Escape

The cold was beginning to penetrate through my jacket. I had been sitting by the shore for a while now, but I didn’t want to leave. My eyes were glued to the sinking sun on the horizon. The sky was ablaze with warm colours, perhaps it was the sun’s way of saying goodnight before the world fell into a deep slumber. My chest felt heavy as if my heart were sinking like the sun. I took a breath, as my eyes began to well up. The horizon and the sun blurred together as tears began to roll down my cheeks. 

Emotions that had built up over several days were released all at once. There I stayed until darkness fell, whether I was crying or yelling, sad or angry, I couldn’t tell. Maybe it was both. Eventually, I stood up again and began to make my way in the dark back towards home. 

‘Home, what a strange word,’ I thought as I pushed open the back door. And strange it was, for me at least. Everyone had always said the home is where the heart is. I didn’t know where my heart was, but it sure wasn’t in that house. All the lights were out, though I could hear faint digital noises coming from my dad’s room. In contrast to the racket of yelling voices I had escaped from earlier that evening, the silence was odd.

It hadn’t always been this way. I used to have a home, a place where I belonged. We were all so happy, my parents, my brother and me. We were that stereotypical family of four that you would always see smiling and laughing in advertisements for things like barbecues or sunscreen. Like everything though, we changed. My brother grew up and found his own home while my parents grew apart in the home we used to share, leaving me alone with only my thoughts for company.

I walked over to the windowsill in my bedroom and pushed apart the curtains. The fire in the sky had turned into a deep blue, sprinkled with shining stars. I sighed.

“I wish I could have a real home again.” 

~

“Hey, watch out!”

I turn around to see a woman on an electric scooter fly right past, missing me by an inch. After taking a moment to let my heart stop racing, I continued down the bustling street. Everyone was rushing ahead of me, pushing me to the side, despite my belief that I was walking at a perfectly reasonable speed. 

“I guess life in the city is just more fast-paced than in the country,” I thought aloud. 

I didn’t entirely remember how I ended up in the city. All I knew was that I had woken up the next morning to another clamour of disagreeing voices. I got so overwhelmed. I packed up a bag with all of my important things and the next thing I knew I was out the door on my bike, to catch a bus into the city. My parents didn’t even hear me leave.

Wandering past stores and offices, I questioned my next steps. Where to now? What are you trying to do here? Why did you bother leaving? I felt my heart rate begin to climb again, as helplessness began to engulf me. I raced over to a nearby bench and rested my head in my hands. 

“Breathe, just breathe. Okay. Just think about this,” I told myself, “ You have money enough to last a while, thanks to that summer job on grandad’s boat you took. That can get you places. But where do I want to go?”

The only place I could think of was with my brother, but he was oceans away, with his new home and family in England. 

“Even if I do have enough money to buy a flight there, would he even want me there? He wanted to escape, just like I did. He’ll be happy now. He won’t want to see me,” I convinced myself. 

“Mum! Look at all the pretty flowers!” a child’s voice exclaimed across the path from me. I looked up to see a wee girl pointing at a small flowerbed of violets while holding her mother’s hand. I couldn’t help but smile along with the girl’s mother. I wanted to be that little girl, to receive and give love, to have a place to call home. 

‘Maybe that’s what I need to find, a home,’ I thought.

With newfound determination, I stood up from the dirty bench, bag over my shoulder and hailed a taxi cab. 

“Where to, miss?” the cab driver asked as I sat down in the back seat.

“Airport, please,” I replied.

I tried my hardest to hold onto the determination that I had found during the drive, but I could feel doubt creeping in. 

‘You won’t last a day by yourself,’ a small voice whispered, somewhere in my mind, ‘Who are you kidding? You’ll never leave this town.’ 

“Stop it,” I ordered.

“Excuse me, miss? You want out?” the cab driver queried, looking surprised. 

“No sorry, please keep going,” I replied, embarrassed of talking to myself. After another awkward fifteen minutes or so in the cab, we pulled up at the departures terminal at the airport.

“That’ll be twenty-five dollars, thanks.” I paid the due amount before stepping out of the cab, a little scared of the adventure I had embarked on.

‘You can’t do it,” my mind whispered.

“Watch me,” I replied as I walked through the sliding doors into my new life.

~

The sun was beating down on my sweaty back. My sunglasses were slipping down my nose as I scrubbed the hull of a yacht clean. Two weeks had passed since I’d arrived in Nouméa. Why had I chosen to go to New Caledonia? I wasn’t quite sure. The airport lady had said flights to French Polynesia were on special, what other choice did I have? I didn’t have all the money in the world.

I had managed to score a job cleaning yachts at the harbour, after a few days of being lost. I had wrongly assumed that my couple years of intermediate french a few years back would be enough to get me around. One conversation had shown me that I was far more lacking in my french language skills than I had thought. 

“How’s the Richardsons’ yacht coming on?” a voice called. I paused my scrubbing and looked down the pier to see Waverly walking towards me.

“It’ll be the death of me,” I laughed in response. 

“Come on, take a break. I’m headed to the wee store a couple of streets down from here for a drink. I’m thinking maybe some pineapple juice? Come with me,” Waverly said.

“Oh, all right then. You’ve convinced me,” I replied, heaving myself onto my feet. I wiped my sweaty brow with my forearm before following Waverly down the pier.

I had met Waverly about a week prior. I was on the verge of a complete breakdown after having wandered around Nouméa for days, searching for a way to make some more money, but with no luck. She found me sitting on the beach, she probably thought I was crying or she wouldn’t have come over. I imagine I was looking pretty miserable though. I had explained my predicament to her and she told me about the business she worked at that cleaned yachts on the harbour. Soon enough, I was washing the yachts of the rich with her by my side.

I felt my body sigh as we entered the air-conditioned store. I bought myself some orange juice while Waverly got the pineapple juice she wanted. We took our drinks to a seat in the shade of a large tree and talked for a while.

“So how do long do you reckon you’ll stay here? You said you left your parents, do you think you’ll go back?” Waverly asked me. I shrugged.

“No idea. I’m going with the flow at the moment, wherever life takes me, looking for a place, you know?”

“Yeah, I get it. But you don’t think you’ll go ever back home?”

“Home? Ha, right. Trust me, my parents won’t have even noticed that I’m gone, let alone care. I’m doing my own thing now,” I replied. Waverly looked a bit confused, but she shrugged it off then smiled at me.

“Hey, we should go out tonight,” she said.

“Out? What are you thinking?”

“It’s Mardi Gras tomorrow, heaps of people are getting together tonight for some pre-celebration!”

I could picture hoards of people wearing festival costumes while drinking the local beer under the nightlights. Not my kind of scene. I shook my head.

“Nah, I don’t think I’ll go. Besides, I’ve got a shift tonight.” Waverly looked disappointed, but she was persistent.

“Come on, sure you can go. The boss won’t even notice. Trust me.” I knew she wouldn’t let this go, especially after hearing my sob story. 

“Fine, then. But not too late.”

~

Warm fairy lights covered the square where hundreds of people had gathered. The colours of the sunset were beginning to fade as Nouméa’s nightlife began. I was pushing my way through crowds with Waverly’s arm linked in mine. I was relieved to have found that no one was wearing big, flouncy festival costumes, it was just a neutral type of celebration. Waverly led me towards the bar where she shoved a beer into my hand.

“Isn’t this fantastic?” she exclaimed. I didn’t know how I felt about the situation, but fantastic was sure not the word I would use for it.

“We should go dance, I love this music!” she said with a wide smile on her face. I liked that she was having fun, but she was really pressurizing. I had no energy to argue with her, so I followed her out to where everyone was dancing. 

It didn’t take long for me to lose Waverly in the bustling crowd. People were moving in all directions, pushing me around. I tried to loosen up a bit and move with the crowd, maybe have a good time if it’s possible. After sculling the beer Waverly had forced into my hand, I soon lost track of time.

The air was buzzing with music, yelling and laughing. As time went on, I felt like I was getting smaller and smaller as everyone moved around me. A voice suddenly broke me out of my trance-like state.

“Oi! You!” I glanced over to where the voice was coming from, expecting to see two other people yelling at each other. Instead, I saw my boss standing at the edge of the commotion, with one finger pointed directly at me. His view of me was soon obstructed by the dancers around me. Stress rose in me very quickly.

‘You only just got a job, now you’ll have lost it! What are you going to do?’ I thought.

I wasn’t sure if I imagined it but the music seemed to grow louder.

“Hey! Over here!” another voice called. It was Waverly, several metres away from me, calling me over. Behind her, I could see our boss trying to make his way through the crowd towards me. 

The music grew even louder still.

All kinds of emotions were running through my head. My vision blurred. I thought I could see my mother through the crowd, standing dead still amongst the chaos.

‘I don’t care that you have no way to make a living, I don’t care about you,’ she said in a whisper, though I could hear her clear as day. I swivelled around, desperate to get away from her.

The music was throbbing through my ears.

I pushed through the crowd, trying to escape, but I ran into a man. I looked up to see my father, standing still like my mother had been.

‘Don’t come back. I don’t want you anymore,” he said in a monotonous voice.

The music was screaming at me.

I tried to see a way out, but the world seemed to close in around me. I saw my brother’s face among the crowd.

‘Don’t you come running to me like you always do,’ he said, ‘Stay away from me.’

I covered my ears with my hands, closed my eyes and ran. How long did I run, I couldn’t tell. When I finally looked up, the music had drowned out and I was standing out on the harbour, alone. I walked over to the yacht I had been cleaning earlier that day. It was unfinished, because of me. I was lost on what to do, so I ended up fetching my cleaning equipment and scrubbing the other side of the hull. When I kneeled down to begin, I noticed the door on the yacht was ajar. 

What came over me that evening? It’s hard to say. I had climbed onto the yacht and started the engine, adrenaline pumping through my veins. I didn’t know what I was doing, but it felt right. I drove the yacht out of the harbour, into the ocean. 

As I sailed, a new dawn rose. The sky lit up in a vast array of pinks, oranges and reds. Eyes glued to the horizon, it felt familiar, like the night I had watched the sunset, what seemed like an age ago. One thing was different, though. I felt free.