Chapter Text
The train station was loud, and Armin knew that she might not like it. They’d never even been on a train before, but he tried to explain it away as if it were a plane, but louder.
“We talked about it, sweetheart, it’s supposed to be this loud!” Armin gave a good shake to his daughter’s hand, wondering who would be hurt more when they finally had to let go.
It might’ve been Rachel, as she tried to always put on the brave face, her excitement for this trip had suddenly dissipated when they arrived at the station. Though for Armin, he’d never sent his daughter away for such a long time before, and she
was
only 10. It wasn’t like summer camp!
Silence; A dead ringer for wanting something, but being too afraid to ask for it.
Chuckling, Armin crouched down to meet Rachel at eye level, “You can change your mind if you want to,
that’s okay
, but you have to tell me what you really want to do Rach’, they’re waiting on you!” He tried to be encouraging, like he was with field trips, and summer camp, and sleep overs, and every other thing Rachel had been so on the fence about in the 11th hour. Armin was certainly no stranger to this routine.
“...It’ll be just like summer camp?” Rachel sighed, reluctantly giving her father eye contact.
“
Just
like summer camp! But you still have to do your homework, and--”
“And you’ll come get me if I don’t like it?” Rachel knew better than to interrupt, but Armin would let it slide this time.
“One-hundred-percent!” Armin promised, giving one more reassuring smile before standing back up.
Boarding school was a new thing for them, and while Armin was hesitant to the idea? Rachel practically begged him to let her go! Even if it hadn’t been free through a scholarship, Armin wouldn’t force her to go if she changed her mind. But the train had places to be, and the chaperones were
not
going to wait forever.
"You have your phone, your books, abd they're going to give you your OWN computer while you're there!" He hoped listing off all the things Rachel had previously used against him in order to wear him down in this decision, would somehow make up her mind.
Rachel kept silent, looking from one end of the train to the other. This might've gone better if Armin just drove her there, but that was a LONG drive, and the train ticket was free with the scholarship.
"First time going to CrownWall?"
Armin turned to look at the man a few feet to the side of him, blinking. Not a chaperone, so, a parent maybe?
"Maybe!" Armin laughed, shaking Rachel's hand a little. These uncertain moments with her often ended in tears when either Armin, or the situation, decided things for her.
The stranger gave a nod, "Y'know, school is REALLY awful," Armin suddenly hated him. "But THIS ONE? It has to be the worst!" A lot! Armin hated him A LOT!
"UHM…."
"Because instead of lots of reading, and writing, and tests? They have gymnastics, a pool, and they have a whole stable of horses kids get to ride! If your grades are really good anyway." The man continued, a smug grin, as he likely noticed Armin's demeanor change earlier.
Rachel wasn't fond of strangers, but she was most certainly listening. She looked up Armin, giving him a quizzical look.
"Dad… is there really horses?" She whispered, skeptical.
Armin looked down and sighed, "Well, yes, but I'd have to sign a permission slip for you to do stuff like that and--"
"Yeah and you'll sign it right!?"
Thinking back on it, Armin didn't remember Rachel ever wanting to ride horses. She'd asked for a unicorn for Kwanza every year, but that was more of a joke between them now that she was older.
Blinking, Armin glanced between the train and his daughter. He wasn’t going to
lie
to her, but he really hoped that horses were not her make or break factor on going to this school.
“I,
well
, sure. But, you’d have to be really good and keep your grades up, I don’t wanna make you any promises.” He was far more concerned with behavior. Grades likely wouldn’t be an issue- Rachel exceeded the qualifications for the scholarship to begin with.
But she was off, backpack shaking back and forth, filled with unessential items as she reached the steps up onto the train. Armin was shocked for a split second, but quickly softened as he gave a polite wave to Rachel with the hand that previously held her hand.
He kept waving until her face had long disappeared, keeping watch at the various windows just in case she could still see him. Armin knew the chaperones would direct her properly, but he still wanted his daughter to know he was as excited for her new school as she was.
After a while, Armin did have to stop waving. Soon after that, the chaperones by the train entrances disappeared, and the train would be moving not long after.
“Sorry, if I overstepped there.”
Armin immediately turned around again, surprised, but not all that shocked. In this day and age, interfering with parenting was very often rude, or appeared to be so.
“Oh, well… you weren’t wrong!” Armin laughed, running his hand through his hair. “I’m Armin, s’nice to meet you! You’re a parent, I’m guessing?” He held his hand out, a modest smile across his face.
The other man, hazel eyes making contact, met the shake without any hesitation. “Jean! And, yeah, I’ve got two boys at CrownWall. They’ve been going since they were in middle school. The train’s nice, I like that the school chooses this way for the long distance stuff.”
Thankfully, in Armin’s eyes, the handshake wasn’t too firm. It was a little clammy, though that was probably not Jean’s fault.
“I never would’ve thought my daughter would’ve cared about horse back riding! She was a girl scout for a bit, never wanted to do it at camp. Or so I hear.
But
, I have to thank you I guess. I wasn’t sure if she was going to make up her mind!” Armin explained sheepishly, stealing a glance back at the train, just in case.
A loud screeching was heard, and the train began moving. Armin took one last glance back at the train as it started moving, picking up speed and moving further and further away from the platform,.
“So… do you wanna maybe, get coffee?” Jean asked, one hand in his pocket, and the other scratching his head.
Armin wasn’t much for small talk, or coffee, but he had to admit; Jean did risk being publicly scolded just to help another parent out. Not that Armin could ignore how some parents wouldn’t accept any kind of help or suggestions from strangers. But, he was a single parent, and sometimes a little unasked for help was nice.
Checking his phone, as if there’d already be a message there waiting for him, Armin raised his eyebrows. “Uhhm…
well
….” Part of him expected Rachel to be texting him already, asking to come home. She always did well at camp, but this
was
her first time on a train.
“I don’t know if I really helped there,
but
, I’m willing to pay! You like local, or are you a Starbucks kind of guy?” Jean joked, stealing a glance at his own cellphone.
Armin looked up, surprised. “I--!! I, ah, would love to! Actually… yeah. Yeah that… sounds good. I’m, alright with Starbucks.” He was flustered, not used to strangers offering him free food. Especially not another parent. Then again, this was the first time he was dealing with another parent from anything but a public school. This was new territory for hm,
and
, his family, so maybe this was commonplace with boarding school parents?
Either way, free caffeine was free caffeine!
“I know it’s… kind of lame, but I’m a tea kind of guy.” Jean chuckled, head bobbing back and forth exaggeratedly.
Armin tried not to be a very judgemental person, especially when he was being offered a free drink. Shaking his head curtly in respect, Armin gave a soft smile. “I like tea, too. Hope you don’t mind that I like black coffee!” He didn’t mind having a lid though, unlike
some
people.
It was a short wait for their drinks before they sat down at a rather small table,
somewhat intimate even
, sitting across from each other.
“So, you’ve been sending your kids to CrownWall for a while, or is it kinda new for you, too?” Armin asked, tapping the last bit of sugar into his coffee. Cream wasn’t his style, but he did have a sweet tooth.
Jean smiled, “Since middle school, for the both of ‘em! Darren and, Christopher.” He showed Armin his phone, a picture of him and two boys as its lock screen.
Two teenagers each holding some bike handles, standing on either side of Jean. It looked like they were at the top of a hill or some kind. A biking trip with the family, maybe? Just from a glance, it was clear how much the two boys looked like their father.
Armin also noticed there wasn’t another adult in the frame, and thought that maybe they were the one who took the picture. Or… Jean could be a single dad. He decided not to mention it.
“My picture’s not as Instagram ready as yours, but here, Rachel is!” Armin laughed, pulling out his phone to show Jean. It was just a picture of Rachel desperately trying to hold up their old cat, a fat, scruffy maine coon that never seemed bothered by anything. He was probably half of Rachel’s weight soaking wet!
Jean laughed at the picture, setting his phone down before taking a large sip of his tea. “Cats are great. Wish I wasn’t allergic!”
“Yeah, well, they’re easier to take care of than dogs.” It had been a while since Armin sat down with another parent and just, talked. Even longer since he’d made a new acquaintance outside of work! It was nice.
Armin quickly checked his texts before putting his own phone away, a nagging worry that Rachel might have forgotten something or changed her mind on the train. But he always worried, and he almost always had no reason to.
“They like it there? At CrownWall, I mean. I researched it for, god I don’t know,
weeks
before I decided to let her go.” It was something Armin never would have been able to afford, and thus consider, but when Rachel won the scholarship? He had to give it a chance.
The face Jean made was unsure at first, sucking in his bottom lip. “Mmmmh… sometimes yes, sometimes no.”
He laughed not long afterwards, bringing a hand up to his forehead in embarrassment. “
That
, wasn’t really reassuring at all, was it?”
Armin grimaced, but couldn’t help but find it funny. “No, no that sounds terrible.”
“I mean,” Jean began to correct himself, almost sheepishly, “They’re teenagers, y’know? Or, well, I guess you
don’t
know.… But! Sometimes they’re having a great time, and then sometimes it’s ‘The Worst School Ever’, but Christopher-- My older son, he’s gonna be 17 this year! Yeah, Christopher wanted to go back to regular school for ninth grade, but by Thanksgiving break he changed his mind again.”
“But I think it’s more a balancing act, kind of. They have all this, this
freedom
without me around, but they also can’t actually
go anywhere
while they’re up there. So I have ‘em come home on the weekends as much as possible.”
Armin understood, for the most part. Rachel was rather indecisive herself, and she wasn’t even a teenager yet! Part of him worried that there would be
too many
options for her at the new school, and it might overwhelm her.
“I don’t know if Rachel will be coming home much,” Armin remembered in the many pages of guidelines and regulations for the school scholarship, that unnecessary trips out of the school grounds would only be paid for up to a certain point. Jean must have had a nice job to be able to afford sending both his kids there to begin with, and even more so to be able to bring them back home whenever they wanted.
“But she’s been to summer camp a lot, and she usually does fine being away for so long. I just hope she doesn’t have any trouble making friends.” They’d never even
met
somebody who went to a boarding school before! It was different than a typical private school, which always meant the kind of people who went there were different.
Armin was planning on buying Rachel a smart phone before the school year started, just in case anyone were to make fun of her. But he couldn’t afford it in time, and sent her with her emergency blackberry instead. Were blackberries cool? Of course! Of course, but the phone was
really
old, and that’s what he was concerned about most.
“You sound worried!” Jean’s chuckle broke Armin out of his thoughts, and he quickly went to take a sip of coffee nonchalantly to cover for himself.
“No!” He swallowed. “I mean,
yes
, but…. I don’t know. I know if anything happens she’ll tell me, but, it’s not like I can just drive up there and get her. I don’t know if it’s what she really wants?”
“Oh?”
Armin stared at Jean, waiting for him to elaborate. Did he find something odd about that? Maybe he should have skulked around the parents’ forums a bit more over the past month.
“Like, CrownWall? Or just, boarding school in general? It is
really
hard to get in there, even if you are drowning in cash! Darren only got in because Christopher was already enrolled!” Jean laughed shortly after the last part, a friendly reassurance.
He must’ve noticed how frazzled Armin was, but at least this meant he understood it, too.
“Oh, uhm….” Armin blinked, shaking his head. This was a weird thing for him to admit, even though he knew it shouldn’t’ve been an issue. “Rachel just, applied for this scholarship near the end of fifth grade. And those things are always just a big lottery, so I tried not to get her hopes up! I was just gonna send her to public school like everybody else, but! Here we are.”
Jean’s eyebrows raised, an impressed expression overtaking his face. “Oh, damn! That is lucky--
well
, I’m sure she earned that anyway. It pays to be smart!”
Armin gave a little nod, smirking to contain his laughter. He
wished
it paid to be smart! Still, he appreciated the affirmation in Rachel’s hard work. Plenty of smart girls probably could have gotten in, but not everyone gets those chances. Not that Armin could afford to feel guilty over it.
“Why’d uhm, why’d you send your boys to boarding school? Anything about CrownWell that’s better than what they have around here?” Armin was completely ignorant in his question, though. He had
no idea
what kind of activities the private schools in their area were like.
Tapping fingers on the table, looking up again with that same unsureness as before, Jean took a long pause to think. Armin wasn’t sure if he was supposed to admire his dedication to being thoughtful, or if he was supposed to feel uneasy.
Endearing, maybe. Yes, it was
endearing
, that Jean wasn’t shy about his uncertainty. It was more interesting than him unabashedly praising the school and hyping up his childrens’ academics dishonestly.
“I think, Christopher saw this little science show for kids? Where the characters were all at boarding school, and he thought it was cool. And he liked science a lot, too, so I was like ‘Yeah okay sure’ as a joke? But then by the next summer he, he’s actually asking me if I’ll send him to boarding school!”
Jean’s face suddenly became much more lively, and he leaned forward as if for dramatic effect. Armin politely listened on, not touching his coffee.
“I looked and looked and looked
and looked
for some school with a really good science program, and CrownWell had the most graduates going into
colleges
known for their science programs, so! I refinanced the house, and shipped him off.”
The last part would have had Armin choking on his drink, but instead he just stared wide eyed, mouth ajar.
“You… you
what
!?”
“I, shipped him off? I mean I sent him to CrownWell, not actuall--”
“No no, you… you really refinanced your house?” Armin was quieter now, calming himself down. He realized how rude it was to make such a scene over someone else’s business.
Honestly, though, Armin just assumed Jean was crazy stinkin’ rich! CrownWell was most certainly a ritzy school. It wasn’t popular nationwide, but it was evidently the most well known boarding school in the region. And like Jean said, it did have a lot of high school graduates go onto even better colleges.
“Oh!
Oh yeah
, yeah I. Yeah!” Jean looked to the side, embarrassed. “I know, I know, it’s sounds pretty silly. But I knew I could work it all around again. One of my best friends actually worked in financing, so it made the most sense. I could’ve waited a year or two to save up, but, I didn’t want Christopher making a bunch of new friends in middle school just to leave them half-way through those schoolyears.”
Armin was just happy that Jean wasn’t offended.
“It’s not
that
bad, is it?” Jean stole a glance at Armin, who was covering his mouth in his own embarrassment without having realized it.
Dropping his hand, Armin straightened up and shook his head again. He went for his coffee again, taking a long, slow, thoughtful sip. What Jean did wasn’t all that crazy, but now Armin felt like a fool for making assumptions and overreacting, even if it was just a little bit. Had it been that long since he socialized with another adult!?
“Oh, oh, oh no. No. Not at all.” Armin still couldn’t think of a way to excuse his reaction. Was he supposed to apologize for mistakenly believing that Jean had lots of money? ‘Sorry, didn’t realize you were poor!’ just did not roll off the tongue.
Jean leaned back in his chair, eyes narrowing, and his lips thinning into a knowing smile. “Yeah, I got my car through CarMax too, didn’t mean to shock you!”
Armin nearly spit out his coffee, turning to the side and coughing out an uncomfortable, embarrassed laugh.
“
Omwhh,
I, I am
so
sorry.” Armin glanced back at Jean, who seemed like he was having a great time watching this disaster unfold.
Not long after, though, Jean pulled some napkins from the dispenser in between them, then offered them to Armin.
“Th-thanks.” Armin patted the remaining dampness, a different kind of smile threatening to appear.
“Want me to get you another coffee?” Jean mocked, standing up halfway.
Armin only spilled a little bit of his coffee, probably just a sip’s worth.
“‘Promise I can afford it.” He added, causing Armin to press his lips together in a thin line hiding his desire to smile. His cheeks hurt with all the force he put into it, and he knew he couldn’t keep it up for long.
“I’m good, but
thank you
anyway.” Armin managed to get out with only minimum smiling.
“Oh really? That’s too bad,” Jean picked up his phone and messed with a bit, then slid it over to Armin’s side of the table, “Why don’t you text yourself on there and you can think of a way to pay me back another time?” And he turned around, heading straight back to the counter before Armin could decline.
It would be awkward, if he didn’t do as Jean asked. Besides, Armin didn’t get to socialize much, so this was kind of a necessity for him! With all this extra free time he’d have on the weekdays, it wouldn’t be so bad having someone to talk to who
wasn’t
a co-worker.
That’s what Armin sold to himself, and he soon began typing a simple message that he
hopefully
wouldn’t later mistake for spam. No, it had nothing to do with Jean’s charm at all.
Restless was the best word for it that Armin could think of for what he was doing. Though, it would imply that Armin was
trying
to get any rest. Part of the CrownWall orientation also involved a nightly ‘check in’, alerting parents that curfew had begun, and thereafter each parent would then get a secondary notification if their child was
following
said curfew. The same thing had happened for when the orientation started, making sure that no student had skipped out on their very first day.
Had it been a recurring process each and every day, Armin might’ve thought it was excessive. But Rachel had only ever texted him to say she’d made it to the school alright, and that was that. It made sense, of course, because if Rachel had been texting him, that would’ve meant she wasn’t paying attention to her teachers.
Rachel probably was having a lot of fun getting to know her new classmates, too. She’d be sharing a room with three other girls, so they could have been spending more time getting to know each other than worrying about chatting up their parents.
Still, even knowing that these orientations took time, and that the campus was very big and likely needed a lot of special attention for newer students,
but
! These were all things that couldn’t shake the worry from his mind. Maybe he should have insisted that he drive her up after all?
Then again, it might’ve been Jean’s timely intervention that convinced her to give it a shot. Who knows? It wasn’t that Armin wanted to go to bed, but he wanted to make sure that Rachel was.
| Intermediary curfew has begun
9:03 PM
Armin breathed out, relieved. ‘Intermediary curfew’ was for any students under the age of 17, or otherwise below grade 12.
| RACHEL .A is checked in for Dorm C-6.2
9:05 PM
Another
sigh of relief. The uncomfortable old tweed couch never felt so relaxing, even though it still smells like cat.
| Waiting for that curfew call every year is the worst
9:13 PM
The message came from an unknown number, puzzling Armin. He knew, however, that it had to have been Jean. Without thinking twice about it, he saved Jean as a contact, stupidly realizing that he either forgot his last name. That, or, they never asked each other. So much for Facebook stalking him tomorrow on his lunch break.
| Yeah?
9:15 PM
| Every year?
9:15 PM
| Every year! They almost always forget to call me
9:17 PM
Armin smiled, thankful that he wasn’t the only one experiencing this exact inconvenience, this arguably silly worry. Still holding out hope that Rachel might call or text him, there was no way Armin would be heading to bed any time soon, just in case.
| Don’t stay up too late!
9:17 PM
| Was going to tell YOU that
9:18 PM
Armin chuckled, thinking of how he should respond. It really was nice, having someone new to talk to.
| I still have that coffee from earlier
9:18 PM
| So Im fine
9:18 PM
| You’re drinking cold coffee??!
9:18 PM
| I changed my mind you have to pay me back asap!!
9:18 PM
Sitting up, and staring down at the text with a smile, Armin thought that maybe, they could keep each other company.