Once When You Were Mine

Chapter Thirteen

                       "I've been afraid of changing because I built my life around you..."

                                                                           -Fleetwood Mac

The next day we were supposed to drive on to Ottawa. We dragged our luggage and ourselves downstairs before breakfast, and after breakfast, piled on board the buses.

We had only driven 30 miles when we had our first mishap. I should have taken it as a sign. Our caravan had to pull over because one of our buses had smoke coming out of its engine. We were dropped off at a park and the bus was driven off to be fixed. After sitting around for an hour, someone finally borrowed a basketball and James, one of the saxophones, entertained us with an impromptu dunking competition. Around lunch time, we were allowed to go across the street to a park to eat. Our wounded bus was still not ready to go at 2:00 PM, so Mr. Haar and the Band Parents piled all of us into the two remaining buses.

Within ten minutes, we were pulled over at the side of the road again. One of the remaining buses had broken an axle. Probably because it was overloaded with people. All of the luggage had to be unloaded from the storage space on that bus; band members were milling around the luggage strewn on the shoulder of the highway like a bunch of refugees. They took one busload of us to a truck stop while the rest of us waited. Soon enough we were all eating mozzarella sticks and chicken fingers and discussing the odds on whether or not we would actually get to Ottawa.

We finally got one bus back by around 3:30 PM, and we made another attempt for Ottawa – the buses were so packed, some people had to stand the rest of the way. We missed our concert, but we made it to Ottawa just in time to see the sun set over Parliament. I was amazed to see signs prohibiting graffiti – not only did the signs seem to be effective, they were still intact. They would have lasted five minutes in New York City. Ottawa was clean and beautiful and I vowed to move there when I grew up. We ate at a restaurant called the Marble Factory – and there was nary a moth in anyone's salad. The food was wonderful, and a man with a guitar played for us, and had us sing along to the songs he played. It was the kind of night I wanted to remember for a long time. I decided that I would, however, try to forget about that day as soon as I possibly could.

A long drive to Montreal remained ahead of us that night – and with it loomed the possibility of the talk I knew I had to have with Austin. Most everyone on the bus was napping, but Austin and I had been making innocuous small talk. Things turned more serious as the conversation turned to college and how it was going to change our lives. Neither of us liked losing people we were attached to – and now Austin was going to Columbia on an athletic scholarship to study engineering. Nate was going to Harvard to pursue physics – and I was going to Penn State to attempt an astrophysics degree. Nothing would ever be the same again after this year.

We started reminiscing about high school – about the rush I had in 10th grade on Walt, who also played trumpet, and about the obsession I'd had junior year with Geoff, a guy on the baseball team. I was laughing over some story about my futile quest to get Geoff to realize I was alive, when Austin tok off his baseball cap, put it on my head and pulled it over my eyes.

"You're so cute," he teased.

"Oh, really?"

"What, I'm not allowed to call my friend cute?" he tried to joke.

That was it. The subtext was making me tired. "Austin," I began slowly, "What's going on between us? Nate aside, things are not the same anymore. There's something else there."