Edge of the Ravine

32

Chapter Thirty-Two

Rebecca left me with three thousand dollars, a letter and a journal. That was it. No other word from her or the band. Not a forwarding address from the management. I didn't even have a ticket home; the one she'd bought me was one-way.

She'd been planning this for a while, I realized in that moment. My ticket to London had been one-way. When I'd asked about it, she'd replied casually that they didn't yet know when they would return and she would buy me one once we were ready to head home. It was now revealed to be a huge lie told to allay my worries. How naive was I to let it work?

Almost immediately, I prepared to call the airlines and book my ride back to South Carolina. In mere moments, I was on the line with the flight directory and was about to make my request. That's when it happened.

"When's your next available flight to Italy?" It didn't event sound like me, but I was the only person in the room. The words were so calm and yet so foreign. As if I'd begun speaking another language I had no idea I'd learned.

I hung up before she could give me the options.

Sitting down slowly, it took me a minute to realize that I was shaking. For once in my life I wasn't doing something practical. Something that I knew I should be doing. Instead, I had just about done something out of pure selfish desire. And I didn't mind.

Five minutes is all it took me to convince myself to do as Rebecca asked. I would do something for me. Not what I thought I should do. Nothing my responsible side would encourage. And three grand might not be a great start, but it was enough for me to find a dream.

On that point, however, my responsible side did get in a niggling of a good idea. Instead of traveling across Europe immediately, I could hunker down in England for a while—three months was legal for someone to visit a country without a visa—and build up my finances a little bit. Then I could hop along for as long as I could. And though I never had a real dream, this seemed like a good baby step towards gaining one.

So it was that, within a week, I was sitting in the window of a small room in an equally small building writing the first of a long series of diary entries. Rebecca would be proud.