Lost: Casa Perdida [Completed]

To La Paz We Go

Kirt Heinrich

The Night Before The Trip

Wolfgang Academy, my high school, was one of the last few boarding schools for orphaned children in the United States. Since its establishment in 1830, when Wyoming was still a Territory of the United States, the school had turned the most unfortunate of orphans into great men and women of society, producing countless entrepreneurs and even five senators.

The institution had been founded, built, and supported by the Wolfgang family, a clan of railroad tycoons who later went on to become a family of real estate tycoons when the railway industry had declined. This family also owned the vast Wolfang Estate, a tiny part of which the school occupied.

We nicknamed the Academy 'Hogwarts' for two reasons. The first reason was its geographical isolation: it was situated in Wolfgang Estate, a vast private park with only a town of fewer than one hundred inhabitants within. Outside the bounds of the estate, there was no town for miles until Powell. The Estate was all woods, hills, and rivers, and this attribute made it the setting of various stories and urban legends woven by students with a lot of time in their hands.

The second reason why we called the school 'Hogwarts' was that it resembled a real castle: the campus itself was a walled complex of Victorian-era buildings surrounded by a ring of tall mountains that was broken only by a road running between two of those heights. If one hadn't heard about our school before and found themselves climbing up one of those mountains surrounding the Academy, they would mistake it for the ruins of a long-forgotten castle or for an abandoned fort.

The best thing about studying at Wolfgang was the spaciousness of the campus. Among the many buildings- blocks as they were called - classrooms were evenly distributed to avoid concentration. The upside to that was that if one wanted to get lost, to stay alone, there were plenty of areas where they could hide, unnoticed.

The most prominent blocks were the two towers that we called the 'the Residencies.' I know the name sounds like it is from a science fiction novel but, trust me, that's what we called them. The Residencies were where the students stayed: the boys on the eastern tower and the girls on the western. Each residency had: a common-room at the bottom where announcements were usually made; two study lounges in the first two floors on top of the common-room: one for elementary and middle school, and the other for high school; and various levels of living space above.

That night everyone else except for the students of grade ten was asleep. And that was a good thing. Awkward middle schoolers and freshmen wouldn't be annoying the others with their embarrassing music. We, the sophomores, had congregated in the Common Room to hear last-minute instructions about the field trips we were to go on the next day. Section 10 A was the most thrilled of the two grade 10 sections; for, we were going to camp in the Bolivian jungles as part of our field trip, while 10 B was going on a social service trip to help deaf children in Sri Lanka.

Some of the students, me among them, were seated on the couches. A few stood by the side. A few students brought bean bags from the lounges above, while the rest sat on chairs spread out side by side. And in the center of the room stood Miss. Berkley on the Persian carpet.

There was a blizzard outside, and as we sat around Miss Berkley, who kept reminding us of our school's field-trip policy, we wrapped ourselves in blankets: the fireplace wasn't sufficient to keep us warm, nor was the air conditioner in order. My attention was focused on the snow outside and not on what our Algebra 2 teacher was saying. I knew everything that was being told by heart. I guess that's a proficiency one gets when they listen to something the umpteenth time.

"Make sure to check if you have everything you need in your bags before y'all go to bed. Y'all are going to third-world countries. So, if you forget to take something with you, y'all are gonna have a tough time," Miss Berkeley said. "And remember: please don't forget to take your toothbrushes and toothpaste with you. Take spares if you think it'll be necessary! Y'all don't want your chaperones dealin' with your bad breath. Any more questions?"