365 Cups of Coffee

One: Mocha Frappuccino With a Shot of Espresso

    Tendrils of fire reach out and set the sky aflame.  I can see the curvature of the Earth faintly when I look down; it’s vast and infinite and incomprehensible.  The edges of the world are hazy, continuing without limit.  The ocean shines with a bright blue glow, the reflection of the sun imprinted on the water.  I am overwhelmed with a sense of insignificance.  The brilliance of the world around me consumes me, and I am lost into the sky, watching the sunset sink down further, painting clouds red and orange and the sky a deep indigo above them. 
    Sometimes I wish I could say I was born in the air.  The vastness of the sky never ceases to amaze me; I know it stretches out even further than I can see, shrouded by the atmosphere.  Here on Earth, we are clouded by our problems, but in the sky, I feel free, like I have no limitations, like I can fly away and never have to worry about anything else.  And although I know that’s not true, something about air travel still gives me a sense of liberation.  I am leaving my old life behind, leaving Savannah, Georgia forever.
    My mind absorbs itself into the sky.  I ignore the rest of the people around me, people whose faces are lit up by their laptops and iPads, the ones who can’t take a moment to realize the insignificance of what they presently find important.  Maybe they’re too terrified to acknowledge this fact.  I wonder what people on the ground are doing at the present moment.  Maybe they’re looking up at the sunset and thinking about how beautiful the evening is.  Or maybe they’re too busy to admire it.  Maybe they’re stuck inside, working, or talking to friends, thinking they’ll be another day, another sunset.
    But they don’t even realize that any sunset could be their last.
    I guess that’s another thing that strikes me about life on Earth.  How fleeting it is.  Society changes at the blink of an eye: its ideals, its people, and its fads.  And yet the Earth?  It continues to turn, day after day, year after year.  This will not be the last sunset . . . But it could easily be my last.
    The sun fades into a fierce purple behind a cloud before blinking out below the horizon, leaving me to look at the stars.  Now, more than ever, I can get a sense of just how small I really am.  The stars expand upwards, farther than I can see, and as it is, there already must be hundreds, if not thousands.  The sky looks no closer 30,000 feet above the ground than it does on the ground itself, and although I am used to this sensation of feeling insignificant, I have usually ignored it.  Now, it’s therapeutic. 
    “Would you like anything to drink?” The voice of the flight attendant shakes me from my thoughts, and I am brought back inside the airplane.  I guess I have to give credit to humanity as well.  The fact that we have figured out how to transport over one-hundred people at a time in the air at over five-hundred miles an hour is incredible.
    Suddenly, I feel a spark deep inside me.  Her voice has triggered a memory.  I fly more often than most people, so being in the sky for me is almost equivalent to taking a ride on a subway.  Many of my memories as a child are actually of traveling, including the flight itself.  And because I am starting over, I feel the urge to allow myself to live my old life one last time.
    “Cran-Apple juice, please,” I say, smiling.  I feel like a kid.  I haven’t had the stuff in years.  “And can I have a straw as well?”
    The flight attendant smiles and nods, opening a can and pouring it out for me into a cup half full of ice.  When I get the cup, I insert my straw inside of one of the ice cubes.  It’s shaped perfectly, cylindrical with a hole in the center.  She hands me a napkin, and after asking, a package of mini pretzels and honey roasted peanuts, the two usual airplane snacks, the same ones I got when I was a kid.  Maybe some things don’t change.  Maybe humanity does have some significance.  Maybe some things leave an impact that lasts much longer.
    My stomach twists.  I can’t think about that.
    Instead, I open the package of pretzels and eat them, biting off certain loops to make them look like fish, something I used to do all the time when I was little.  The taste of the honey roasted peanuts brings me back even further, and by the time we start descending, I have started sucking on a large lollipop, something I used to do when I was younger to calm down my ears when they readjusted to the thicker atmosphere.  Now, I have gotten used to the sensation and my ears no longer hurt, but today the extra sugar calms me down. 
    As we descend into Newark airport, I watch the city lights gradually draw closer.  But this time, I don’t feel dread as we descend.  This time, I’m not going home.  I’m never going “home” again.  It’s not home anymore, and it never will be again.  This time, I’m heading north and never looking back.  I have one more flight, from Newark into Manchester airport, and then after a fairly short drive I’ll be “home:” a town called Granite Falls, New Hampshire, halfway between Manchester and the coast.  A place with river and lake and mountain all nearby.  A place I picked personally.  My parents have spent the past few weeks moving into our new house while I stayed at my aunt’s house.  I guess she’s the one thing about Savannah I don’t want to leave.
    Now I’m going to be stuck in Newark airport for an hour by myself before I have to be at my gate for my flight into Manchester, the last of the day.  I don’t have a phone anymore, so I’ll have to keep myself busy by reading on my Nook or walking around.  A sharp ache jolts through my body at the thought.  Just last year, I was here alone, at this exact same airport, but my friend Ryanne was Skyping me.  I remember laughing out loud in the middle of gate C-131.  Everyone stared at me as I struggled to catch my breath.  Everything is different this time.  Ryanne and I haven’t talked in two months.  I have distanced myself from all my friends, actually.  This time, I’ll be truly alone for the first time.
    Once we land, I let the familiar sound of the engines shutting down soothe me and join in on the shower of releasing seat belt buckles.  I wait for the two people sitting ahead of me to take their bags from the overhead compartments before taking my own suitcase from the compartment above our seats.  Some people are blinking off sleep.  A few babies are crying.  Some people are in a rush to get off the plane, but others take their time, letting other people go first.  Usually I stay until the end, sometimes talk with the flight crew a little, even, but today I just want to get off the plane.  I just want to start over in the place I’ve known since before elementary school.
    Terminal C of Newark Liberty International Airport has two food courts, over five Hudson News stands, and free WiFi (but only if you sit in the food court with Ben & Jerry’s).  It’s got a number of gates and restaurants and a view of New York City in the distance, once you get past security.  I arrive in gate C-129, meaning I am literally right next to my new gate, so I have an hour to wander around the airport.  I feel free, even though I am now on land.  And, strangely, I feel like I belong here.
    The first place I go to is Starbucks, even though caffeine does nothing to keep me awake.  I know exactly where it is without having to check a map of the terminal, and although I have to carry a suitcase full of the remaining clothes I had with my at my aunt’s and a backpack full of necessities like my laptop and my Nook, I get there fairly quickly, order a mocha frappuccino with a shot of espresso, and sit down. 
    When I sit down, I open my laptop.  By force of habit, I search for the Skype icon in my doc, but quickly remember it’s not there.  I uninstalled it back in April, an irrational decision I don’t regret.  I don’t regret deactivating my Facebook either, or never checking my email.  The only website I ever go on now is the one I share my writing on.  Opening up a crisp new document, I stare at the blank screen in front of me.  Writing is the only thing from my old life that has not become hard to do.  By the time I’m halfway through my large frappuccino, I have a good five hundred words of a new story, and another half hour to kill.
    People watching has always been one of my hobbies, especially at airports.  At airports, you can make up stories for everyone that goes by: the businessmen, the TSA agents, the giant family with tons of kids . . . All you have to do is observe and then get creative with what you can’t see.  I feel strangely lost wandering around the airport, which is fitting.  I am lost, in more way than one now.  Buying a package of Sour Skittles at a Hudson News helps the feeling a little, but then I’m back to walking around the terminal.  With the sugar running through my veins, however, I feel energized.  My steps, although aimless, have purpose.  I am waiting to get to a destination.  Waiting to start over. 
    I try to feel like a new person as I wander through the gates, try imagine that if someone asked my name, I’d tell them it was something different, like Juliana, or Tara, or California.  I try to pretend that I’m moving to Europe alone to seek out a career as an actress or a script writer or something fun and interesting.  Inventing these personalities passes the time, but I know it’s all false.  I know it’s not who I am. 
    Half an hour before departure time, I sit down at my gate again and wait to be called to board.  Once again, I am Aspen Laurent.  I am a writer.  I will be a sophomore in the fall.  And I am moving to New Hampshire, not across the ocean or anywhere new and exciting, for that matter.  Once my section is called for boarding, I walk down the jetway and to my seat, headphones in and world shut out.  I throw my suitcase in the overhead and my backpack under the seat, buckle my seatbelt, and stare out the window at the airport while everyone else finds their way to their assigned seat. 
    The sky is red.  The city glow is captured in the clouds here, like smog.  And although it’s familiar, and I somehow find some comfort in it . . . I’m going somewhere new now.  I’m leaving this life behind.  This is the home stretch, the last 250 miles until I can finally truly forget everything that happened in the past year.  When the plane takes off, I feel my heart soar higher than ever before.  I am being set free.  My mind is far above my body, far higher, like it can’t be contained to the ground alone.  This time, I don’t look down.  I only look upwards, towards the stars.  I am not afraid anymore. 
    I am Aspen Laurent.  I am fifteen years old.  Today, my life starts fresh.