A Long Journey

A Long Journey

By Uma Sczupak

Dedicated to my bird nicknamed Jorge Cutie, who showed me to try new things every day…

Maple Leaf Writing Project

Brattleboro, VT

Copyright 2019.

One day, I got horrible news from my parents. Not the kind of news like,”You’re going to do calligraphy camp”, or “We’re enrolling you in piano lessons.” Nothing like that. But rather, I got news from my parents saying that we would be moving to Boothbay, Maine in a couple of months. The water there is probably going to be freezing cold, and we probably won’t be able to swim in the winter like we do here. We live in Vista, California, and our family decided to move to Boothbay for a couple of reasons. One of the reasons is that my mom and dad went there before I was born, and they loved it. Ever since, they have been thinking about going there.

But the thing is, they thought that my little brother Jed and I would be happy to move there! Why would any kid be happy to move to a place that they had never been to before? I mean, I would get why they would think that if we were moving to someplace like Disneyland, because I do have to admit, that would be pretty cool. But no, we were moving to a place that is very cold. Mom showed us the house on our computer, and half of the whole house and yard was covered in snow! I guess they took that photo in the winter because it sure looked like it. I kept denying the fact that moving there would be fun because then I would miss home.

A few months later, we finally started to pack. Even though I didn’t want to move, I do enjoy packing things up and keeping them organized, and that’s why I immediately rushed to my room and saw exactly what things I could pack with other things, like my glass animals with my snowglobes, and my medals from gymnastics with my stuffed animals ( because they would be cushioning the medals.) and the things that I would need to bubble wrap and all of that. Then I calmed myself down. My light brown hair, hanging loosely down to my elbows, was knotted because I forgot to brush it. I heard my dad say that he was going out to buy some moving boxes.

It was a hot day in June. While I was sitting outside our garage drinking cherry juice, the movers came. They arrived in a big, white truck that could have held all of our house’s furniture and trinkets and books. Since our house was a small ranch house, fitting all of those things in there would not be a problem. I ran inside of the house, leaving the cherry juice behind me. You see, I am a shy kind of kid, so I also didn’t like other people talking to me. I called out to my mom and dad, and they came in a hurry.

“Cassidy, is it the movers?” my dad said.

“Yep,” I said.

“Cerys, the truck is here, and the other truck should be here soon,” my dad told my mom.

I really hated having to move. Moving would mean that I would have to go away from my friends, my gymnastics and tennis center, and my school. I really hated having to leave all of those things behind. The new place we were moving into seemed like it would be ok, but it didn’t mean that I would be excited about it. I wanted to go inside and play on my ipad, but since we were moving, we hadn’t paid for internet or anything like that. Then I saw Jodie. Jodie was a very special chinchilla. I decided to play with her for a while, but then (very soon) I got bored.

Suddenly, my little brother Jed came running out of his room and rushed over to mom and dad.

“Mom, dad, can Cassidy take me up to the park?” said Jed.

“We have to pack and get everything ready you know.”

“Mom, it will be multa,” I said. “Besides, I have everything packed and I wanted to go up there and see if Audrey is there. I have to tell her something important.” Our family speaks Spanish just a bit, so if you didn’t know, multa means fine.

Audrey is one of my best friends ever, but we hadn’t had the time to hang out in a really, really long while. I guess it was just that we both have so many things to do, and so little time to do it. I sorta kinda didn’t tell her that I was moving.

“Ok, well I suppose it won’t hurt to go up there for a while.” dad said. “Ok then, you two go to the park while your mother and I get the cajas loaded into the truck,” dad said.

The park was not a far walk, it took us only about five minutes to go up the street and get there. So Jed and I went up there, and we both took our scooters for a last run before both of them had to be put away.

We finally got to the gate, and I was ready to break the news to Audrey if she was there. We opened the latch on the gate and went inside. To the right of us was a wooded bike path. To the left of us was all of the playground structures and the giant pine tree that we liked to climb. We brought over our scooters to the structure, where I saw her.

“Hola, Audrey,” I said.

“Oye, Cas.”

“So… Uh.. I might’ve forgotten to tell you that we are moving...” I said sheepishly while nervously playing with my fingers.

“WHAT? WHEN?” She yelled, clearly flustered.

“Jed, go play on the big kid structure now. Audrey and I have some catching up to do.”

“Hurra!” Jed screamed, waving his hands in the air and running towards the playground.

“Ok, we are moving... tomorrow.” I explained.

“Are you kidding me?! Tomorrow? Ok Audrey, deep breath in, deep breath out. You are not about to lose you friend .

.

forever. Cas, let’s go over there onto that pine tree.” Audrey said calmly.

“Ok,”

So we walked to the left of the structures and to the great pine tree. We call it the great pine tree, but really nobody knows whether or not it’s actually one. Audrey went up first, and then I went up. We had our usual spots for sitting and relaxing, but something told me that we weren’t here for relaxing. I sat up near the top of the tree, while Audrey sat below me.

“Cassidy, can you tell me why exactly you didn’t tell me this before?” Audrey asked.

“Well… since we haven’t hung out in a really long time I couldn’t tell you personally.”

“You could have just texted me,” Audrey said.

“I don’t know, I guess I just wanted to tell in person so it would mean more,” I explained as smoothly as possible.

“Ok, but why are you moving?” she asked while playing with her hair.

“I really don’t know, you’ll have to ask my parents,” I said.

Then there was a car alarm. Audrey and I got off of the tree to see what was happening, and sure enough, there was Jed trying to open a car door for whatever reason.

“Jed! Get away from that car right now!” I screamed.

“Cas, I think you should go over there,” said Audrey cautiously.

“Fine,” I said.

I ran over there, with Audrey toddling behind me. When I reached Jed, he was trying to pry open the car to get to a chihuahua that had been left in there. I tugged Jed away from the car because he was trying so hard to open the door. The owner of the car must have been somewhere else in the park because it seemed to be that no one cared.

“Jed, what did mom tell you about doing bad things like that?” I asked.

“If I did it again, I would be in bad, bad trouble?” he said trying to remember exactly what.

“Yes,” I replied.

‘Ok, Jed and I should probably be getting home because I think he’s had enough fun for today. I’ll call you up tomorrow before we leave and we’ll try to patch up this whole issue.” I said. Even though I said I’d patch this up, I don’t think it will happen.

“You know what? Fine! But if it isn’t fixed by you tomorrow then I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’ll let you leave with me still enojado at you!” Audrey growled.

“Ok Audrey, I get it,” I said, exasperated.

“Ok, geez,” she said.

Then Jed and I got our scooters from where we left them, and started scooting our way home.

When we reached home, we saw that the moving trucks were gone, along with my mom’s car, since we’d be driving my dad’s car across the country. We’d be attaching a trailer to the back of our dad’s car so we can put luggage, bikes and scooters, and Seizurebell, Chichi, and Jodie. Pearlpelt and Chris Morris would be riding in the back of our car so we’d know if they needed to, you know, go.

Jed and I went inside and saw our mom.

“Hey mom? Just to make it clear, we are leaving tomorrow, right?” I asked.

“Yes, sweetie,” she said.

“Oh, ok, so is it ok that I invited Audrey over tomorrow to settle a couple of things?” I asked.

“Yes Cas, it’s fine,” She said. “Bye the way, how was the park?” she asked.

“It was good. We saw Audrey there, and we talked about stuff like how we were moving so I invited her over then.” I said. “Also, Jed saw a dog and wanted to pet it so he basically tried to break into the car just to pet the little thing,” I blurted out. “Ok mom, bye.” I said, leaving and going to my room before she could say anything.

“Ok honey, I’ll talk to Jed about his decisions. And by the way, we are going out to dinner tonight.” I heard her say faintly.

Later that night, we had takeout at a really good Chinese place we went to all of the time. I got the chicken lo mein and some pork dumplings. We ate at the restaurant since we didn’t have a dining table. It wasn’t all that exciting but we did say goodbye to the owners of the business before we left.

“Wow, I can’t believe this was our last time at that restaurant,” Jed said as we were walking out of the place to our car.

“Yeah, I know,” I said thoughtfully.

Then we walked to our car and drove home in silence. Our family is quite loud so that was one of the only times we had ever driven 10 minutes in silence.

When we got home, Jed and I went to our blow-up mattress that we shared since that was our last night. Our parents had their own mattress that they slept in but no matter what, we had to sleep on the ground, so we decided to sleep in the living room where it was carpeted. I put on my pajamas that I had in my suitcase for the car ride, and said good night to everyone. Inside I was feeling a little anxious of what would happen the next day with Audrey and the moving.

I was in the middle of dozing off but then Chris Morris just had to walk up to me and nudge me with his nose and whine, indicating that I had to stop trying to sleep and take him out.

So, five minutes later, when Chris Morris has done his business, I finally got to drift off to sleep.

In the morning, we packed up all of the bedding.

“Bien, let’s pack er up,” Dad said while walking our stuff toward the trailer. We put both of our dog’s beds into the back of our car and we put Jodie, Seizurebell, and Chichi into the trailer. We were leaving in about two hours.

Then I went into my room for one of my very last times. About ten minutes after I started, there was a knock on my bedroom door. Audrey walked in before I could say anything.

“Hey,” we said in unison.

“Wow. I can’t believe that this’ll be our last time seeing each other but I hope you know I’m still mad at you,” Audrey said.

“Yeah, I know. Look, I really didn’t mean to tell you this late and I am really, really sorry. I guess I got all caught up in the rhythm of things and since we don’t go to the same school I guess it was kind of hard to tell you,” I said.

“Well, yeah but I wish you would have called me over here and told me. But now that it’s so late, we don’t have the chance to do our final things together. So that is the main reason why I was mad at you. But now, I am 50% less mad at you ok?” she replied.

“Yeah ok, but we can’t do things while we are still mad at each other because that just wouldn’t be as meaningful.”

“You know, you still haven’t made it up fully… ” she said slyly.

“Ugh… What do I have to do?” I asked.

“Go up to the park with me and we’ll make our mark,” she said.

“Multa,” I muttered.

We walked up the road and to our pleasant park. Audrey walked me over to the great pine tree, picked up two sticks, handed one to me, and kept one for herself.

“Cas, we are gonna carve our names into our special spots,” she said.

“Ok” I said, wondering if this would count as vandalism. I didn’t think so. We climbed up to our spots and started carving. I carved my initials and a heart, and Audrey carved her initials and a star.

“These marking shall now forever be in this tree,” Audrey stated softly.

“Yup,” I replied just as quietly. Then we climbed down and walked away out through the gate. I made sure to say goodbye to it and the rest of the park. “I will miss you,” I whispered. Then we walked back to my house with only a few words shared.

We reached home and found out I was going to leave in ten minutes.

“Are you still mad at me?” I asked.

“No, not anymore,” she replied.

Five minutes passed of just silence, and then seven.

“I better go to the bathroom because we are leaving like, right now,” I said.

When I came out, my stuff was already in the car. There were snacks and drinks too.

“Sweet,” I thought to myself. I climbed in, but before I did that, I gave Audrey the biggest hug she’s ever had.

“Audrey, I hope you know that you are the best friend I have ever had, and ever will have. Trust me,” I said.

“Cas, I already knew that,” Audrey said stubbornly through her tears. “I hope you know that you will always be my el mejor amiga.”

That made me laugh even though my tears.

“I will miss you,” I said.

“I’ll miss you too,”

We said a few more things. Then my family was off. There were some tears shed though and it was one of the saddest things I’ve ever experienced. The trip took about a week and it was pretty boring. When we got there, all of the stuff that got moved was there. I put my stuff into my room and began to think that this was going to be a good home. I could see my new climbing tree out of my window, so that was a plus. But in the end, I knew that even if she wasn’t here, Audrey was going to support me all of the way, because that is just what best friends do.