Save ourselves- One Direction

Daisy

Holding my phone in my hand again felt somehow strange. As if it came from another life. A life I was no longer used to. When you used your smartphone every day, you were always reachable, you knew what time it was and what day it was.

Here, you forgot everything after a while. Time hardly mattered. The only thing you followed was day and night. You had your routine and knew where you had to be and when.

At that moment, I would have liked to do a lot with my mobile phone. I would have liked to call my mother to tell her what was really happening to us. I would have liked to have called my father to tell him what was actually going on in his head to just take off like that. But there was no reception here. But that didn't stop me from looking at my photos from before the camp.

My parents and I, eating ice cream in the park or looking at pictures after a successful swimming competition where my team had come second. After a while of looking at my pictures, I noticed that Dad was less and less visible in the photos as the date of my sentencing came closer. As if it was a silent announcement that he would disappear from our lives very soon. Why hadn't I noticed this before? Dad used to show up at all my competitions and or school plays because I had once tried my luck as an actress in the school play to impress my mom. She was a theater director and had done some successful plays. She had been very proud of me for taking part in the drama course and disappointed when I dropped out again because I didn't enjoy it as much as I had hoped. But nevertheless she continued to support me.

The thing with Dad had started slowly. At first it was only one or two appointments that he missed, but over time his absences became more and more frequent. Suddenly he no longer had time to go swimming with me. Or to come to my competitions. He was always making up new excuses. Mostly work. And I, naïve as I was, had believed everything he said. How was it that I didn't notice all the signs until now? I felt so incredibly stupid.

Avery sat down next to me. She had her phone in her hand as well.

"Can I see your photos?" she asked with a smile and I nodded, showing her the photos from my last competition.

"Wow, your team seems really amazing."

"Yeah, I hope when we get out of here I can swim there again. Or at least find a new group," I muttered.

"You'll be fine. If not, you can train with me sometime. There are lots of places to swim in Amsterdam, you just have to watch out for oncoming boats," she joked.

"Very funny. Let me see your photos."

"Here," she handed me her phone.

I scrolled through the photos. Avery actually seemed to have a good bond with her parents, at least there were significantly more family photos with her than with me. And even though she had told me about her parents' marriage problems, her parents still seemed to love each other. At least that's how it looked in the photos.

"Who is that? Is that a friend from back home?", I had spotted a picture that was a little older, as Avery looked a little younger in the picture. She was sitting on a brick wall with a red-haired girl, grinning at the camera.

"That's Keyla. I still know her from my time in Germany. We were best friends back then," she told me.

"And now you're still friends?"

"Well, the contact broke off at some point. The Netherlands and Germany are neighboring countries, but the distance between us was still very great. So sometimes you lose track of each other."

"When was this photo taken?"

"I think it was about four or five months before the move. Keyla already knew what she wanted to be when she grew up. I still have no idea."