And I'm in the Bleachers

Part 1 - Journey + Arrival

Pulling away from the house I've called home since birth is a weird feeling. We're in my dad's Subaru. Pilar and I are in the backseat with a cooler between us and our parents are in the front. We're about to start our twenty-two-and-a-half-hour drive to our new home in Pennsylvania. When our dad came home from work last month and told us we were moving across the country, it was sort of a shock. We were already prepping for the fall Marching Band season in Graham, and I had no idea what to even say, not just to my parents, but to my teachers, and even more so to my friends. Our parents didn't really give us a full explanation of why we were moving even; all they said was my dad got a new, better paying job in Pennsylvania, and that we were leaving on the first to drive across the country.

When Dad makes the right off Canyon Rd onto 16 to head toward town, Pilar is already furiously typing into her phone. This whole thing is going to be a lot harder on her than it is me, I think. She's never done well with change. I'm actually sort of looking forward to a fresh start and even though we're moving to an almost equally small town, it's in the north and I have some sort of hope that it might be a little more open-minded than Texas. There's never been room to be different in Graham; especially not the kind of different I'm pretty sure I am. I have no way of knowing for sure, because even so much as saying it's a possibility would end with a profound lack of friends and maybe even a lack of family.

My mom was born in Puerto Rico and moved to Graham before she started school. My dad was born in Graham, but Abuela Nati and Tito moved here from Colombia before he was born. They're all Catholic, very Catholic, and very conservative. I'm talking mass on Sunday, small groups on Wednesday, no sex before marriage, get married at eighteen and have babies Catholic, but it worked for my parents. They got married right after high school while my dad was training to be an electrician and had me a year later and Pilar a year after that. I'm pretty sure they were just meant to be, or I was until a couple months ago when they suddenly started arguing every night. I guess, I'm also kind of hoping this move is going to help them figure out whatever the hell is going on between them, because I have no idea how much more Pilar and I can handle.

Dad drives up sixteen past Walmart and pretty much everything else interesting about Graham and into town. I try to take in my surroundings more than I usually would, because I have no idea when the next time we'll be back here is. He turns to stay on sixteen after we get through town and the route is familiar for a while basically just vast open land on both sides, Texas Hill Country at its finest. We pass through the occasional tiny town and just over half an hour after leaving home, we merge onto to two-eighty-one to go toward Wichita Falls. Once we get through the city he merges onto a real highway, interstate forty-four, and things start moving quicker. We cross into Oklahoma fifteen minutes later and everything is just open land again for half an hour until Lawton. There're a couple small towns, but we're on the H.E. Bailey Turnpike heading across Oklahoma, so they pass in blurs. I'm listening to music on my phone with my air pods in, because I can't stand the weird Spanish music my parents have on the radio.

The turnpike ends and turns back into a regular highway as we enter the Oklahoma City metro area just before noon. Dad merges onto interstate forty to head east in the middle of the city, and I try to appreciate the views of the Oklahoma River outside my window. He gets off the highway and pulls into a McDonald's parking lot as we're almost to the end of the city. We get lunch and everything's a little weird, honestly. We don't really do family vacations, so this is the longest we've all been crammed into the car together, I think ever. My mom's trying to make it exciting for us, but it's not happening. Pilar just rolls her eyes, and I smile and nod. Dad hasn't said much at all, and it just feels strange.

When we're back in the car, Pilar and I both put our air pods in, and Dad gets back on the highway. A few miles later we merge back onto interstate forty-four eastbound which is Turner Turnpike on this side of the city, and we're in the suburbs. An hour and a half after Oklahoma City is Tulsa which is a huge sprawling city and then the turnpike changes names again to Will Rogers and we keep driving. An hour and a half after that, just after four-thirty, we enter Missouri. Just over an hour after that, we stop for dinner on the other side of Springfield. We eat at a Golden Corral which is fine. It's nothing special, but it's fine. We stay there for just over an hour and then my dad says we should get going, so we walk back to the car.