Arrival

            On the first weekend of August of my thirteenth year I received a phone call. My mother answered the phone and being used to my friend Jimmy’s roomy calling me on occasion she called for me. I don’t believe my heart has ever pounded so hard in my life. I raised the phone to my ear and spoke a soft, “Hello?” there was a pause and finally that deep baritone breathed out, “Hey princess, I’m at the hotel up the street, why don’t you come by tonight? My room number is 131 on the main floor, ok?” My heart skipped a beat and I nodded before remembering he couldn’t see me, “O… Okay, I’ll have to wait for my parents to go to bed, I’ll be there later, I love you.” We’d been saying that for a few months now, most calls were salt and peppered with I love yous these days. It was like breathing, completely natural and usually said without a second thought. “Alright, baby I’ll see you then, I gotta go though, love you.” The line went dead, he had hung up.

            I rushed to my room, ignoring the questions from my mother who had been down the hall during the call, the usual “Oh how’s Tony and Jimmy doing, what’s the news from the Bay area?” stuff, nothing too important. Shutting myself into my room I went through the routine I had set out, grabbing my backpack and shoving a few changes of clothes into it as well as my school yearbook and my teddy bear. Then I settled down for a long wait. It was 6pm when he called me, I knew my parents were usually in bed by 11pm. Those 5 hours are still a blur to me this day, sometimes I try to remember exactly how I spent them, whether I simply sat on my bed, letting the nervous tension work it’s way through me or whether I went about the day as usual.

            Either way, 11pm came and I peeked out my bedroom door. Noting my parent’s bedroom door was closed I picked up my backpack, stuffed full of all the possessions I had chosen to take with me, and snuck out into the hallway. It took me a full ten minutes to creep down the hall, downstairs, get the back door open as quietly as possible, shut it as quietly as possible, and make my way towards the street. I never thought twice about how it would look for a young girl to walk the two and a half miles towards the nearest motel by herself in the middle of the night down the street with a loaded backpack slung over her shoulder. All I could think about was finally meeting that deep baritone in person, finally feeling his arms wrapped around, finally escaping this dull small town.