A Beginner's Guide to the American West ✓

chapter two

t w o

*

The whole way from my hostel to the airport, my stomach aches. I didn't realise how nervous I was about the trip until I got on the shuttle bus and had to sit there for two hours in torturous L.A. traffic on the way to LAX when I don't even have a flight to catch.

I'm meeting the rest of the group at a motel a mile away from the airport, and I feel sick. Apparently, there's a free bus that will take me there but I've been waiting for thirty minutes and nothing's shown up, and my nerves are getting the best of me.

Ordinarily, I'm not much of a nervous person. I kind of pride myself on my ability to take life in my stride; to keep going when the going gets tough; to laugh off inconveniences and know that the world is brighter around the corner, but it's been a rough month. As I wait for that bus, I can only hear worrisome questions rattling around inside my head. What if I got it wrong? What if I'm at the wrong airport? What if there's no bus? Do I have enough cash for a taxi?

No, but I have my card – that I haven't lost it yet is a miracle in itself - and there's a cashpoint inside the airport. There has to be. And I haven't got the wrong airport, because I put the hotel's address into my map app and it said it's a mile and a half from right where I'm standing. Worst case scenario, I guess I could walk there. But that would be the truly worst case scenario when I can't follow directions for shit. I always end up walking ten minutes in the wrong direction before I can even tell that the blue dot isn't following the line.

It's hard to believe that this morning, I hiked up to the Hollywood sign and watched the sun rise over the city, and now I'm choking on airport fumes and praying I'm not stranded. I check my watch and nervously tap my foot, and I jump when my phone buzzes. It's nearly six in Los Angeles, which means it's two in the morning back home, yet the text is from Mum.

Before I read her message, I'm struck by a lightning bolt of anxiety that tells me something horrible must have happened, something that can't wait. I'm not used to that attack of angry moths in my stomach, the kind of anxiety I'd never known until recently, and it's hard to suppress it to read Mum's message.

MUM: hope you're ok hun. i can't sleep and felt the need to check in on you. you didn't seem yourself before you left and i hate to think of you alone out there. love you, march. xxx mum

I didn't tell my parents why I booked the trip. Pretty much all they know about the past year of my life is that now I've finished high school. They took me out to my favourite restaurant after my last exam, and they toasted to the next stage of my life. Dad reminisced about my early years, when it was just the two of us, and Mum waxed lyrical about watching the boy she adopted ten years ago blossom into a man, and I just tried to strike the right balance between awkward cringing and subtle appreciation. Mostly the latter. My parents can be cringey, but they're my favourite people.

And they have no idea that I'm nursing heartbreak, a raw pain that I never predicted. I know I sound dramatic, but it is dramatic, I've decided. They don't even know I had a boyfriend, though I'm sure they must have their suspicions: until two years ago, George was my best friend, and then it turned into more. Hanging out on the occasional weekend morphed into George coming over after school three times a week; rowdy video game tournaments became sleepy film marathons; an open door ... shut.

It was a while – possibly embarrassingly long – before I realised what had been slowly happening for months, and then I fell head over heels for George. But now it's over and neither of my parents have ever said anything, so I've decided that unless they're exceptional actors, they don't know I'm bi.