This was supposed to be my own special adventure. This was supposed to be fun. This was my own freaking idea to begin with. What the hell was I thinking?
I am fifteen. I have not yet learned about culture shock, but it's suddenly on me like a ton of bricks.
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I start at my new school tomorrow. It's been about two weeks since my parents did not buy me a ticket home. I am living with my aunt and two cousins who are close to my age - E is about a year younger than me and T a year older. E suggests we go into the city get pre-first-day-of-school makeovers. I’ve been growing my hair and I'm not really sure if I want a haircut, but the idea sounds fun so, full of excitement, we hop on the train and go to a hair salon in Cambridge
I sit down in the chair beside E and ask the stylist for a non-adventurous "just a trim" as my hair is (finally!) down past my shoulders. I have already learned the hard lesson that if you ask for celebrity so-and-so's haircut, unfortunately you do not stride out of the salon moments later actually resembling a fully cloned version of celebrity so-and-so. This time, I am actually being smart and erring on the side of caution. Just a trim.
Within seconds, three-quarters of my hair is splayed out in a crime scene on the cold tiled floor beneath my feet. I am baffled that I didn't catch the switcheroo the Houdini who I thought was trimming my hair pulled when he deftly replaced himself with Edward Scissorhands.
This cannot be happening.
I experience only three of the five stages of grief: denial, anger and depression. Bargaining and acceptance are curiously nowhere to be found. This is not at all what I asked for. There is no turning back. I do not look like a pixie. I do not look cute like Winona Ryder. I look like a poodle who's owner does not quite like them. My hair is a fucking Chia pet mocking me atop my head. Not knowing what to do and determined not to cry - yet again - I actually pay for my stupid ugly haircut. The stupid ugly haircut that I didn't even necessarily want in the first place. I am starting at a new school tomorrow knowing no one but my two cousins who I've really only met twice before in my life.
I am fifteen. I have hideous hair and I hate my stupid life.
I sit down in the chair beside E and ask the stylist for a non-adventurous "just a trim" as my hair is (finally!) down past my shoulders. I have already learned the hard lesson that if you ask for celebrity so-and-so's haircut, unfortunately you do not stride out of the salon moments later actually resembling a fully cloned version of celebrity so-and-so. This time, I am actually being smart and erring on the side of caution. Just a trim.
Within seconds, three-quarters of my hair is splayed out in a crime scene on the cold tiled floor beneath my feet. I am baffled that I didn't catch the switcheroo the Houdini who I thought was trimming my hair pulled when he deftly replaced himself with Edward Scissorhands.
This cannot be happening.
I experience only three of the five stages of grief: denial, anger and depression. Bargaining and acceptance are curiously nowhere to be found. This is not at all what I asked for. There is no turning back. I do not look like a pixie. I do not look cute like Winona Ryder. I look like a poodle who's owner does not quite like them. My hair is a fucking Chia pet mocking me atop my head. Not knowing what to do and determined not to cry - yet again - I actually pay for my stupid ugly haircut. The stupid ugly haircut that I didn't even necessarily want in the first place. I am starting at a new school tomorrow knowing no one but my two cousins who I've really only met twice before in my life.
I am fifteen. I have hideous hair and I hate my stupid life.
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My older cousin T has an extensive music collection. He endlessly mocks the fact that I used to like the New Kids on the Block. He's got long hair and interesting friends and an endless supply of band t-shirts and I find myself going into his room and borrowing his cassette tapes. They're heavier and edgier than the pop music I'm accustomed to and I instantly like them all. I copy them onto my own blank tapes and listen to them on repeat. The Levellers. Ned's Atomic Dustbin. Wonderstuff. The Pixies. L7. Nirvana. Jane's Addiction. This music becomes the soundtrack of my year.
T is the older brother I always wanted and he treats me like a younger sister. He steals my belongings and dangles them precariously out of my second-story bedroom window threatening to drop them out at any moment. He sneaks around and writes silly messages on my mirror using my makeup. He roughhouses and teases and laughs at me, but secretly I love it. Not-quite-brotherly love.
My younger cousin E is very unlike me. She is far more conservative and takes piano lessons and her studies very seriously, but she takes me under her wing and lets me into her circle of friends and we too become like siblings. We have long chats and pillow fights and real fights. One night, we sit on her bed and laugh so hard we both have tears rushing down our cheeks and E falls right down behind the bed she's so hysterical.
We watch Neighbours and Quantum Leap and Top of the Pops together. Most days after school we stop by her dad's house where she keeps two of the most enormous rabbits I have ever seen in my entire life. We drink orange squash and biscuits and hang out with her dad and her stepmother who treat me like I've been there all along. We also go to my grandparents' house all the time because they live just one street up from my aunt's house. I love this because I only have one grandmother back home and we only get to see her a few times a year.
One day as we're walking home from their house, E tells me she believes that my grandparents think the sun shines out of my ass. She says it in the joking kind of way that feels as though it's masking just the slightest hint of jealousy which I am not accustomed to. I do my best to blow her comment off, reassuring her that they're still just getting to know me and that if they knew me half as well as T and her I am sure they would think differently. But much as I try to protest, inside I'm beaming my own little ray of sunshine.
I am sixteen. I'm glad I'm getting the opportunity to get to know this side of my family, different as they are to my own.
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The end of the year comes and rolls over into the next. I have never had this many close friends in my life. If asked, I could not choose a favourite. S is super indie and has wicked clothes and cool, hippie laid-back parents. A is mature and wise beyond her years and I've never met a more sincere or trustworthy person. L teaches me how to smoke and she's super sporty and has a cool accent. J is the clown of the group and laughs at herself almost as much as she makes all of us laugh. The other A is a vegetarian and we both get our first jobs together at the new grocery store in town, although neither of us stays there very long. R is studious and conservative, but she looks the oldest out of all of us and we have our first underage liquor store adventure together (we panic and choose Cinzano). The other S is beautiful, has long curly blonde hair and is quietly comfortable to be around.
The only time any of us seem to spend apart is when we're sitting in different classrooms. We run around the village streets barefoot and arm-in-arm. We get dizzy and fall off the merry-go-round onto the squishy tarmac in the park near the old stone church. We go to the Strawberry Fair and jump around the bouncy castle amongst the little kids and haggle our allowance for trinkets. We celebrate each others' birthdays and hope each others' wishes come true. We make cassette tapes of our conversations in my bedroom. We sneak disgusting homemade wine to sleepovers and laugh our heads off. We talk for hours about life and clothes and boys and teenage philosophy. We have it all figured out.
I am now sixteen. Sweet, sweet sixteen.
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The highway of my year that started out as a neverending stretch to the horizon gradually picks up speed. I write in my diary every single night. I document what steadily turns out to be more highs than lows. I get a part (well, four parts actually) in the school play. I get asked out by a guy, get stood up for the first time by another, and make out with a few more. I go on holiday and reconnect with old friends and make some new memories. I go to my first-ever concert and see the lead singer up close after the show. I get a part-time job and get paid and write and receive an endless stream of letters. I keep myself busy with aerobics classes and youth groups and everything but studying for exams. I go to the heath and The Pit and the high streets of my own town and nearby ones as well. I stroll through markets and escape into books I pick up at the library. I develop a sense of style, a sense of self and a bit of an accent. I drive a car for the first time and even though everything's opposite to what it will be at home and I'm only allowed to drive in empty parking lots, I still feel the thrill. I attend school and dances and sleepovers and parties. My head is constantly spinning from liquor or hormones or excitement or fear or sometimes all of these things at the same time. I hang every single card I receive in my bedroom and pretty soon one wall is all but hidden.
I am sixteen. I've finally got the hang of this whole thing.
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June floats in on a warm breeze. The change on my yearlong meter has all but run out and before I can reload, all of a sudden it is time for me to leave. It's the night before the day that I will be shooting through the sky towards home. My other home. My close circle of friends and I get all dolled up in our fanciest clothes and way too much makeup. We have reservations at the small Italian restaurant on the high street. We sit shoulder-to-shoulder around the dark wooden table and share stories and memories and laugh as we always do and (of course) try to impress the cute waiter. I am nostalgic before I am even gone.
I am having that weird kind of moment where I am actually in two different places at the exact same time. To anyone looking at me, I am talking and laughing having a fun night out on the town with my friends. But on the inside, I am looking around at each person in this group and wondering how I will feel tomorrow in a few hours when they are suddenly not there. I am taking a moment outside of the very one I am currently in and reflecting on the past year. I am thinking back to the day long ago last August when I was crying on my aunt's bed and I wish I could have seen just a glimpse of this moment then. I am glad for the first time in probably forever that my parents are older and wiser and actually really do sometimes know what's best for me. I am grateful that my parents didn't buy me the return ticket I so desperately wanted or I never would have got to meet or know these amazing people and have these crazy fun experiences and stepped outside of what was comfortable and everyday and familiar to me. If I allow myself to acknowledge the truth, I would have simply returned home with my tail between my legs feeling like a failure.
We finish our dinner and settle our bills and skip arm-in-arm down the dusky streets to A's house where we're spending the night. We braid each others' hair and drink whatever bottles anyone's managed to sneak out and make way too much noise way too late into the early hours out in the giant orange tent we've set up in the backyard. I don't sleep partly because I've always thought the "sleep" part of sleepovers is lame and partly because I am half-insomniac anyway but mostly because I don't ever want this night to end. But before I know it and before I can stop it, the sun is up in near-full force and the bodies that actually managed a few hours of rest are slowly emerging into the light, pushing sleep and braided hair out of their bleary eyes.
The day's events are a bit of a blur (as hard ones tend to become), but there is much hugging and promising to stay in touch forever and ever and everyone comes to the bus station at the grocery store where a giant bus with tinted windows is about to take me to the airport. We all pose for a picture in front of the bus stop. And then before I know it, I'm sitting on the giant bus with the tinted windows and then I'm sitting in the plane that's rocketing me high up into the clouds towards my real home that's 3,559 miles away from these amazing friends and this family that I've discovered and this brief parallel life I've come to know. This temporary life that I created for myself. This moment in time that will forever be remembered as what turned out to be one of the best years of my life.
I am sixteen. I know so much more than I did a year ago. If only I'd have known how it would all turn out...
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