Seventeen and Invincible

The flight from Phoenix to Munich felt like it had taken a lifetime. Eighteen hours of nothing made me want to scream. My iPod battery had died about eight and a half hours in, and though I knew I should have been glad that it lasted that long, I was incredibly annoyed. Without my iPod I was left to stare out the window and make small talk with the boy sitting next to me.

During the flight I’d barely managed to sleep thanks to the turbulence. There were times when I really thought I wouldn’t even make it to Munich alive. But I had made it. I’d let out a huge sigh of relief when I stepped off of the plane and into Munich International Airport.

Customs was fairly simple, considering I only had one suitcase. It still took a while though, angering me to no end. I was tired and jetlagged and cold. In Munich, unlike Tempe, it snowed. There was actually winter here.

I dragged my tired self across the airport, rummaging through my carry on for my cell
phone. The charges for making this call would be ridiculous, no doubt, but it was well worth it. I scrolled through my contacts until I found Garrett. A smile spread across my lips just thinking about hearing his voice again.

“Hello?” he asked, sleep clouding his voice. I smiled even wider, blood rushing to my cheeks just at the sound.

“Hey,” I whispered. “I just wanted to let you know I’m here. Were you sleeping?”

“Yeah,” he laughed, “but I need to get up, so thanks.” I smiled and nodded, though he couldn’t see.

“What time is it wherever you are?”

“It’s nine in the morning. What’s it there? Seven p.m. right?” I looked up at a clock hanging on a wall across the building, squinting to make out the numbers.

“Yeah, something like that.” I strolled over, taking a seat on an uncomfortable metal bench near a window.

The silence hung between us for a few moments and then became randomly filled with questions or thoughts not at all relevant to this call.

“Alright, Gar, I gotta go. I’ll miss my train. I’ll talk to you soon.” He mumbled some form of farewell and we hung up.

To get to Sendling, the suburb where I now lived, I would have to take the S-Bahn 8 and the U-Bahn 6, getting off in Harras and taking a cab into my neighborhood. It wasn’t my ideal way of traveling through Munich, but I didn’t exactly have much money on me and couldn’t exactly take a cab.

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After my fifteen minute trek back and forth across the aiport, I finally found the rail station. I was even more surprised to find Molly waiting for me, pulling me along with her toward the car, almost like she was happy to see me. I found it strange. I mean, we both knew that I was more than capable of unraveling the mystery of the Munich Commuter Rail System.

The car ride was almost enjoyable. Molly managed to go on about the house and family that I’d never met for the entire journey. She actually managed to look at me with a smile that wasn’t fake and full of disgust.

Pulling up at the house, she took my suitcase from me and directed me to my room on the second floor of the small but quaint home. I wasn’t going to lie, it was beautiful here. Had I not had to abandon my best friend on the other side of the Atlantic, I might have liked it here.

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Family dinner was a new institution that I’d had to thank my grandparents for. It was a new thing. On Sunday nights it would become a tradition. Cousins, aunts and uncles, inlaws, everyone, would gather around the long dining room table positioned in the center of the home that Molly had actually decorated.

I was the oldest of the kids in my family. A few cousins were within two years of my age, but they didn’t seem to take to me too well. I was as much of a social pariah here as I was back in Tempe. Then again, in Tempe, I chose to let myself become an outcast. I’d had Garrett and he was all I really needed. Then I’d had Mia, she was like the sister I’d never had. Here, well, here I had none of that. I had no Mia, no Garrett, no John, or Kenny, or Pat, or Jared. There wasn’t even an Evan or Ariel, or Rhiannon.

Munich would be miserable, it seemed. If I was this much of an outcast in my own family, I could only imagine what school would be like. At least in Tempe there was a good chance that I could sit next to Garrett or one of my other friends. If I couldn’t do that I’d at least find someone who I was capable of talking too.

My aunts and uncles looked at me with disdain and my grandmother almost ignored my presence. She’d hugged me when I first met her, but it had become like she didn’t want to know me. Molly was the only one to even look at me with some form of sympathy when I excused myself and made my way up the flight of stairs to my new sanctuary.

The tears formed and I blinked them away, opening my laptop and staring at the screen. I miss you, I typed quickly into an email, I want to come home.

I clicked send and closed my laptop, not even waiting for him to reply, because I knew he was more than busy with tour and all.

My stay in Munich would not exactly be a pleasant one, or so it seemed. Munich was not home and it never would be, no matter how many family members were introduced or how many family meals were spent at that table. Germany would never be the place where I belonged.