One small step

Chapter one; Welcome to England

I never liked flying. In fact, I almost began hyperventilating before we had even arrived at the airport. That would be one of my main reasons for a need to believe in God. My dad’s a pilot, for reasons I never understood. So, while the most important man in my life flies from north to south, east to west, I prayed. And hoped that someone was listening. So far, so good.

Eight hours later, our plane landed. As usual, I was the first off the damned air robot. The relief of my feet touching solid ground was a feeling that I don’t think I could ever describe to you. My elder brother, Derrek, was already flirting with the girl who had the misfortune of sitting next to him on the flight. I rolled my eyes as I saw him come out of the tunnel that connects the plane to the airport with his arms around her.

“Cassie, this beautiful young lady is Cynthia. She’s visiting her auntie in Manchester.” He then gave me his signature smile. After giving her my ‘I would get away if I was you’ smile, I left them to get my suitcase from the rotator that every human has dreamt of sitting on.

“Well, this is it.” I pulled out my headphones just in time to hear my father speak.

I took a glance at the house. It wasn’t bad, roughly the same size as our house in Beverly, probably a bit smaller. But I wasn’t one to judge a book by its cover, so, doing my best to avoid being asked to help unload the vans, I went inside with my suitcase.

The front room was big, had a large kitchen, large living room, marble staircases and blah blah blah. Where the size would have had most children excited and in a dizzied state, it didn’t faze me. Money and all its privileges were how I grew up, and really, it wasn’t as amazing as everybody seemed to think it was. I’ve seen what money does to people, and trust me, being raised in a family that has to survive on $20 is much better.

My new room was big. Probably bigger than my old room, but to get it to feel lie my room again, it needed some serious work. It would probably be another month before I bothered to do anything to it though, so I guess that would just have to wait.

I didn’t get out of helping un-pack unfortunately, so, goodness knows how many heavy boxes later, all the furniture was in the right rooms at the very least.

Seeing as our bodies weren’t exactly used to the British timing, and we were kind of tired from all the work, we all went to take a power nap. Or, that was the plan at least.

Instead, after failing the ‘sleep’ plan miserably, I decided I might as well go and see the new neighbourhood. I mean, if I was going to live here, I might as well know what kind of place I’m moving into. So, after hastily scribbling down a note on a page ripped from a notebook, I was out. Walking along the streets of England all by myself, hoping that there was just some possibility in me waking up and finding out this is all a dream. Just yesterday, I had been at Kasey’s house, making plans for the weekend, and now, all of a sudden, I’m in a whole other continent. Thinking of which, I had yet to tell my friends that i had moved. It won’t take them too long to work it out, I mean, it’s Beverly. Everyone knows everybody’s business there, and the house suddenly being empty would not exactly go unnoticed.

While all these thoughts were running through my head, I found myself at a par. It wasn’t empty or quiet. In fact, despite the cold wind and the cloud over-head threatening to open up and release oceans of water onto us, there was plenty of little kids, running around, enjoying the apparatus, behaving as any normal child would do. I sat down on a bench and just watched them. They reminded me of the same kind of fun I had back in America. Back in the days where the biggest gossip was who got told off by the teacher for doing what.

A few minutes later, I pulled my iPod out and put my ‘Quiet time’ playlist on shuffle. As Jason Mraz was playing in my ears, I saw a group of people about the same age as me sitting in a circle on the grass. I noticed that one of the girls was looking at me as she spoke, wherein a few seconds later, the whole group turned their heads in my direction.

Now, I’m not exactly the ‘shy’ type of person, but I don’t exactly like being the centre of attention when it comes to people I don’t know, so I broke my stare from them and took a very sudden interest at the converse on my feet. That is, until another pair of the turned up opposite them. I looked up and saw it was the girl who had been watching me from earlier. Her lips began moving, but my headphones were still in, so I didn’t catch her sentence. I quickly oppressed the pause button on the headphones.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. What did you say?” I asked her politely. She scrunched up her eyebrows at me before turning over her shoulder and calling out, “Hey guys, we’ve got an American here!” This comment seemed to raise the attention of the group, as two of the guys and one of the other girls got up from their spots and came to where I was. Now I was in a really awkward situation. I’m starting to regret not taking that nap that I had planned.

The first girl turned back to me and said “I said, I haven’t seen you around here before, but I guess I know why now.” Then she smiled to herself. When her friends had arrived to where we were, she spoke to me again.

“Anyway, I’d rather not call you ‘American girl’ the whole time you’re here, so, what’s your name?”

“Cassie.” I replied, simply and plainly.

“Cassie...” she said, as she was waiting for me to give her my full name. I sighed before saying “Cassidy Tafadzwa Daniels.”

“Hold on,” Began one of the guys, “Tafadzwa. Isn’t that shona?” he asked. I just nodded my head. It wasn’t that I was ashamed of being part Zimbabwean. In fact, I was very proud of my roots, but having to explain to the clueless all about Zimbabwe got tiring at times. At least these guys seemed to have some idea about it.

“Awesome, that’s where I’m from.” Said the guy who had just spoken. Then he continued, “I’m Clive, by the way.”

Then they each went in turn introducing themselves. The girl who had come to talk to me first was called Tammy, from Jamaican heritage. The other girl was her twin sister Taylor, and the other guy was mixed-race and went by the name of Dylan.

We were stood for a while just talking. Once I’m with people for just a few minutes, I start to get comfortable with them, so it didn’t take long for us to begin joking and laughing.

“Guys!” Came a female shout from the distance. We all looked back and saw the people that had decided not to come and join us. It was a rather good-looking girl, and a guy whom I assumed to be her boyfriend.

They got up before they began jogging and making their way towards us.

“Seriously? You just left us like that? Aren’t you guys rude?” Sid The girl, panting slightly from the jog.

“Aw, I’m sorry babe,” began Tammy, with fake sympathy in her voice, “Cassie, this little delicate flower here is Shay, and that handsome young man next to her is her boyfriend Chad”

After that little introduction, we got back to our casual conversation. We all seemed to be getting along before I got a ping on my BlackBerry from my brother, telling me to come home. Before I left, I swapped BB pins and numbers with the group, before making my way back ‘home’. I smiled to myself whilst thinking ‘If everybody in this country is like that, I’m not going to have a problem’.