A Moment

A double-decker bus lumbered through the rocky desert of central Chile. The bus passed through sleeping villages, and the sky flaunted its sidereal artwork across a dark canvas. I sat in the front seat of the top level of the bus, and my journal was cradled urgently in my lap. Most of the pages contained verbose, whimsical observations and lost threads of thought, extracted from my erratic imagination. The wide windows provided a perfect view of the labyrinthine map of constellations above me, and the stars were always my most trustworthy muse; yet I didn’t write about the sky or the country around me. I curled up in my chair, and I cried.
I had been looking forward to coming to Chile ever since I heard that my school would sponsor a trip for ten students and two teachers. I had wanted to go to South America since I learned my first word of Spanish. I spent my entire freshman year harassing my Spanish teacher for details, and I was the first student to sign up. Yet sitting in that seat, I had never felt unhappier.
My misery began on June 27th when we arrived at our first hotel in Santiago, Chile. Three of the girls raced to pick their own room; I shared a room with the remaining two girls from our group. We tried to get to know each other, but eventually the only chatter in the room rattled out of the cheap TV. I heard rowdy laughter through the thin walls. I knew that I could leave my dank, fusty room; I could knock on the other girls’ door; and I could enter their secret-laden world. I flipped to the next page in my journal instead, and I began a new paragraph about loneliness.
The teachers let us find our own dinner that night. I joined a motley mix of kids; we didn’t know each other at all. Since nobody had any ideas for dinner, we wandered through bleak strip malls for most of the evening. We shuffled past countless, matching stores as they completed their nightly closing-time routines. When we drifted back to the hotel, with no food in our stomachs, I saw the three tight-knit girls talking and laughing in the lobby; the contrast between their dinner experience and mine was razor-sharp and painful. I dragged myself upstairs to my room, and I fell asleep in an onerous silence.
I glanced back at the seats where these girls slept in peace; I wished that I had said something to them that first night. Ever since, I had to wordlessly listen to them gush about the same movies and music that I adored. However, even when I heard one girl mention that she loved the Blue Scholars – my favorite band – I didn’t have the courage to talk to her.
I turned on the weak reading light in the bus, and I brought my attention back to the crowded journal in my lap. I had written accounts of everything our group did, and a detailed report of every emotion that I experienced. Every quieted opinion and angst-ridden question had raged through my pen onto the patient page. I lifted the book closer to the pallid light, and I wrote: Always I feel that I am boring; the sense is all-consuming, and my loneliness is ever-present.
Throughout elementary school and middle school, I had a close group of friends, and I hadn’t needed to extend my social comfort zone; I was a confident and outgoing girl. Freshman year, however, my best friends embraced the bigger social circle of high school, and they bonded with older students. Girls that I had seen every weekend began to cancel plans with me in order to hang out with seniors instead. I began to doubt every joke or comment that came to me when I was with my friends, and I constantly tried to keep them entertained. I was sure that whenever I was with my girlfriends, they were thinking about where they would rather be.
I twisted to look out of the steamed side-window. I smeared my hand across the glass, and I watched the dark roadside. I was in the country of my dreams, but I had spent my time in hotel rooms while the other kids in my group explored the city. A billboard appeared along the road ahead of us. I automatically began to translate the foreign words; I loved Spanish, and my translation games had become a safety blanket for me in Chile. As the billboard receded behind the bus, as I worked on the ad’s new vocabulary, I realized that I was here. I was in South America. I had waited my whole life to be on this bus, in this moment.
I sat up in my seat, and I opened my journal again.
Late at night, alone in the front of that double-decker bus, I swore that I would enjoy myself. I promised my journal that I would focus on my own experience instead of focusing on the opinions of others. Even if the rest of the group had a terrible time, I would snap pictures, take notes, and saturate myself with Chile.
I fell back into my chair, and I breathed easily for the first time since boarding the bus. I refused to glance back at the girls, and I spent the rest of the ride enjoying the stars.
The next night, I asked the three girls if I could have dinner with them for the first time, and they agreed. We ate in a dark, empty restaurant. I didn’t notice that the food was bland, and I didn’t care about the off-tasting soda served to me. I returned to my hotel room with a stomach-ache and an ecstatic heart. I still shared a room with the other two girls on the trip, whom I did not get along with well, but that night I didn’t care. I had new adventures for my journal.
In the morning, our group began to drive to our next destination, Pisco Elqui. On the way, I finally told one of the girls – my fellow Blue Scholars fan – that I also loved the band, and we spent the rest of the car ride listening to music together.
Pisco Elqui sat wedged between two arid, steep hillsides, yet sunny, paradisal flowers surrounded our small, adobe-style cabins. As the teachers negotiated with the cabins’ owner, I heard the words that I had been hoping for:
“Hey, Katie, you should come share our room!” I smiled, and I rushed to the three girls’ cabin to claim a bed.
After everyone retired to his or her respective cabins, the three girls and I snuck out. We tiptoed through the slumbering, tropical gardens toward the covered pool. We sat in four canvas lounge-chairs, and we moon-bathed in the unusually warm, night air. Every planet and star marched past for our approval, and we tallied how many shooting stars we caught. After some time looking upward, we faced each other, and we began to speak. The star-freckled sky stripped us of our guards, and we began to share our lives, our troubles, and our secrets. I was honest; I was outspoken; I was daring; and I was myself for the first time in months.
The final entry in my trip journal reads:
I feel like we are truly, finally honest with each other – a real family. I am more alive with these people than I am at home, and I hope that in Seattle I’ll be different – more willing to seek life. I know that the more fun I have had, the less details I have written, but I hope that this journal caught some of who I am; what I saw; and how I felt. I had an amazing time laughing, stargazing, joking, crying, and ultimately changing. I hope that someday I can read this, and I can remember who I was from June 27th – July 20th, 2006.