You Just Do

I sighed and looked around the airport. My parents stood beside me, holding my bags for me, while I glared ahead at the check in counters, where in a short period of time I would send my two filled bags to another country, another city and I’d be gone from my hometown for a long time.

Did I hate my parents? In this very moment I disliked them a lot. I just wanted them to understand how badly I wanted to stay here. I tried pleading, tried begging, even making up bullshit promises that I would never keep, but all in vain. My parents knew me too well…

“Come on mom, câlice, why did you even waste money on plane tickets? You know that this is pure evil!” I whined.

We put up my bags and then had to go to my gate so I could fly all the way down south to lovely Pittsburgh. Please note my sarcasm, because Pittsburgh was a dirty city with a bunch of Steel. Nothing else was there!

“Olivier, be good now for your brother don’t cause him too much trouble. Work hard in school and maybe you’ll get to come back sooner than we thought!” Dad explained to me.

I rolled my eyes, knowing just how much bullshit that really was. These two who called themselves parents were enjoying this. They liked sending me away, because I wasn’t a perfect child how I was supposed to be! I never liked sports, never was the best in school and I wasn’t into music or art! I had no talents!

I sighed and turned around, slinging my backpack over my shoulder, waving to my parents. I didn’t want to hug them, didn’t want to look at them. They did this to themselves by sending me away! So, I was going to be a little bitch about it!

I walked through security and found my flight to Pittsburgh. They weren’t boarding yet so I still had about an hour left to kill.

Now let me tell you readers something, airports suck the life out of you. They are boring and weird and smell funny. Nothing ever happened in them, unless there was a bomb threat and everyone was scared for their lives. That is a 1 in a million chance though so that rules out that theory.

There were a few stores I looked through, but nothing of interest, so I just bought myself some coffee and sat down at the window to watch the planes drive around.

Fun eh?

Finally, after wasting an hour they started boarding the small plane that would take me to New York and from there I would fly to Pittsburgh. So complicated.

The plane was small and smelled like shit, but I could live through it. I wasn’t down to complain about the stale peanuts. Why did they even give those still out? Wasn’t it disallowed in case someone had allergies?

I knew I was allergic to quite a few things. Pollen, cats, dogs, oranges. Weird that I couldn’t eat oranges or anything like that or even drink orange juice. My biggest handicap though had to be my asthma, and smoking up every weekend didn’t help it either.

Did I care? No. The high made me feel amazing, made me happy for once, and I always had my pump with me so in case I did end up getting an asthma attack, which to this day hasn’t happened when I was high, I would be ready.

Now I could go on and on about various hospital visits and other diseases I had, but that list would be too long and boring so I’ll just stick with the main ones.

Once we landed in New York I had three hours to spare to find my flight to Pittsburgh, which I easily did. Airports are idiocy proof. Signs everywhere, showing you where to go and what to do, seriously it didn’t get any easier than that!

I found my flight and waited around the airport for another few hours until boarding would finally start! Why did layovers have to be so long anyways? They could have just made it half an hour or something! Man, this whole entire trip sucked.

In that moment my Blackberry Torch vibrated in my pocket.

I sighed, thanking the heavens for sending me a text message, because us teenagers loved our texting!

Hey Oli, where are you right now? I’ll be picking you up, so I hope you still remember what I look like! :)

That was from Max, clearly since he was the only one who would pick me up. I guess he was happy for me to come see him. I mean I haven’t seen him since the season began. I was never one for travelling. I didn’t like heights all that much and being in an airplane means being high up.

I’m waiting for my plane in New York… it’s boring as fuck. I still know what you look like. You’re all over the tv.

I texted back and put my phone away again. I sighed and turned around, hearing the flight attendants start boarding for the flight to Pittsburgh.

I grinned and walked over to them, giving my ticket and sitting down on my shit seat, beside some happy, too happy, looking blonde chick. She had a scarf tied around her neck and was grinning from ear to ear. She looked to be around my age, maybe a little bit older.

“Oh my god I’m so excited!” she whispered to me.

I raised an eyebrow at her, but smiled slightly, as not to seem too much of an ass hole.

“I’m going to Pittsburgh to see the Rangers game there. I’m such a huge Rangers fan! Oh I’m so excited!” she squealed.

I think I just went deaf in my right ear.

I smirked, realizing that I would, most probably, get backstage passes. I would get to go to the Penguins locker room and be there for intermission. Hello, I was Maxime Talbot’s little brother!

“You like hockey?” she asked me.

“Not too much.” I muttered, not wanting to talk, due to my strong French accent.

I was failing English people, you want to know why? I couldn’t speak the damn language. I could understand, I could write it, but talking and vocabulary was not my thing.

For the entire flight I had this chick gobble on and on about how amazing Marc Staal was… god damn it! could she just shut up? I hated talking about hockey, I didn’t care for it one bit. I’ve been to enough games in my life to know what it was about. I’ve met enough pro’s to know that they are just like any other person…

I cheered, silently, when the plane finally landed and I could get away from crazed Rangers girl… man she was too happy, too hyper and too… too everything!

I waited for my bags to come out, and when they finally did, I booked it out of the weird waiting for your baggage room.

I ran outside, to where the people waited for their friends and family, but no sign of Max. He had told me he’d come and pick me up, but where the hell was he?

People hugging and saying hello to their families, blocked my way. I managed to get around some people, still looking around, searching for the infamous Maxime Talbot. My heart started to sink, just imagining being forgotten by him.

But then I saw a bunch of people bunched around one guy and when I looked closely, squinting my eyes, since I’d taken off my glasses before, I saw none other than my big brother. A smile grew on my face. Even though I pretended and acted like I hated him, he was still my big brother and I loved him like that. Having him gone for over half a year all the time was horrible.

I dropped my bags and ran towards him, jumping on him and hugging the life out of him.

He ignored his fans and swung me around happily, setting me back down on the ground. He smiled and ruffled my hair, before excusing himself from his fans.

“Welcome little brother! I’ve missed you!” he smiled.

I nodded and looked away, “I might be happy to see you, but I’m not happy to be here.” I growled.

Max chuckled and ruffled my hair again, picking up my bags and pulling them behind him, while I dragged my backpack along.

“Well let’s see how you think of that once you go to your new school and make some new friends… mom and dad already signed you up for some school, they even sent the uniform and everything… and wait until you see all the guys from the team again!”

“Uniforms?!” I shouted loudly, causing heads to turn and Max to laugh at me.

“Have fun little brother…”

Fuck I hated it here already… I wanted to go home… back to Quebec…