One Way Ticket

Booking a One Way Ticket

(note: the whole story has been written from Zoey's POV)

I was pacing around the length of my kitchen, occasionally stopping to throw heavy phrases of exasperation at my 17-year-old sister, who drove to the neighboring town in the new Ford Fiesta that my grandmother gifted me the previous autumn, only to go buy Boba tea for her girls night.

"What part of 'yOU cANT uSE mY sTUFF' do you not get!" I yelled.

"For the 100th time, I asked mom and she said its okay, and I've gotten your car in the same shape as it was when I took it, so stop making such a fuss about it!" she replied back in annoyance.

"This is the last time I—aaaaaahhhh," I screamed in pain as my left toe dashed into the pointy knob of one of the kitchen cabinets.

Today was just not my day.

Post a long rant from my mother about how irresponsible and illogical I was being today, and a painful application of ice pack on my toe until the temperature of my foot was less than that of the watermelon popsicles in my freezer, I was forced to lock myself up in my room, and was asked not move an inch out of the mahogany door because a.) I was "injured" and b.) my sister's semi-hysterical teenage girlfriends were over and my presence was a disturbance.

The alone-time I was spending got me thinking. I would be entering senior year in college in a couple of months, and I knew I didn't want to spend my last summer break binging Netflix shows and occasionally stepping out of my house to grab coffee or hang out with the few friends who would remain in town during the vacation. I did not want to make another road trip to Boston, because I knew I would only crash at my best friend's apartment and spend more than half my time there napping in her fancy queen sized bed. 

I was laying comfortably curled up in my blanket, listening to Olivia Rodrigo and contemplating life, when an idea for the perfect spring break struck me.

Hostels, bicycles, bread and broken French.

The Legendary Europe Backpacking Trip!

Gilmore Girls, Monte Carlo and the world of travel bloggers had really shaped my outlook on what backpacking through Europe would look like. Since the past 6-7 years, I had been shoving dollars down a fancy shoe box turned piggy bank  that I had aesthetically wrapped up in gift paper. The adventure enthusiast in me had been saving up money for all these years so that I could spend my 20s travelling and exploring freely. Looking back I felt so proud of my decision and I knew the time was right to start spending all this money.

I opened my laptop and google searched 'cheapest-flights-to-London' and without overthinking my decision to a point where it would be yet another crazy plan that remained trapped in the overcrowded brain of mine, I booked myself a non-refundable one way ticket to the London Heathrow.

That was it. It was done. There was no turning back. I was going to Europe and after paying a solid 435$ even my mom couldn't say no.