Rome

I walk quietly down the dark hallway illuminated by the bright full moon. The only noise is the muffled shuffling of my soft pink slippers that were given to me by my grandmother for getting good grades. It’s not my fault, you know. I kind of have to do this. It’s a necessity, not another thing I just want. At least, that’s what I convince myself as I softly touch the cold, silver doorknob that reflects the serene moon. My hand is paralyzed, but only a little bit. This is the last chance I have to change my mind, a decision that could keep me alive in the future or be my downfall. Unfortunately, whether I should go or not is no question. I force the knob to twist and push myself into the bitter cold. I close the door carefully behind me so I don’t wake anyone and walk a little further away from my house. A little further away from my past, and closer to my future.
It’s done now. I can’t go back. I take one last look at my home. A glass railing on my flat roof is falling apart. It’s sort of my fault. The roof was my sanctuary, where I went for comfort and peace. I did most of my homework up there and even slept up there once. It’s pretty amazing to be able to wake up and find yourself looking at the night sky- at constellations and galaxies- and not another wall. It’s freedom, no restrictions. Literally, no ceilings, just an infinite sky. The stars are shining for me tonight as I continue to make my way down the hill that I grew up on. I used to play out here with my little brother. One time, I even pushed him down the hill in a small toy car for babies. I was about eight, and he must have been six. He crashed at the rusty, green gate at the bottom of the hill, but he was fine and I made sure of it. I made him swear on his favorite toy not to tell our parents.
Tonight, I am guided by the sparkling lights of the city, not the stars. When I left, it was around midnight, and I have about six more hours until daybreak. I left a note on my kitchen counter for my family telling them I will be walking to my bus stop in the morning. That gives me until after school tomorrow. However, it is pretty unlike me to ditch school, and when they get the call that I am absent, they will begin searching. By that time, I have to at least be at the airport.
I cover my head with the hood of my gray hoodie. Blond strands of hair still frame my face, although their linear paths are interrupted by my fake square glasses. I don’t actually need to take this much precaution yet, it’s still too early, but I feel safer with a disguise. I left to escape myself, so a disguise is exactly what I need. I play with a strand of hair until a large, orange and gray bus rolls up. CityCommuter is written in white block letters on gray part of the side of the bus. It’s a quite ugly vehicle, even for a bus. I think my school bus is better-looking. I step onto the bus and hand the driver a quarter with a slight nod and curl of my lips.
“What are you doing up at this hour, sweetie?” The driver asked. Confused, I point to myself and look around the empty bus. “Yes, you. Honey, why aren’t you at home? You can’t be more than seventeen.” The bus driver had curly hair and dark skin. Her smile revealed a small gap between her front teeth, but it also lit up her eyes. A person has to be truly happy for a smile to illuminate their whole face like that. When I smile, I just move my mouth; my eyes are still numb.
“Well I am,” I lied. “I’m eighteen as of last Saturday.”
“Happy late birthday!” The bus driver says. “Here’s your quarter back. Being grown-up now, you might need it sometime.” She hands me my coin and I smile, then retreat to the very back of the bus. The row at the back is elevated above the other rows. I guess it made me feel good. But there was no one on the bus.
“You know, sweetie,” The bus driver was practically yelling. “I’m not getting any business at one thirty-three in the morning. Where ya headed?”
I hesitate. “The airport.” I panic for a second before finding the plane ticket in my bag with my hand. It’s still there. I’ve got my passport too. And my blanket. I’m good.
“The airport? Whatcha doing there?” She asks. It’s annoyed. I tried to pay her, and she doesn’t have to be nice to me. I won’t tell her the truth even if the kindness was genuine.
“I’m staying with my father in New York for a couple weeks. “
“Did you want a late night flight? That is something I never want to do.”
“Yes,” I answer. “I like sleeping on planes.” It was a stupid answer, but the bus driver seemed to be content with it. She started talking to me about her childhood in New York. I am completely tuned out, but I heard something about snowmen and Central Park.
I don’t think I have ever been more excited to get off a bus. Even on the day when I had a paper due and three tests in the same day- one during first period. Even after I hadn’t slept the weekend before and looked like a raccoon. Getting off the bus tonight feels like a breath of fresh air. No one knows me here at the airport. No one will even think to look for me, especially here, until tomorrow. I have almost a day to be free. A day where I don’t have to worry. I take a deep breath and feel the hot, wet air spill into my lungs. It almost feels gross.
The bus driver wishes me well on my travels and drives off. I stay outside for a minute, then walk inside. It’s the right terminal, I think. Pacifica Airlines International. The airport is dead and nearly empty. I quickly walk to the bathroom. Like I thought, there is no one inside. I take out some orange scissors. I divide my hair into two parts and hold a pencil up to the right part and line it up to where my shoulders meet my neck. I hold the pencil securely with my left hand and make my first cut with my right. About five inches of hair falls to the floor instantaneously. I take a deep breath and make another cut. When I am finished with both sections, I clean up the hair from the floor and throw it in the trash along with the scissors. I gave myself a pretty decent haircut. I needed to. I can’t even look like my old self.
The escalator feels slow. A flickering light behind the bag check desk catches my eye. I stare at it and try to time its flickers. It stays on for three seconds at most, sometimes for. It starts to annoy me, so I turn away and step off the escalator. There are still no lines and no people. I sigh and walk to the security check line. A man behind a small desk asks for my boarding pass and passport. I hand them over and he draws a line through my boarding pass.
“Name and age?” He asks.
“Riona Kamber, sixteen.” I answer. He hands back my passport and everything and lets me through.
There is one person ahead of me, an older man, maybe around fifty, that has a green and blue tye-dye Hawaiian shirt and jeans on. His head is covered with a navy blue straw cap. Maybe he’s going to Russia. He trips while trying to take off his brown leather sandals. Finally, he walks through the scanner, puts back on his sandals, retrieves his backpack, and leaves.
I place my small sac into a boring beige bin, push it to the conveyor belt, and walk up to the scanner where an old woman with white hair and glasses ushers me through. She instructs me to hold my arms above my head. I have done this twice before. Two years ago, my family went to Italy, and four years ago, we went to France. My plane ticket today is for Rome. If I’m going to leave everything behind, I deserve, at the least, to be in a place that make me happy.
I walk out of the scanner, collect my sac, and walk to gate 43B, which is empty with the exception of two men in suits with briefcases at their feet. I take my wallet out and buy some chewing gum from a concession stand. I’ve never been able to fly without it. I have chronic ear pain during descent. One time, when I was a lot younger, I screamed and the man next to me called a flight attendant to ask for medical help. I tried to wave her off, but I couldn’t take my hands off my ears. After we landed, my hearing was sort of muted for a week.
I also buy an “I love Hollywood” sweater because I know I’ll need it. It’s a pretty, seafoam-green type color. It was that or a red one, and I thought red would be too obvious. I made sure to stay away from the orange. Orange is an ugly color. I brought a coat, but I need to be ready for all types of weather, I guess. I leave the sweater in a bag for now. It’s too hot to wear it, anyways.
Back at the gate, I read a book about Italian that I bought the first time I went to Rome, two years ago. I flip to a page that has a bent top corner. It shows a photo of a girl with sunglasses holding some ice cream in a cone. At the top of the page, it says, “Un cono di cioccolato y strachitella, per favore.” I love ice cream, but I won’t be ordering it much this time. Maybe if I get a job or something, I’ll let myself get some on Fridays to celebrate a week of somewhat-success.
Except, nothing I do will be completely successful. I haven’t even thought about where to sleep and eat and although I have a toothbrush in my bag, I don’t know how I’ll brush my teeth. This was too abrupt. Maybe I shouldn’t have left this soon. But there was no other option and at least I’ll be in Rome. It beats staying in California and moving north. I have money, but I’ll need it for food. It’s only about two-thousand dollars and a couple euros that I had in a bag from my last trip to Rome. And I looked it up online before I left: two-thousand US dollars is only 1,455 euros. I guess it’s not terrible.
I put the Italian book away and go to find a currency exchange machine. I find one outside a bathroom, and exchange the dollars that I have. All except a one and a five dollar bill, which I keep just in case. Then, I brush my teeth using the airport bathroom and return to the gate. We are finally boarding. The men are gone, so I assume they have already gotten on the flight. I walk to the stand in front of the passage to the plane and give the attendant my passport and boarding pass. She tears a section of my boarding pass of.
Out of nowhere, a family of four runs up to the gate, luggage trailing behind and out of breath. There is a mother and a father and two boys. One of them is probably only a year or two younger than I am, but the other one is six years old at most. The mother flashes me a tried smile and I smile back in the fake way that I smile before entering the plane.
I am seated alone in a row near the back of the plane. More people must have come to the gate when I was buying my sweater or in the bathroom because the plane isn’t that empty. My row is empty, but there are two people seated across from me and the plane has about two people in every other row. Some are obvious tourists, cradling their cameras and looking at Italian phrasebooks similar to my own. Others are businessmen or women that have already settled in with their laptops and phones. Others are just quiet, reading or staring at the small television screen in front of them. And then, there’s me. I’m none of these. I’m just kind of here, not doing anything at all. I fit into none of these categories, so I add a new one that only includes me. I struggle with what to call my category, but end up with the name The Rogue. I add an s in parentheses, just in case there is someone out there like me, making up a separate category for themselves.
I pop a piece of gum into my mouth as the plane moves backwards and turns around. The runway lights are red and yellow tonight. I try to count them as the plane moves toward the runway, but I know it’s a futile effort. The lights turn white like stars as we move to the runway. I hear the revving of the plane’s engine. It sounds like we will go from being still to thousands of miles an hour in a second. I try to chew my gum as loudly as possible. The plane lurches forward and my body sticks to my seat as the plane lifts off of the ground. We climb higher and higher and soon enough, the bright lights of the city are visible below. They’re astonishing and infinite. I can’t imagine life here a thousand, or even a hundred, years ago when there were less lights and I wouldn’t be able to see anything right now. Although if it were a hundred years ago, I wouldn’t be in a plane in the first place. There are yellow lights, blue ones, white ones, and even some green ones. They all sparkle like the stars.
There are less lights as we head toward the beach. Form where I’m sitting, I can see a couple on the distant hills, but they are gone as we fly over water. The plane turns and I see a bright yellow light again, then some more yellows, and then some blues, and then the greens. They increase in number as we fly over the city once more. I press my face against the cold window and look down. It looks almost peaceful down there. Nothing is moving and the lights are the only objects that are visible. They outline buildings, but you still wouldn’t be able to tell what color the buildings were. A small droplet falls from my cheek onto my pants. The city is gone. The lights are too. I press the back of my head against the seat, but even that doesn’t stop me from crying.
I take out my green “I love Hollywood” sweater and trace my finger over the embroidered, white letters. “I” is easy. One word, one letter, one line. “Love” is a lot harder. It’s a funny word. The o is not easy to trace, and neither is the e, but the l is another one-lined letter that looks like a capital i, and the v has just one extra line that meets the i line at the bottom of the letter. Hollywood is terrible. I give up on tracing it on the w, put on the sweater, and pull the hood up. I pull the sleeves of the hood over my hands and use them to wipe away the tears from my eyes. I’m done crying. I could’ve cried yesterday or the day before, but I didn’t. I could’ve said a better goodbye. I knew this trip was coming. I couldn’t wait a day longer. Being on the plane, actually traveling to Rome, is the culmination of a year’s worth of planning. Although, my original plan wasn’t aimed at Rome and included a nice apartment and a job and more gelato and… It doesn’t matter. That was then, this is now. I have 1,449 euros to use in Rome before I need to get a job and provide for myself. Anyways, this trip was inevitable. It could’ve happened under better circumstances and all, but it was going to happen.
I fell asleep and dreamed of orange. Just orange, nothing else. At least, that’s all I remember of my dream. It just sat there and taunted me. First it was a small cube, and then, like the Big Bang or something, it just exploded and consumed my whole line of sight. I could only see orange and there was no escaping it.
I’m pretty sure the people across the row from me genuinely think I’m crazy because I woke up panting and sweating and all. The orange cube is still embedded in my brain like the red scar stuck on my left elbow. That’s probably one of the reasons I woke up so abruptly. I was putting too much pressure on my elbow by leaning on it and I guess it sort of hurt. It was bad the first day I got it. I think it was a third degree burn. I woke up in the hospital that night. It was late, probably around the same time it is now. I was alone on a gurney. I got up because I wanted to leave, but a doctor stopped me. He showed me the burn in the mirror and it looked all red and gross. I don’t know though, I was never bothered by it and I’m still not bothered by it. It hurt a lot back then, in the hospital. I remember touching it and crying. The next day, I was released. I wore a black lace dress that day. I remember the lace painfully pressing into the burn while leaning against the ground and I remember the rain falling on my burn and exacerbating the pain. I didn’t care enough to wrap the burn. I knew it would heal no matter what. Today, it looks a little better. I checked right before I went to bed. It’s less red and a little smaller. I bite my tongue press my elbow into the seat rest as hard as I can.
A short flight attendant pushes a cart up to my seat. The businessman in the row across from me orders some alcoholic beverage and has to pay extra for it. The tourist woman orders a soda and some cookies. I get water with no ice and some peanuts. I put the peanuts directly into my bag to save for later. While I’m putting them in, my hand brushes against a cold, metal piece. I feel for it again and take it out of the bag. It’s a bracelet. It has square, silver pieces hinged together. The squares depict famous Parisian buildings and monuments such as the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame with their names in French engraved on the top of the squares. I run my small pinky finger over the large squares. My favorite is the Arc du Triomphe.
The bracelet slides onto my left hand with no trouble. It’s a little big, so I clasp my hand around the bracelet, holding it to my wrist. The nice, coolness of the bracelet sends shivers down my spine, but also makes me tear up a little. They’re happy tears, I think. There is only one person that knew I was packing a bag. After all, he was packing with me and we were going to leave together. We were going to leave two days ago. The smile fades and I get back to aimlessly staring out the window. There aren’t many lights in the area we’re flying over. It’s dark and lonely. A snowflake has formed near the bottom of the ovular window. It’s small and delicate, but it hangs onto the bottom of the window.
There is nothing better to do but sleep. I would sleep, or at least try to sleep, but it seems my eyelids have been painted orange. A bright and ugly shade of stupid orange. I play with my bracelet and try to close my eyes again. I try to imagine Paris. The Arc du Triomphe is towering in front of me. I look up and take in its amazing engravings and beautiful architecture. People walk past me, but I take no notice of who they are. I’m pretty sure someone tries to take something from my bag, but there is nothing to steal. Twenty-four masterfully engraved flowers line the top. A French flag with sections of vibrant blue, clean white, and powerful red hangs down. My head hits it as I walk under. I am now close enough to touch it. I hesitate. Should I be touching it? Can I touch it? Are there guards around? No. I reach out and touch it, but when I take another look, I am on the outside of the Coliseum in Rome. I open my eyes and decide to stay awake.
I get up to go to the bathroom. The six-year-old from the family that almost missed their flight earlier has his head on his mother’s shoulder, his eyes closed. He has his green polka-dotted pajamas on and brought slippers that are meant to look like monsters. His thumb is in his mouth, his tiny arm wrapped around a soft blue blanket. He sort of makes me wonder how my family is doing right now. They’ve probably had enough. I ran away when the opportunity presented itself. I mean, the death and funeral, and everything else. It was time. There was really no staying. So I ran the day after the funeral. His name was Orion. His parents were astronomers and named him after one of the brightest constellations. It worked, too. He was one of the brightest people I had ever met. Good in all his classes, and the star of the swim and soccer team. He was tall with somewhat tan skin and light brown hair that he never cared enough to brush. He wore clothes that barely matched and tennis shoes every day. The only time I saw him dressed nicely was when he took me out for dinner at this small Italian place near my house. My parents loved him immediately and they trusted him. They were devastated to see a boy that had a future brighter than his namesake go. But they didn’t run. I owe a lot to him, to say the least. But, I guess I can’t repay him anymore. At least I stayed for the funeral to say a final goodbye. That has to count for something.
I step into the bathroom and go into a small panic attack for a second. It was really short. With shallow breaths and a beating heart, I wet a paper towel and shoved it onto my burn. And it hurt. A lot. But it also felt good. Kind of. It was cool and refreshing. I grab my Paris bracelet and calm down a little. Tears start rolling down my cheeks one by one, then two by two, until the point that I can’t even count them. I’m tired and hungry already and I still have a lifetime to go.
When I return to my seat, I allow myself to eat the peanuts. The whole not eating thing will get easier as I go, so I’ll be fine. It’s getting hot in here. I pull my hood down and feel a little better. I can’t get Orion off my mind. I saw him two days ago, but it feels like at least a month or something. We were packing. He promised we would go and I couldn’t hold off any longer. I guess it was exciting and stuff. We went to our final party that night. We were going to leave after it and we were going to say goodbye to friends and take photos with alcohol so we had an excuse to leave. Our families would hate us and think we were insane and then we’d be gone. Of course we weren’t actually going to drink anything. We just needed the plea for insanity. Some guy that I wish I knew dropped a lit cigarette onto a pile of paper or something stupid like that. I hope he drops one on his face too. And Orion and I shouldn’t have gone to that party. His face was orange and he was staring at me with crying eyes and sadness and desperation and I just left. I gave him a hug. He was facedown and I couldn’t see his eyes or his stupid orange face and I was scared. I left and this is all my fault. I had to leave, please believe me.
“We now begin our descent.” A flight attendant’s voice booms over the loudspeaker. I clasp my jaw, start chewing another piece of gum, and pull up my hood again. It’s too cold anyways. I don’t dare sleep for the last twenty minutes. It’s only twenty minutes and then I’m there. I’m free and innocent. No one knows me. I watch the airline’s ‘thank you for flying with us’ video about five-hundred times. Finally, the lights of the city are visible. They are the same colors as the Hollywood lights, but even brighter. My hand is tingling because I have been holding my bracelet so tight that I cut off circulation. I lift the bracelet to reveal imprints of the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre on my wrist. I scratch at them until they aren’t all bumpy. Finally, my body is hurled forward by the impact of the airplane’s touchdown. I tighten my jaw and move my sac to my lap. We taxi into a gate and stop. The doors open and the first few passengers get out and all, and then it’s my turn. The worst part is that although I wish this plane had taken me back in time, I don’t miss Hollywood. Not at all. I feel nothing towards it, which makes me a bit happier. I guess if I don’t feel anything about my departure, then no one else will either. Maybe no one even noticed. No one cared if they did.
I step into the Roman airport. It’s nice to have my feet on the ground again. Tomorrow, I will see the Coliseum and tonight, I will sleep under the stars. They are the same ones I saw in Hollywood when I left, so they are not strangers to me. They’ll welcome me and I will have a home. I have no bags to collect, so I walk out into the night, hood still up and all. Except I pull my hood down when I realize the language on the signs in the airport is not Italian. And I am not in Rome.