Transatlanticism

It was five in the morning, and I woke up cursing, because awakening a thirteen-year-old at the crack of dawn is tantamount to felony, and I promised myself, that once this was over, I would curl right back into the covers. I sniffled and wiped my nose on my sleeve because no one cares about hygiene at five in the morning. No one cares about anything at five in the morning. And I shuffled downstairs to the parking lot, in oversize slippers that slapped against the dusty concrete, raising puffs of mud, leaving a trail of bigfoot-esque footprints. The dirt made me sneeze, I was allergic to dirt, it was five in the morning, I should have been sleeping, but I was at a dusty, allergy-causing parking lot, squinting against the annoyingly bright sky and the birds that sounded so rested. Rested, unlike me, and I sniffed again, and I realised that I loved my sleep a little too much, maybe? And the guard got out of that car which I didn't recognize, and I leaned against our own bug-like one. You bought it before my birthday. It was supposed to arrive on my birthday, but the delivery men screwed it up, and it came two days later, but the car, in my head at least, shared birthdays with me. But I didn't recognise this car. It was pearl-grey, it was shinier, and it was newer, and more expensive than ours. You told me it was a Baleno. I didn't care. I liked our car, our bug-car better. It had more scope for imagination. It looked like a bug. This car didn't seem friendly. Our car was home. That car was not. And it had a stranger at the wheel. A man in a white-suit and a white hat, and the starched stiffness of his clothes hurt my eyes and so I looked away. Behind me, a voice told me to say goodbye nicely ("You're not going to see him again for two months, the least  you could do is smile and say goodbye, you know he'd like that. Stop being such a crybaby and wave goodbye to him") and in front of me, there you were, hugging me ("You don't have to smile if you don't want to") saying you'd visit in two months ("It's just sixty days, and just when you begin enjoying life without me, I'll be back to annoy you with Math again")  and it would be great fun ("We can talk on the phone whenever we want, we can talk everyday, and when you visit, we can go to the beach!"), we'd go to the amusement park ("Wouldn't that be nice? Did I not love the amusement park?") and you'd buy me something ("I'm going to buy a new car when I get there, what should I get? A Baleno like this one? Isn't this Baleno nice-looking?"), and that I should do well at school because that's what matters ("Practise your math, and 9 times 3 is 27, not 24. Never mess that up like you used to when you were six"), and before I could reply, I sneezed again, the car door shut, and the pearl-grey hostile car drove out, and I knew it wasn't friendly, because it never let me say goodbye. ("Vroom")