#1 - Nick Webster

10. Land of the Free

            The next three days were the longest of my life. Physical torture wasn't as bad as this type of torture. The plane ride was horrible. I couldn't stop thinking of Nikki. What happened? Why did it take so long for her to dry herself off? Did she decide that she didn't want to be with me anymore? Was Paris where she wanted to stay from here on out? Why didn't she even tell me? So many questions ran through my head throughout the entire trip. I sat at the window, and I actually cried several times during the trip. It was such a miserable feeling.

I arrived at the airport in Chicago, United States, about at noon. It was the weirdest thing ever because the plane ride took several hours. I felt like it took the whole day, but only three hours had passed. When I stepped off the plane, it was a different time of the day than what I was expecting. It made me feel so stupid... was 'morning' always considered to be six or seven in the morning? Does six or seven in the morning then come at different times for different places? I'm thinking too much right now. I just need to calm down and get some sleep or something.

Anyway. I waited either inside or outside of the airport for three straight days. I didn't eat anything during that time, but there were water fountains for me to drink some water. I was finally so hungry that I couldn't stand it. I didn't know what to do, though. I may have to break my own rules. If I don't steal food, I would die of hunger soon.

I don't know what happened to Nikki, but I had to start to get the feeling that I wasn't going to be with her any time soon. She was in another country, and I had no way of traveling there right now. I would need to find a way to make money and figure out how to buy a ticket. I had no clue how to purchase a ticket since Nikki did all that. To make matters worse, the language in Chicago is different from Russia or France. I knew some English from those songs we sang, but I was very lost trying to read signs and understand what people might be saying.

The grandma in Russia was super nice. Why didn't I just stay with her? Maybe people in this country were also nice. Nikki said they had some of the best foster care systems in the whole world. People who adopt children must be nice, right? Why else would they adopt kids? There was only one way to find out. Well, except I still had the problem that I didn't know the language and have no clue how to find a foster care home.

My sleep schedule has also been thrown off. I was tired in the afternoon and woke up in the middle of the night every night. I went back to wandering around the city at night and sleeping in alleys and trash cans in the day.

After what I think was an entire week, someone discovered me while I was asleep in a trash can. It wasn't the first time I had ran into someone, but it was the most significant moment for me thus far. A lady had been taking her trash out or something and saw me. At first, I thought she thought I was dead. Her loud scream after seeing me woke me up. She was much younger than the grandma in Russia. She started talking to me, but I had absolutely no idea what she was saying. I didn't even really realize where I was when she woke me up. I had forgotten which dumpster I jumped into the previous night. But I looked around and realized I was at some sort of daycare or elementary school. There was a bunch of playground equipment for children.

I decided not to fight whatever she was going to do. If she called the police, she would call the police. If she invited me into a building, then at least I'd be warm. If she tried to kill me, well, my life was going downhill anyway. What's the point anymore at this point? My life was living in and out of trash cans eating leftovers and garbage. Nikki was out of my life, and I had no other friends or family.

Anyway, the lady at the garbage finally stopped trying to talk directly to me after I hadn't responded to her. I decided to demonstrate that I wasn't ignoring her, but I just couldn't understand her. I told her, "I speak Russian," except it was in Russian. She immediately gave me a weird look. She pulled out a cell phone and started calling someone.