Gone Home✔️

Prologue: Going Home

"...will be coming in for a landing very shortly. Please make sure your seat trays are up and your seats backs are in their upright position and locked. Thank you."

The words dragged me slowly out of the tentative sleep I'd been drifting through for the past...how long was this flight supposed to be? I opened my eyes and took a deep breath, slowly stretching. My neck hurt now from the awkward position I'd slipped into while asleep and I reached up, massaging it gently as I looked around. The cabin still looked sedate and almost dreamy. There weren't too many people around.

That still seemed kind of surreal to me, but I guess not all flights are jam-packed. Maybe there just weren't that many people flying back from Amsterdam to Portland, Oregon in the middle of the night. Rubbing the remains of sleep from my eyes, I sat up a little more fully and looked out the window. There were still just clouds out there, clouds and darkness, but the plane was headed down. It wouldn't be long before it was on the ground.

I'd been on more planes than I wanted to think about over the past year.

Thankfully, this was the last one! At least for awhile. Hopefully.

Flying still made me nervous. It just seemed like it was all too easy for something to go wrong in something as intricate and complex as a plane...but now I was just scaring myself. It was almost over. Then I could go home.

Home...

I had never even been home, at least not to this one. Not yet.

I settled in and waited.

* * *

It had been a long, strange year in Europe.

Mostly fun, sometimes annoying, sometimes frightening, but all in all a good time. Originally, I wasn't sure if I wanted to do it, but...hey, how many college sophomores get a chance to spend a year studying abroad in freaking Europe?! My dorm mate said it best when I was still struggling with the decision...

You'd be a moron not to do this!

She'd been right, of course.

It had been quite the change from Portland, where I'd spent my first year of college. Maybe most importantly of all, in a way that I was only recently beginning to even grasp in the slightest, it was like...saying goodbye to my childhood. Sitting there on a plane as it landed in Portland, I didn't feel like an adult, not at all.

But I didn't feel like a kid anymore, either. Maybe not even a teenager. Ha, at twenty one, I'm sure I know what a lot of adults would have to say about that. And maybe I'm wrong. But probably what got me thinking on the whole subject was the fact that I never even got to say goodbye to our old house, because while I was away, in a very strange turn of events, my parents had inherited a mansion apparently out in the middle of nowhere.

When they'd first told me in a letter almost a year ago, right after I'd left, I didn't even know what to think. I thought it was a joke. But, no, it wasn't. Apparently, we had a great uncle Oscar, and he had died, and he had given us his house. His mansion, I guess. It was weird, I never thought I'd live in a mansion. But was it a mansion...or was that just my mom and dad putting on airs and calling it a mansion? They'd sent pictures, and it seemed big but...

Well, I guess I'd find out before too long.

The plane came to a stop and the pilot wished us all farewell and thanked us for flying Delta Airlines. I was just thankful that we'd made it there in one piece. I stood up, stretched, and felt my neck pop. That was a relief, at least. Reaching up, I grabbed my duffel-bag from the overhead compartment and then got into the single file line of the two dozen or so passengers that were getting off. It reminded me uncomfortably of elementary school.