Journal NO. 14

FICTION PIECE

I never thought that I’d want to leave my home. When the time for applying to college came around, I knew in my heart that New York City was where I wanted to be. Why go to a school with 10,000 faces I would never recognize and only have my campus as an exploration ground when I could have millions of unrecognizable faces in the best city in the world? 

My family was both happy and sad about this. You see, my parents wanted me to get out into the world and experience something new. My grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins were all thrilled at the thought because me staying in the city meant they wouldn’t have to miss me. 

To please everyone, I applied to schools all over. Some in florida, some on the west coast, some in Boston, some in Pennsylvania, one in Paris cause why the hell not, and more. 

The only school that I held high in my heart and mind, though, was Colombia University. I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a lawyer who attended and IV League school in New York City. I wanted my own law firm where I was the boss. I wanted to fight for justice, and so be it, I did everything in my power to get myself there. 

Without discussing it with my parents, I applied Early Decision. This meant that if I got accepted, I had no choice but to go there. I pretty much signed the contract without knowing if the people I was signing with actual wanted me. 

It had been about a month and a half since I applied. Acceptance or rejection letters should be arriving at me and my fellow students doors any day now. As I waited for my letter, I would spend my days uptown on the campus and sit on a bench and just watch as all the amazing brains and people walked passed me. 

Then it happened. The letter came. And, it was a no. “Dear Charlotte, it is with regret to inform you that we are unable to offer you admission to the freshman class at Columbia University.” 

It was as though 800 different emotions went flying through my brain. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know what was wrong with me. I was sad. I was angry. I was disappointed. I was surprised yet I expected it. I didn’t know if I should cry or if I should scream. If I should crawl into a ball and hide in my room or go out into the street and wreck any and everything I saw. 

I grabbed the letter, folded it up and placed it back in the envelope. I walked out my door without saying a word to my mom. I needed air, I needed to walk. I didn’t know where I was going or for how long I’d be gone. I just knew that I needed to get out of that apartment and put what seemed like the 6 million scattered pieces of my brain back together. 

I walked up Furman Street till I got to Columbia Street. Figures, huh, that I’d try to run away from the name that was jabbing a knife into my stomach and end up looking right at it again. Instead of walking down that street, I turned left and made my way up Atlantic Ave. I turned right onto Henry Street and walked and walked. 

It was a gray, rainy February afternoon, so it was pretty convenient that there was scaffolding up all the way down Henry till President Street. It was almost perfect, the sky matched my mood. Gray, rainy, wet, and unhappy. I liked that the scaffolding protected me from getting soaked, but not as much as I liked it when I had to cross the street and the rain would hit my body hard and fast, due to the lack of scaffolding on the crosswalks. The rain cooled my heated and red face, while the scaffolding served as some type of protection from reality. It was like I knew the rain was there, but it wasn’t actually affecting me because I had something to hide under. 

I reached President Street and the scaffolding was gone. I had nothing to hide under anymore. The reality was that it was fucking pouring outside and I didn’t get accepted into my dream school and I had no idea where I was going to go or what I was going to do. 

It all seems so funny to me now, after graduating from college and heading off to graduate school, how purely depressed and lost I felt in this exact moment when I stood in the rain and just cried. And how the moment to follow changed everything about me and my future. 

I was crying on the corner of President and Henry. I went to the side of Henry where there was no scaffolding at all, plopped down on a stoop, lit a cigarette and cried. I had my hand covering the entire cigarette so that it wouldn't get soaked from the rain and go out. It was my last one. Had to make it count. 

I felt a vibration in my coat pocket. Pulled my phone out and saw that I had an incoming call, from Susan, my mom. I took a deep breath, sighed, opened my eyes real wide, and picked up. 

“Charlie,” she said, “You’ll never believe what I’m holding in my hands!” I rolled my eyes, “What is it? The fucking golden ticket? You’re going to Willy Wonka’s magical chocolate factory?” 

“Shit, someone must be PMSing. No you hormonal little shit. It’s a letter from the American University of Paris. You got accepted! They want YOU in PARIS and they offered you a scholarship. A big one at that. Where are you anyways? I wanna talk to you about this. Get home please, Char. This is so amazing I need to squeeze you till ya pop!” And she hung up. 

I was frozen for what felt like an hour but was probably a minute. Paris? Me in Paris? Me not in New York? I didn’t know what to think, or what to do. Then something so cliche happened. Something that you would only see in movies. Minutes after my mom hung up, it stopped raining. The sky was still gray but the rain had stopped. I literally heard a bird chirp. I was waiting to see the sun pop out from behind a cloud, but that would be to unreal. 

I stood up, suddenly knowing exactly how I felt. I had hope. I knew that I would be alright. Paris…I thought. Not a college campus with 10,000 unrecognizable faces, but the second best city in the world with a million brand new faces. 

I’m gonna skip the part with all the conversations, decisions, obstacles, fights and tears that came to follow me in the months after I found out about Paris. I’m gonna jump right to the part when I decided I was going. When I suddenly had no desire in my blood to be a lawyer anymore. When I was walking down Henry Street on an excruciatingly hot August morning and it was my last day in Brooklyn. I plopped down on that same stoop on Henry and President. Looked around, smiled, and started crying again. But this time it was a happy cry, a melancholy one, a bittersweet one. A cry because everything had fallen into place and a cry because I was excited and nervous and a cry because I was gonna miss this stoop and everything else about my home. 

I walked back home, with out any scaffolding. Completely aware of and present in reality. Kissed my dog, jumped on my bed, and left for the airport. I was going to Paris and I was going to write. Nothing felt more perfect than this. 

Now I’m gonna jump to when I had settled into my apartment. Settled into school. Made friends. Had a little bit of a clue as to how to navigate my new home. It had been 2 months at this point. I was loving every second and every minute that I spent in this city of love and life. Since it was still fall during my first few months in Paris and the weather was nice, I made a point to walk all over. Go to every park. See everything that was outdoors while it wasn’t too cold or too rainy. 

My apartment was walking distance to my school. I was lucky enough to only have class 3 days a week. When I wasn’t at school or doing school work, I was outside. I spent a lot of time in the Tuileries and Luxembourg Gardens. I had made my way to the canals by Reublique and to a bunch of different parks. I would walk through Le Marais and Bastille. Sunday morning were spent at the market in the Bastille and then picnicking at Le Tour Eiffel. Some days I would walk through Montmarte and up to the Sacre Coeur and stare at the city below me. Paris was everything and nothing I had expected at the same time. Completely different than New York, but equally as lovable. 

Once November approached, the warmth seemed to disappear and the cold appeared. It wasn’t dead winter yet and being outside wasn’t quite painful. It was the time of year for a hot coffee or a hot chocolate. It was time to take the metro and walk a shorter distance and find somewhere cozy to sit inside. This is when I discovered the passages of Paris. They were walkways that were covered and filled with little boutiques and shops. Like all of Paris, they were filled with history. Many of them have been around for over a hundred years. 

My favorite passages to walk through were the Passages des Panoramas and Galerie Vivienne. It wasn’t until recently that I realized why I liked these passages so much. I just arrived back in Paris and I’m starting Grad school. It’s kind of like starting college all over again. There are still so many surprises in store. I made my way back to the passages and walked through them a bit. Window shopping and people looking. I suddenly had a flashback to the day I found out I got accepted to the American University of Paris. I remembered walking under the scaffolding and escaping from reality. 

Walking through the passages on a cold, rainy day is kind of the same thing, escaping from reality I mean. You get to walk and pass by adorable little shops and see so many different people, with the feeling of walking down any of Paris’s historic streets. But, the cold and the rain aren’t hitting you. You seem to forget that its such a shitty day outside when you spend your time walking through such gorgeous walkways. 

As I walked through Galerie Vivienne, I seemed to forget that I was starting yet another new part of my life. I forgot that I was now 24 and had to get serious about everything in my life. I was that same 17 year old girl I was when I was walking down Henry Street. I was blinded and naive. But this time, it was invigorating. It was exciting and warm. I wasn’t crying at all.