Snippet #2298691

Exhaustion. That was all Ryan felt as he lied in bed, staring at the ceiling of his dorm room above. When he was first told he'd be sent to a school in the middle of the ocean to treat his aquaphobia, he assumed it was some sort of twisted joke; the day he was told to prepare to head there on boat is when he realized his mother was serious. He spent the entire night beforehand just like he was now, staring at the ceiling. He occasionally turned to stare at his alarm clock after what felt like an hour only to see that a few minutes had passed. Although he was tired and weak, Ryan couldn't sleep that night, and there was no way he'd sleep on the actual trip, lest the boat would end up sinking and he'd drown without being able to escape. So, there he was, exhausted and lying in bed. He stood up and walked past everything that was brought for him, which remained in a messy pile for now, and looked out through the window at the sea.

It was all he saw. He watched the waves building momentum in the distance and his body tensed up, as if he expected the waves to continue growing into a tsunami and consuming the entire academy. He dragged the window curtains shut, blocking off the image and relying on the room's fluorescent lamps for light. With a small sigh, Ryan began to unpack his things. By the end of his task, his room looked slightly less empty. A laptop with a wireless mouse rested on his desk with a large pile of clean notebook paper beside it. A mug filled with crisp, sharpened pencils sat nearby. From the next bag, he removed a four-octave electronic keyboard so he could play an electric piano without having to go to the band room for the real thing. Ryan rested it on the space next to the desk before he continued grabbing miscellaneous things such as books, folders and a small row of canned foodstuff. Stepping back to observe the room as it was then, he gave a little sigh of relief. Maybe this won't be so bad, he thought.