Page 50 of Escape from the Green

I wasn't sure I ever had been.

I may have always felt alone even when surrounded by others, but I had never been allowed to be on my own for any length of time.

It was normal to feel scared, to feel uncertainty, to wonder if this was a mistake.

I had no one to lean on but myself.

I was going to need to become comfortable with that.

Unsure what to do next, I had found myself in the local library, understanding that the whole world was at my fingertips there. Once I figured out how to use the computers, that is, a skill that definitely took some getting used to.

I found apartment listings.

I called the numbers with a cell phone I had picked up on an outdoor cart.

I went to see it.

I put down a nice little chunk of my savings on it.

But then it was mine.

All three-hundred-seventy-five feet of it.

Mine.

Utterly.

No one could tell me how to decorate it, what to do within it, when I had to be inside it. I could come and go as I pleased. I could pull the bed down from its contraption in the wall and sleep whenever I wanted to.

For the first few days, that was what I did.

I stayed in my apartment.

Sleeping.

Only slipping out to grab food from the market.

Then I slowly ventured out.

I found a place to buy clothing, to buy dishes and utensils, to get bedding and toiletries.

And then, finally, on Sunday, I made my way down to the museum. I waited in a line full of cranky kids and their flustered parents.

I walked around, taking in the history of the human's realm with relish before finding myself in front of the giant dinosaur I had told Drake and Jasper about in my note, watching the bodies move around me, an endless sea of faces. And not one of them belonging to someone I cared about.

I left later feeling an unstoppable amount of disappointment.

The next month was much the same.

But I got some houseplants.

I got art for my walls.

I found a place that sold little creatures as pets to humans. And I asked for a job.

Days turned to weeks, weeks to months.

And I slowly learned to love this new city of mine, to feel like a part of it instead of an outsider. Enough so that I could give the tourists with the bulging eyes and ready cameras a small, amused smirk, remembering when I, too, was so fascinated by everything around me. Before I got used to it. Before I learned how to move with the crowd so they didn't trample me. Before I figured out how to get from one place to the next without getting lost five times. Before the other things about my new home took that sheen of wonder off the surface.