Monday.
Trial HSC, week one. English first, the way it always seems to be.
I did the drop this morning, like we'd worked out on Sunday. Quiet in the car, both of us up earlier than either of us wanted to be. She checked her pencil case twice before we'd even left the driveway — two black pens, a spare, a water bottle with the label peeled off because apparently they check for that now.
Forest Road was already busy by twenty to nine. Hazards blinking outside the school gate, a line of cars doing the same silent goodbye I was about to do. Nobody rushing. Nobody saying much either.
I found a gap near the oval and pulled in.
Kids everywhere on the grass, in twos and threes, not really talking, just standing the way you stand when you've already said everything you were going to say to yourself about it. A few parents lingered by the fence. Most just watched from the car, the way I was about to.
She got out, bag on one shoulder, water bottle in the other hand.
"Good luck," I said, which felt like the wrong-sized thing to say.
"Thanks." She was already half turned toward the gate.
I watched her cross the grass and fall into the line forming near the hall doors. Nobody was talking now. Just standing, waiting for whatever signal tells four hundred kids at once that it's time.
At nine exactly, the doors opened, and the line moved. No pushing, no hanging back. Straight in, one after another, like they'd rehearsed it — which I suppose, in a way, they had.
She didn't look back.
I sat there a second longer than I needed to, still watching the doors after they'd swallowed the last of the line.
I thought of another gate, years before this one — the preschool, the low fence with the plastic slide behind it. I used to reverse out of that car park so slowly, checking the mirror the whole way, because she'd press herself against the window and watch the car until it turned the corner and she couldn't see it anymore. I used to feel terrible leaving her like that. I used to wonder if she'd remember it later, some small version of missing me before she'd even learned the word.
This morning she didn't turn around once.
I don't think she even thought about it. That's the part I keep turning over — it wasn't a decision she made not to look back. It just didn't occur to her to.
I sat in the car a while longer than the empty spot really needed me to, engine off, watching the hall doors stay shut.
Eventually I started the car and pulled out onto Forest Road, slower than I needed to, though there was nothing behind me left to check for.