citrusy and fresh. Thank you for not making me feel like even more of an idiot when I panicked.
Thank you for lacing your fingers through mine. For the fact I can still feel the heat creep up my wrist.
We part, finally, so I take a deep breath and walk in step with Shane, dragging my suitcase behind me. Everything’s better here in ways I can’t even quantify properly. Patches of blue start to peek out from behind the gray sky. The buildings around me are different, manageable. They’re not ornate like Parliament or Westminster Abbey, but simple and classic. Large stone bricks give them a castle-like feel, and the meticulously manicured round or square bushes and lawns that sprawl out toward the sidewalk put me at ease.
“Things are certainly … different here,” I say. “Maybe I’m delirious, but things just feel right. I think this was a good decision.”
This happens sometimes, after I get out of a super anxious moment and I have the chance to breathe normally. I feel the sun on my skin and things feel lighter. Right. If only all the moments could be like this.
Hanging in the back of my mind is the awareness that I’m not a tourist here. I’ve committed to this new life, and the responsibilities are about to tumble over me. I should start looking for auditions soon.
But I spent so long trying to get here, why can’t I just let myself enjoy this first moment? I swallow hard, pushing down the bile and unease. A minor success.
“Can you see this as your home?” Shane asks.
“I can. It’s nothing like Avery, but that’s not a bad thing. Everything is prim and proper here. It’s picturesque.”
“I suppose,” he responds. “It’s a bit harder to feel that magic when you’ve been here for almost eighteen years.”
We walk in silence, and I recharge. As a certified introvert, I need people like Megan or Pierce to kick me out of my shell. But I also need alone time to re-collect.
I’m spent—a plane ride, a cute boy, and jet lag will do that to you. I meander along the path, enjoying the energy rushing through my veins and pushing through my drowsiness, until we come up to a building I recognize. A pang of something—regret, anger, disappointment, all of the above?—echoes through my body as I think back to last summer.
I tense my shoulders and push through the doors, and say hello to my new home.
12 MONTHS AGO
DIARY ENTRY 9
We’re leaving.
That’s all I got from my parents. Shane and I were basically hiding in his room as my parents and Aunt Leah had this intense conversation out in her living room.
“I haven’t seen you in, what, thirteen years?” Her voice carried. “And you’re cutting your trip short because you felt a little uncomfortable?”
I stopped listening after that. I couldn’t listen to them talk about it anymore.
It’s not like Aunt Leah to raise her voice, but I can’t help but be on her side. We have tickets to things; we had two days left at the Airbnb. But Mom just closed up.
It’s kind of like what happens when I have one of my panic attacks. I close off, and I want to run away. But it was different with Mom. It’s like she had all this armor up with none of the actual panic. None of the shortened breaths, the chest pain, the world-falling-in-on-you feeling. Which makes me think this is kind of fucked up. (Yeah, definitely not turning in this project.)
Before I left their apartment, Aunt Leah stopped me. She said something like, “Marty, we might not get another chance to talk alone for quite some time. At least face-to-face.” She held eye contact with me, and her intensity was catching. “If you need anything, you let me know. Anything.”
Living in London is out of the picture, I know that now. I find out about Knightsbridge soon, but that doesn’t matter. Maybe I should just give up on music altogether and choose something safer.
It’s clear my oboe and I are meant for a different path, and maybe that’s okay. Maybe since everything else is fully not okay this seems less important, or maybe it’s that it really is okay. I don’t know the answer. I just know that I only have a handful of allies in this world, and only one of them is back in Kentucky.
Aunt Leah’s offer, though, it’s some kind of offer. An opportunity. I may have blown my chance with the academy, but