months ago, he hadn't been disappointed.

Although it was impossible to get A*s at that level, his grades had been worthy of them. He hadn't dropped a single mark in his English coursework, his exam only three marks off the top. History had proved much the same, his coursework boosting his overall score up into the high nineties and despite all the warnings he had been given about physics, he had come out at the top of the class with the highest score the school had seen for several years. Even French, a subject in which he'd had shaky confidence, had been a pleasant surprise. While his raw marks had been a few shy of his target, converting them to UMS had pushed him very comfortably into the high A grade range.

The addition of his most recent qualification in British Sign Language, achieving his level three certificate just four intense years after he had started learning the language, gave him an edge as a candidate. He was a versatile learner, easily switching from the poetry of English to the formula of maths to the linguistics of speaking three languages. While his French wasn't fluent, he was getting there, and his signing had come on in leaps and bounds thanks to the course that Bree and Kit had subsidised. It was expensive to get the official qualification but it was worth it, passing his knowledge onto his parents and siblings.

On paper, there was nothing holding him back. In reality, the only thing in his way was himself. He was his own worst enemy - especially now that the only enemy he'd ever had was out of the picture - and the times that he slipped up were the times that he piled up so much pressure on himself that he cracked under the weight. The exam would be ok, he was fairly certain of that, but the prospect of an interview terrified him. He hadn't even been offered one yet but the thought already made him feel sick, having to prove himself in person with no idea what they might ask.