Who am I?

TWO

I'm standing on a cliff on a mountain. I can feel the gentle breeze buffeting my skin, I can smell the sweet, grape-scented air, I can see the plentiful pine trees crowding the descending plain. I love these kind of places, but I know this isn't real. 

I am one of those people who have this conscious side to them, so I know the difference between reality and dreams. 

Then something looms from the edge of the forest, a huge black shadow with glowing red eyes. It grows and expands until it reaches me, and burning pain erupts in my legs.

It's like a knife is repeatedly stabbing me and I instinctively back up, running away from it until I'm right at the point of the cliff. It's very thin, so I know it won't hold my weight for much longer, but it still doesn't succumb. 

The shade touches my leg, and I let my horrible scream loose as agony flares up and down my limb like icy-burning water that is so hot my nerves doesn't register it. It feel colds, and in seconds so many tears have fallen my face is wet like I dipped it in a barrel of water. 

I cry and sob as I sink to my knees and the world in front of me fades. It refuses to get out of my head, so I won't just fall unconscious from the sky and wake up. I can't seem to end the dream though I should be able to. 

It hurts deeply and in my desperation to get out of this pain, I grab a hand sized rock and smack it repeatedly into the edge of the cliff. It crumbles a little, and I sob and shudder until I'm falling from the sky, where the shadow can't reach me.

I should be waking up now, except I'm not, and the tips of pine rush closer and closer. The shadow is snaking its way down to me, and I'm suddenly suspended in the air. I want to fall and hit the ground and burst conscious, but I can't, and it touches me, and terrible throbbing tortures me. 

The dreams won't let me wake, the world won't let me fall, and the pines don't grow to save me.

Familiar hands wrap themselves around my shoulders, and I jolt to the real world, blinking half-formed tears out of my eyes. I'm awake. Despite my maybe 20 hours of rest I feel even more exhausted than I was when I fell asleep. 

Mamma is shaking me. "Time to go, sweetie," she says in Spanish quickly, then smiles and pulls me up, passing me my bag. I'm shaking and weak, but she doesn't seem to notice as she ushers me out of the cabin in a rush to get out of the plane. I missed the landing, and something stabs me in the heart as I file, backpack with me, out of the plane dutifully. 

Blinding yellow-white rays shine into my eyes, and I escalate down the steps while Papa goes quicker in front of me. He jogs slowly to the back of the long, twining line where we need to get our luggage checked. Unfortunately, this gives me too much time to think. 

I feel sad, we are officially in Manhattan, New York, and away from Spain. But the dream unsettles me more even though it's not real. I'm scared, and it is very obvious, but I don't want to show it. 

After half an hour, it is our turn and we place our luggage on the treadmill in dreary grey tubs. I put my bag in it and walk through the metal detector rectangle, and it beeps. I look around confusedly. I am not smuggling anything.

The person in the yellow vest passes me around again with the lighting-up metal thing in their hands. I don't know what they are called, but I assume they are also mini metal detectors. They beep at my pocket.

They advance towards me, and I panic. What do they think they are doing? I've never been international with being caught in this problem before. I search my pockets and find nothing in them. 

"There is nothing inside," I argue in Spanish calmly. They don't care, or understand. I squeeze my eyes tightly sealed and they search in my pockets with their sanitary blue gloves. Something goes click and a small pinch, then they extract their hand and pull out a pin that holds together the small rip in my jeans. It opens, and my blue and white striped underwear is partly revealed. 

I wince, but they don't laugh or suppress any smiles. They just throw it in the black plastic-ringed bin. 

"Hey!" I tell them in English, annoyed. Now I have to pinch together the tear, and it looks like I really need to go to the toilet. 

"Sorry, but it's a requirement," she says. I only understand the first part. An apology. I stare more gently even though I'm still cross and pass through the detector, which doesn't siren this time. I go through without any loud noises, and collect my bag at the end. This is a relief. I am so stressed as Mamma, Papa and I walk through the shops, which are selling jewellery, toys, pillows and food. 

We sit down at a breakfast place though it is already 11:00am and I buy hot chocolate and a raspberry and white chocolate muffin. It is bigger than my palm, and the sweet taste explodes in my mouth as I munch it down. I'm sorry I missed the five-star meals on the plane. I wonder why my parents didn't wake me for a whole 20 hours. Then again, on weekends, Papa snores like a pig and sleeps in for sometimes the whole day. 

Mamma sips her coffee and scrolls through her phone, and Papa stares at his laptop while drinking his latte. They don't touch their pastries. I feel like the only one at the table who is actually alive, actually not existing in the world of screens, digital devices and tech is me.

I am different, and I like that, but it makes me feel alone. Everybody loves or hates being different, and so many slogans and child supports say that it's good, because you are original, there's no one in the world the same as you. And that sort of means you are lonely, having no one to have common ground with, having no one to have similarities with, or anyone to communicate with. I don't like being different, I'd rather be a clone of so many people, unoriginal. It feels safer than having to stand by yourself.

The solution: I get out my smartphone and start scrolling through fact articles on google, stories and drawing videos, blocking out the sound with my wireless headphones. Being alone is too hard. This is the reason I am so scared to move from Spain, for the fear that I won't fit in, won't be able to make friends. 

Psychologists say all that rubbish and all that baloney to make you feel better, with false hope and slogans swarming in your brain. You think, I'm going to make so many friends, and then it fails and you start to blame the psychologist, because life is made of the Blame Game. 

But the psychologist can't take the blame, because he or she were just doing their job. A job for money, and all those gold and silver coins, which is the reason I have to endure all this right now. 

After another 15 minutes, we are out in the glaring sunshine, and there are roads down below the higher ground we are standing on. It reminds me of the cliff, except this time I'm trying to stay in the shade, not run away from it. Towering skyscrapers with aqua and blue hues ring the horizon, spearing the sky with their pointy tips. 

I don't believe it. New York is all glamour, all cool, no familiarity or warmness. I can't compare anything from Spain except maybe the fact that I have now visited them both. Spain has tall buildings, maybe seven-storey to eight-storey and small skyscrapers, but it's all made of stone and concrete, not glass and metal.

That way, history is neatly preserved and shows things in modern ways, and it also isn't too tall to make you feel enclosed like you're in a bowl. The streets there aren't as littered with rubbish or as dirty, or cramped and long and winding. New York... well, it's not that it isn't livable, but it emits more smoke, destroys more trees and I can't even see the mountains. The mountains used to calm me, ensure me that there was a safe, less evil place to run off to if things got hard in the regular life. But here, the mountains were too far away to even see.

"What do you think, mija?" Mamma yells to me, smiling, over the roar of the crowd and cars and engines. I don't want to upset her, so I reply, "It's great?" in Spanish. And yes, there's a question mark, because really, I think that I would rather be drinking from a river and living in a cave than this. 

We cross the road, holding each others' hands and walk down hard cascading steps, following the rough stone staircase down underground to catch the screech-shouting train, which is the evil 'white' vehicle that speeds me away from the airport, my only hope, my only chance of getting back to home: Spain.