Chapter 1
Waiting at an airport terminal is a tad annoying experience but this
time, as I awaited flight from California to land in Boston at precisely 5:16 pm on a pleasant September evening, I felt a lot of emotions but irkiness for the delay. My stomach was swirling with a hundred butterflies and my mind kept returning to the memory of the day I last saw him. Four years ago, a little before we both were to start highschool in our respective cities. Him, in the bustling life of L.A and me in the Same old golden courtyards of New Boston. He was wearing a T-Shirt that said 'Hi California' in big bold letters and brown casual shorts. His brown hair was messy and unkempt just like I had known them to be for my entire life. I remember
crying that day on the car ride back to home.
I hid from my Mom in the back seat of our old minivan thinking that I would be the lonely miserable kid at highschool even though it was with the same people I went to middle school with. It would be Freddie who would have to start anew.
But he seemed to be all his usual boisterous self as he kissed my mother goodbye, shook hands with my father, smacked me on my arm and later crushed me with one of his annoying hugs. He had whispered in my year; "I would miss you Allie". I had hugged back even tighter and then pushed him away as the announcement to board the plane began. He blew a kiss at me in his usual teasing way and I blew a raspberry back at him. That was the last time I ever saw him. His mother died in California two months after they moved away and he was hurtled from relative to another as his dad was a busy person who had to go on business trips and techically, lived in Paris, than be with his only son. Freddie and I had texted and exchanged mails daily, but after.his mother passed away, we grew distant. Freddie stopped returning my mails everyday and when he did, they were distant and feeble.
He told me about the food, the places his rich aunt (who had taken custody of him for the time being) had taken him to. He never talked about his mother or how was he holding up clearly. Before he moved away, Freddie and I talked for hours on end. We were joined at the hip as mothers liked to put it. But then, it just all ended. One day I didn't send him anything either a mail or a 'How are
you doing?' One day, we just stopped talking and a whole year passed. I was jerked out of my reverie, by the sound of my mother calling me back to senses. "Allie? Allie? The flight has been delayed. Would you mind grabbing cheeseburgers from the burgerjoint?" I realized the cool female voice reverbrating the same
thing ( the flight delay, not the cheeseburgers) and I nodded at Mom
who was now looking at me suspiciously. 'Are you nervous honey? It's alright. You two have known each other for your whole life. All that has happened last year, you two are still best friends. You both will be very glad to see each other again.' She smiled at me and tucked my hair behind my ear and I thought my mother had it alI wrong. I would indeed be happy to see him. God, I was dying to see him again. It was Freddie who might not be. Who might even be too disgusted to look at me. For what I did to him. For the pain I caused him from miles away last summer.
Mom doesn't know that, the whole story. She has no idea that deep down I know that Freddie and I are not friends anymore.
I silently got up and made my way to the burger joint.
