charity project // mischa bachinski (ride the cyclone)

21 - travel

A few days later, I was at Ocean's house with Noel to work on our biology project. Ocean was kinda-sorta taking the whole thing over. Noel didn't mind, but I did. I wasn't super aggressive about it, though. I just tried really hard to make suggestions, which Ocean most of the time either turned down or brought the idea up later and claimed it as her own. We finally took a break. Unfortunately, Ocean's idea of a break is to start working on something else, namely the festival music.

"Ocean!" I said. "Now is the perfect time to bring this up."

She lifted her head from the music. "What?"

"There's been a situation about the rooming."

"Ooh!" Ocean squealed. "I am so excited to room with you! Best friends, right?"

I winced. "Well, that's the thing. Laura... is scared to sleep in a room all by herself. Yeah. And I agreed to room with her so now I guess you have to have your own room."

She didn't look too disappointed. In fact, I saw the first genuine smile from her I'd seen in a while. "Bummer. That's alright though! I'd love to have a room to myself!"

"Glad to know how upset you are," I gave her a thin smile.

"Oh, don't feel bad. I'll miss you. By the way, what if we color-coded the organs to make it look more organized?"
Noel's eye twitched. "Y/n gave us that idea literally five minutes ago!"

...

It was the final week before the trip. I could hardly sleep. Or do anything, for that matter. Whenever I get excited about something, everything I do sort of freezes up and I think about what I'm excited for instead of doing literally anything else except for anything to do with it.

That's why I was able to pack. We'd actually made a plan to go to an indoor waterpark on the ninth. Father Marcus said that we should use the one day to rest, but it's not like we were going to be jet-lagged. We weren't even going to cross time zones. Noel was not looking forward to it, though. He hated swimming, but secretly, I think it's because he doesn't know how to. All of us placed bets as to whether or not Ocean would bring sunscreen. It was an obvious yes, but Noel likes to play devil's advocate. I made sure my swimming suit made it into the bag as well as my travel-sized toiletries. I packed my backpack with everything I'd need for the plane rides. I also kept my music there.

Ocean and I were probably the most awake people at the airport. Some people were not particularly thrilled to be there at three in the morning, namely Mischa. One thing I learned about him is that when he's tired, half the time you can't tell what he's saying. Either he's speaking in Ukrainian, or mumbling random words or phrases that don't make much sense. He also gets weirdly clingy, which I, personally, find kind of endearing. We'd just gotten through security and we were making our way to the terminal. Mischa made sure that he had a hold of my hand at all times to make sure I 'didn't accidentally go somewhere else because I was tired'. In reality, I was the one who needed to be doing that for him. It was almost like dragging a child around there with the incessant 'I want to sleep! Or 'Can we please stop here to get something? Please?'

At one point, he stopped in front of a window to watch an airplane take off and I had to convince him to keep going before the rest of the choir left without us. It was safe to say that it was a relief to finally board the plane. I let him have the window seat. I expected him to fall asleep first, but it was actually me who did that. I guess that's what happens when you only get about four quality hours of sleep for a week.

I woke up maybe thirty minutes before the plane landed in Saskatoon. We had an hour before the plane to Chicago left, so we ate a quick lunch beforehand.

On our second ride, I was awake most of the time. Mischa and I watched an in-flight movie together. He wasn't tired anymore, which made things a lot easier.
All of us got excited when we could start to see the Chicago skyline far off in the distance. It was nearing four in the afternoon and we were excited to be done with travel for a while.

Father Marcus had rented an embarrassingly large van for our stay. It fit us all, so who was I to complain? When we finally got to our rented house, we were surprised to see that it looked almost nicer than in the pictures. I'd gone ahead and claimed Laura and my room. The room was upstairs and had two beds. Some of the last rays of sun were shining through the small window as I put away my luggage.

Father Marcus had left to go to the store. He'd decided to have a homemade dinner tonight rather than go out for dinner. As he backed out of the driveway, Ocean, Noel, Mischa, and I all started making comments about the van. My favorite, coming from Ocean, was: 'Bye! If you don't come back soon, I'll assume they've arrested you on suspicion of kidnapping!"

Father Marcus, of course, couldn't hear what any of us were saying, so he'd just smile and wave while we absolutely slandered the van.

Dinner, as it turned out, was being prepared by Mrs. Gruber and Ocean, who, big surprise there, was an excellent chef.

After we ate, we went to bed. It was easy to fall asleep after all of the travel we'd been doing.