No Alternative: Day 4

Word Count: 24,003

Summary of Events:

Drake cried himself to sleep over the letter, upset that his parents would enrol him in anything without seeking his opinion on the school he might even want to attend, much less what program he wanted to participate in. The following day he met with his friends, who wanted to know why in the world he'd thanked his parents for the letter and resolved to help him get out of it, some way or another . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

“It’s not like we can do anything to change where I’m going to school now,” Drake said. “It’s Sunday, nobody’s in any offices until Monday morning.”

“Um, probably not actually,” Calder said. “It is the Long Weekend after all.”

“So we can’t do anything until Tuesday,” Drake said. “So we can shoot the breeze if we really want to.”

“Websites are never closed,” Hayden said. “We could check out this school’s website and look into other aviation programs too if they don’t have one, and determine a plan of attack, who’s going to do what.”

“I don’t think you guys can do anything,” Drake replied. “I’m the one who was enrolled, I’m the one who has to get myself out.”

“Well we may not be able to call them, but surely we can help you with other stuff,” Hayden said. “Like researching other schools and summarising what they offer so you can choose which one you want to go to, stuff like that.”

“I guess,” Drake said.

“Don’t tell me you want to give in to them,” Hayden said.

“No,” Drake replied. “I’m getting to the end of my rope with them, especially watching this last year how they’ve treated Oriann, that just gets a rise out of me more than anything.”

“How do you mean?” Calder asked. “What are they doing with Oriann?”

“They’re not putting the same level of pressure on her they’ve put on me so far,” Drake replied. “She’s free to do whatever she wants with her life, even if they’re not paying her, they’re not constantly telling her that she has to think about the restaurant first and prepare for a future of working at the restaurant. She wants to go into fashion design and they’ve not once seemed perturbed at that, they let her talk about it and even tell other people about it while they go telling everyone I’m taking over the restaurant before I can even say something like ‘I don’t know’ just to be ambivalent.”