“I’m freeeeeeeee!”
The boy yelled into the wind from the top of a hill overlooking the bluest stretch of sea he’d ever seen. But in his stomach, in his tummy, his child’s soft underbelly, he was afraid.
This moment was long awaited, coveted for years, hoped for and dreamed of, but still.
The real thing had come at last, and now he was alone on a hill feeling full of everything lost.
Earlier in the day he had bid his mother farewell, and she had begun her long drive south. They would see each other again in a couple of months, but still. This was new, to say goodbye and not mean later in the day, later in the week, later soon. He had met new people already, had been smiling all day. Now that he was alone his face fell grasswards. The corners of his mouth curled under, his eyes turned into the deep dark pools of puppies left alone in a pet shop window. His throat joined the club, and threatened to close its doors to any incoming swallow, but the boy forced the feeling away, taking a deep drag of his cigarette. He would not cry.
He had done this before, had been doing it in some form or another for most of his life. But this departure was a little different. He looked across the field and thought about all the places he had come to know during his lifetime of moving. There were some moves he had been too small to remember--the move to China as a toddler for instance--but there were some moving days that smarted just to think about. How had he ever managed to get on that plane leaving Hong Kong for the last time as an eighteen-year-old? To leave home takes a special kind of pluck, especially if you love the place you’re leaving.
Even LA, though he couldn’t believe he was thinking this, was hard to leave. It had only been five years, but the place had slowly grown on him, like a soft coating of mold, and now it had a hold on him he couldn’t fully shake. How does that happen? You live in a place long enough, always waiting to leave, and then the day comes and it’s suddenly real. No matter how much you hate the place, you’ve still grown there, changed there, soaked parts of the place into parts of yourself so embedded you don’t know where they lie, until something happens and everything comes back. You smell a certain flower and you’re back in Mom and Dad’s garden.
Now there was a new place to grow into, new friendships to develop, new everything. Now it was all about him, learning to be on his own, trying out a new style of living, and he had no idea where to start. Of course the place was set up for this--newbies arriving and meeting and awkwardly trying to stave off the fears common to them all. Old hands walking around with utter confidence, hardly conscious of the fact that just a year ago, or maybe two, they were the new ones, they were the ones who had stood there trying to look like they knew what was going on while their mother made their bed one last time. Her hospital corners had never been so crisp. The bed would never be made again.
The boy stood atop the field, breathing with the wind, and thinking back to the time he visited this place with his sister. They had driven up for a whirlwind college tour weekend, when coming here was but a possibility, a hope. The field he now stood on belonged to someone else back then. Now it was his. The whole campus was his for the biking, trying, learning, living. And this thought was exciting, not scary. But still. He was here. He had done it, made it, left everything else far behind.
“I’m free,” he said quietly to himself. “I’m free.”
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