Taking On The World - A 5 Seconds Of Summer Story

Chapter 2

If this is a dream, won't open my eyes,

Am I asleep? No, I'm alive

-Wild, Jessie J

I’d been alone before.

I’d been scared and hurt and bitter and sad and angry and furious and lonely before.

But I’d never been alone.

Even if I hadn’t realised he was around, I’d always had Zak by my side. We’d been closer than anyone in the town and it was a weird feeling that now we were so far away.

Granted, he’d been at university in Sydney for most of the year, so I’d been without him then.

But then I’d had a few of my friends to keep me afloat.

Now I was truly alone…and I was loving it.

I’d always been a quiet person, enjoying solitude rather than being afraid of it.

And it was here, driving down the coastal highway in the kombi with the ocean to my left and small rocky cliffs to my right, I was at complete serenity.

The air lifted tendrils of my hair as I whizzed along the highway, curling in away from the coast.

The air stopped smelling like salt as I drove further and further away from my coastal town.

Going inland. I haven’t been inland for a long time.

I shot through small towns with short lines of shops and lots of single houses.

I passed bakeries and petrol stations and farms and bush and endless rolls of green grass paddocks.

Colours flashed by in a blur that any artist’s pallet would be jealous of.

I was moving, I was escaping, I was free.

The reckless freedom caught me in a rush and I let out a loud, excited, slightly hysterical whoop of absolute joy.

All those nights spent dreaming, hoping and wishing for this moment.

All those frustratingly long and boring shifts at the fish and chip shop and those occasional nights on the fishing boat.

All those nights spent in the kombi with my earphones in, blocking out reality.

All the saving, tiptoeing through the tense family life, graduating with top marks, memorising my enter score in case I decided I wanted to hit up a university, buying a tent and litres upon litres of petrol and the long hours cleaning and stocking up the kombi.

It was all worth it.

Because now I was free.

I was feeling wild.

Untameable.

And really hungry.

Having downed no more than a mouthful of dry cereal this morning, my stomach was rumbling.

I eased the kombi to a stop alongside a small picnic bench overlooking a field and unwrapped my sandwich.

The day was starting to warm up now, and I knew the cheese wouldn’t last long in this heat.

In the spirit of breaking all the rules, I sat on the table rather than the seat.

The sandwich tasted better in the fresh air.

Ten minutes of chewing and I was on the road again, driving right on the speed limit on the empty road, tasting freedom.

I didn’t have a destination other than away. I followed the road and let the sun follow me.