Lost!

I should have known from the very beginning that I would have forgotten something. I was never a super organized person, but I would have never dreamed I would lose something this important.

“Passport, please,” the woman at the desk in front of me snapped in her deep foreign accent. It was enough to make me want to punch her in the face.

I dug through my purse over and over again, spreading its contents all over the counter. Jordan and Krista just stood there and stared, wide-eyed, as I searched for my passport. There was no way I could’ve left it at the hotel.

Ever since we arrived in France, my two best friends had become my two worst enemies. Jordan Poubelle and Krista Andrews had always been the shallow, stereotypical popular type, but this trip just made it all worse. They were never my true friends. Not once did they offer to help me pack, or invite me to go meet cute French guys with them. They didn’t care about me in the slightest.

It made me so sick to my stomach to think that I was the only one that took care of their sickly, drunken selves whenever they partied too hard. A pang of hatred hit me in the gut when I remembered all the times that they were out of money, and I bought them dinner. I took care of them, I sheltered them. I was a good friend, and I got stepped on for it.

If it weren’t for Jordan and Krista, I’d still have my passport. Two nights before we were supposed to head back to America, the two of them were nowhere to be found. All of their clothes lay strung out across the hotel room, their suitcases untouched. All of my things, or what I presumed were all of my things, lay neatly packed into my luggage in the far corner of the room.

I paced for what seemed like ages that night, awaiting the arrival of the world’s worst friends. They didn’t stumble in until around two in the morning, drunker than I had ever seen them. I shook my head in disappointment, but I still took care of them, for some reason or another. I held Jordan’s bleach-blonde hair back as she spent the rest of the night with her head in the toilet. I even made soup for Krista, who I found digging through my purse for cash when I returned from the bathroom.

“If you need money, just ask,” I snapped as I ripped my wallet from her hands and tossed it onto the table, only after taking out thirty Euros and handing the bills to her.

If I would have stopped to think about myself for once that night, I wouldn’t have ended up trying to board a plane without a passport.

“I just had it, I swear,” I mumbled frantically to the woman at the desk, who was now shifting her weight from one foot to the other uneasily.

“Did you leave it at the hotel?” Jordan asked, with her hands on her hips, tapping her foot impatiently.

I shook my head and began to rummage through my bag again.

“I’m sorry, but there is no way I can let you board this plane without a passport,” the woman explained. “And this flight leaves in ten minutes.”

Jordan and Krista looked at one another and at once I knew what they were thinking.

“Oh hell no. You are not leaving me here.” I could feel the tears welling up in my eyes.

The two exchanged concerned looks before Jordan finally stepped forward and took my hands.

“Sophie, we have Olympic training in three days. You know that…” she trailed off as I jerked my hands out of her grasp.

“Does it look like I give a damn, Jordan? I’m your friend; you’d think I’d mean more to you that soccer!”

Of course, I was wrong. Nothing in the world meant more to Jordan and Krista than soccer – not even boys and partying.

“Sophie, we love you, but what other choice do we have?” Krista began, biting her lip uneasily.

I shook my head in disbelief as the worker behind the desk cleared her throat awkwardly. “Flight 143 for Boston,” she said, trying her best not to upset me anymore. She mouthed a soft “sorry” to me as I looked pleadingly at her.

I was shocked. My two supposed best friends were leaving me in a foreign country, all alone, because of a stupid sport. What was I going to do? Where was I going to stay?

Tears were streaming steadily down my face as I watched the two people I hated most in the world at that moment board the flight home. My flight home. I stood there, rooted in the same spot, for what seemed like ages. I watched the plane take off, and then it finally hit me: I was alone. All alone. All alone in a foreign country. How was I ever going to survive this? I was petrified of even going to the supermarket by myself; there was no way I was going to make it home without losing my sanity.

Hours passed, and the furthest I had ventured from the spot where I was betrayed was a group of seats near the flight gate. I sat down, trembling, and tried to think straight. That was a difficult for me, even on a good day. Thoughts cascaded through my brain, and I could feel myself developing a migraine.

“Pretty shitty friends you’ve got there, eh?” A voice to my left startled me. It was the woman that worked behind the desk. I nodded feebly. “I’m really sorry, I just can’t let anyone board without a valid passport,” she continued, staring down at her shoes in guilt.

“You were just doing your job,” I mumbled back, wishing it was all a dream.

We sat there for a while, neither of us talking, both too shocked to say anything. I buried my head in my hands and groaned.

“I’d like to make it up to you, if you’ll let me,” she said when I finally looked up. “I’m Vivian, by the way. I want to help you.”

“How could you possibly help me?” I asked, shaking my head.

“I can offer you a place to stay, free of charge.”

I stared at Vivian blankly, wondering whether or not to take her up on her offer. I desperately needed a place to stay, given my shortage of funds. However, I didn’t want to end up at some grungy hotel filled with sketchy characters only seen in my nightmares. Vivian seemed to notice my skepticism.

“My mom is a concierge, I can call her up and you can stay at her place. I’ll pay for everything, don’t worry. I just feel so awful that this happened to you.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “A concierge? So she owns a Bed and Breakfast?”

“Sort of. Look, you sit right here and I’ll call her right now and take care of everything.”

Before I could respond, Vivian was off, rushing toward the desk that I had come to despise. Her face seemed to light up as she dialed her mother’s number on the phone and started chatting away. Only then could I breathe properly again. I was going to be alright.

After a few moments, Vivian came back, positively beaming. She arranged for a cab to take me to her mother’s place, where I could stay and eat for free for as long as I was stuck in France. I had never been more thankful for a stranger’s kindness in my entire life. That was, until I saw where I was staying.

The cab pulled up to a shabby looking building on the outskirts of a port city called Marseilles. Ivy covered half of the three story house, which made it look even more decrepit. I kicked myself for trusting a total stranger while dragging my luggage out of the taxi’s trunk. How could I be so stupid? I asked myself this question over and over before I heard a door slam.

A chunky woman in a pink Mumu and an even pinker apron came waddling out of the building, waving her hand frantically.

“You must be ze girl from ze airport!” If I thought Vivian’s accent was thick, it was nothing compared to this woman’s. “I am Adail, Vivian’s mother, I own zis hostel!”
My jaw involuntarily dropped. A hostel? I was going to have to share a room with anyone under the age of thirty?

Before I could say anything, the woman ushered me inside, not letting me touch any of my luggage. The inside of the hostel was exactly like the outside, dirty but somehow quaint. Looking around, I wasn’t so thankful for Vivian’s offer anymore. The front room was tiny, beside a tiny kitchen, and attached to a tiny bathroom. The only thing that divided the front room was a narrow spiral staircase that Vivian’s mother was now climbing, dragging my suitcase behind her.

“Follow me,” she demanded, breathing hard from having to carry my two-ton luggage. Adail led me into a small attic bedroom, filled with three bunk beds, two chest-of-drawers, and a small, ratty couch facing a window. When she finally threw my suitcase down onto the hard wood floor, Adail smiled at me. It was a full, genuine smile. I hadn’t experienced one of those in months. There was no way I could break it to her that I couldn’t stay at a hostel.

“No one is staying here until later in ze week, so you can choose any bed and make yourself comfortable! I vill be downstairs if you need anyzing!” she declared before rushing back down the staircase.

I looked around the room and sighed. I had never been in a place so depressing. It probably wouldn’t have been so disheartening if it’d been remodeled in the last twenty years. The wallpaper was a moldy-looking yellow, and was sagging in several places. The floor was very dusty, and nearly every board creaked. I threw myself onto the worn couch and immediately felt springs attacking my body, but I didn’t care. I stared at the ceiling for a few moments, trying to shake myself from this nightmare I was living.

I couldn’t have been alone for more than ten minutes before I heard Adail trudging back up the staircase. There was no mistaking her footsteps. She appeared in the doorway moments later, a cordless telephone in her hand.

“You have a call,” she smiled and handed the phone to me. Who could possibly be calling me? Maybe my two awful best friends had managed to get in touch with my parents, and they were going to rescue me.

“Hello?”

“Sophie?”

My heart dropped as soon as I recognized the voice. It was Krista. I groaned as a form of a response.

“Sophie, you will not guess what happened. So we’re on the plane home, and I went to the bathroom and went to pull a tampon out of your purse and you’ll never guess what fell out!”

“How did you even get this number? I don’t have time for this, Krista.”

“It was your passport, stupid! It must’ve fallen in my purse!”

I had never been more angry and relieved at the same time. If Krista hadn’t been going through my purse for cash, my things wouldn’t have ended up getting mixed in with hers. At the same time, I was thankful that at least I knew where my ticket back home was. I couldn’t speak for the longest time.

“What the fuck, Krista?”

“Aren’t you happy baby girl? Now you can come home! What’s your address? I’ll mail it to you as soon as we get back to Boston!”

In a slur of yelling profanity at the girl I used to call my best friend, I somehow managed to get the address from a pamphlet on the chest-of-drawers and rally it back to her. If she was blissfully unaware that I was angry with her before, Krista knew for a fact that I despised her now. Our argument ended with me calling her a selfish bitch and her hanging up after saying I was lucky she was even shipping the passport to me.

I grabbed a moldy-smelling pillow and screamed into it. I couldn’t see straight I was so upset with Krista. Eventually, I drifted into sleep, taking one of my famous “angry naps.” The only thing I was ever good at was sleeping off the pain.