And Away We Drive

Chapter 1: A Week Earlier

Chapter 1: A Week Earlier.

Kendrick

"I can't wait for the upcoming field trip." I said as enthusiastic as I could.

"Mmm." was the only reply I got from Katya, who was sitting close to me, her eyes fixed on the book she held with her right hand, the left hand was tucked somewhere I couldn't see. Right behind her back, I thought.

"Well, are you?"

"Mmm."

I just nodded and kept my mouth shut. It didn't really occur to me that I was kinda disturbing her from her reading because of my nonsense rambling until now.

With nothing left to keep me occupied, I decided to do what I'm best at. Observing. I observed Katya's face, the couch we were sitting on, the walls surrounding us, the ceiling above us, the lamp on the right corner of my bedroom, the bed across us with Star Wars covers and bedsheets and Toy Story pillowcases, the tall and almost-empty bookshelves, the stack of unfinished homeworks and paper reports possibly due tomorrow, the big world map scattered across my study table, the pencil holder filled with badly-needed-to-be-sharpened pencils, and Katya's face.

Katya.

Katya Boris. The name that sends me spiraling into unclear yet satisfying voids of emotions. Katya is my childhood friend. I've known her for as long as I could remember. From the time that I set foot here in this small yet not-so-small town, Sunnyside, Washington, Katya had always been the one who stood beside me through thick and thin. I was nine when she first talked to me. It was the second day of school and I sat at the bench outside the school gate because I was waiting for my uncle Hugo to come fetch me home like he always does when we were still living in Pennsylvania. But he was coming late so I was forced to wait outside school campus while I got to watch my classmates go home, one by one. I was forced to witness the smile forming on their lips whenever they see their parents' car, the wave their parents give whenever their child came into view.

So how did Katya get in the picture?

Easy, she was in the same situation as I was. Turns out her parents were attending an important meeting that day.

"...but Ivan is on the way." I recalled her saying.

"Who's Ivan?"

The little girl with dirty blonde pigtails and freckles on her nose bridge whose name I didn't know at that time, looked at me with those emerald green eyes that will forever stay with me and smiled. "Ivan's my brother."

"Oh. Cool." was the only thing I said. Mainly because I can't relay anything that concerns brothers at that time. I was an only child, you see.

"Do you have a brother?"

"No."

"Oh, a sister then."

"No."

"You're an only child, I see."

"Yes."

She smiled and for the first time I got this sunshine-y feeling deep within me, and somehow I knew that I had found a friend.

I smiled back at her. It was a genuine one, by the way.

She told me her name, Katya. "I was named after my great great grandmother. She was Dutch, after all." She shrugged.

And I never really figured out the connection between her name and her great great grandmother's Dutch descent. But I figured out something, Katya was a beautiful name.

I smiled at the memory.

I tilted my head sideways and tried to see the title of the book she was reading.