Sebastian - 1. Chapter 1

I stood outside at the curb, waiting for the paperboy. It was misty, dark and the air was so full of moisture I thought it was drizzling, maybe it was and I just couldn’t tell, I scrunched down into my coat, and walked around in circles a bit, trying to keep warm. “This is totally fucked up” I thought, just last week I was home, it was spring, the weather was awesome, and now here I am 6,000 miles away, winter is just starting up again and damn it all, I hate being cold. I’m small and skinny, without an ounce of fat, or a lot of muscle even, to protect me from it.

I bitched to myself while I waited “damn country”, I thought, they don’t even have newspaper deliveries, and damn my dad for his obsession with having the newspaper to read every day.”

I could hear the boy coming down the street, yelling “diario, diariOooo” which I guessed was Argentine for newspaper, but I couldn’t see him through the mist.

“Come on hurry up” I groused to myself, and as if someone had answered my pleas, a human shape materialized from the dark and fog.

I’d only been in Argentina for 2 days and I was totally unprepared for the shocked feeling I’d have at the way some of the people lived. As he got closer and I could make him out more, I realized he was about my age and size. He was dressed in a thin, worn coat. I saw holes in his shoes and in the threadbare sweat pants that he wore. His dirty blonde head was uncovered and matted to his head from the moisture in the air. I couldn’t tell if his hair was truly a dirty blonde or just dirty, it looked like he hadn’t bathed in days, and his clothes were stained and filthy. He walked with his head down, and shoulders hunched, an air of defeat surrounding him, like he realized he was doomed to have a shitty life, I wondered if he even ate every day.

“¿Querés un diario?” he asked me as he approached.

“No hablo Español.” I responded with 3 of the few words of Spanish I knew as I thrust out the money for the paper.

For the first time he looked up, a puzzled expression on his face, my breath caught in my throat, and I’m sure my mouth hung open. He wasn’t the most beautiful person I’d ever seen but there was something about him that left my throat dry and an unpleasant squirming in my stomach.

He reached up to move his bangs out of his eyes, and I felt like I was falling into the most brilliant deep green eyes I’d ever seen, his eyes caught mine and I couldn’t have looked away for anything. He had a smattering of freckles across his nose, his lips weren’t thin or full, they just sat there like they knew they belonged. His nose was a little bit small, and his cheeks were pinched, I knew right then that he wasn’t eating enough.

He cocked his head to the side as he looked at me, I know he said something, but I have no idea what it was, I just stared at him blankly and repeated,

“No hablo Español.”

At those words he giggled a bit, said something more, and when I didn’t respond he got a huge grin on his face, his eyes shining. I knew he was teasing me, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Damn I felt so impotent standing there like a dork.

He finally handed me the paper and tried to give me some change, which I refused, again he looked up at me, with that toothy grin and puzzled expression, then he shrugged, the transformation that followed ripped my heart out, I watched the fire in his eyes burn out, his face sagged as he lowered his gaze to the road, and he shuffled off, his shoulders hunched again in resigned defeat. I turned to follow his progress with my eyes and watched until he disappeared into the fog. I stood there for several minutes with so many thoughts and emotions passing through me that I felt like I couldn’t function.

“Sean!” my dad yelled standing inside the door frame, “if you got the paper bring it up, we’ve got a busy day ahead of us.”

I ripped my eyes from the fog where he’d disappeared and slowly turned to climb the steps leading up to the house, I didn’t understand why, but I felt like I’d just let something precious slip through my fingers and a hole I hadn’t know existed opened up inside of me, leaving me weary and scared.

“Hey son” my dad said as I entered the house, “you ready for your first day of school here?”

“Not really, Dad”

He’d made breakfast for us while I stood outside. I sat down at the table and loaded my plate with eggs and toast.

“I’m really nervous, I don’t know anyone, and I can’t speak their language.”

Saying that brought to mind images of what my day was going to be like. I put my fork down rapidly. I didn’t feel like eating anymore.

“Don’t worry about it so much, you know you’re only going to school here to pick up the language, it will take a bit of time, but you will be fine. Don’t worry about the other kids, its not like your going to need them, we should only be here a year or so anyway.”

He spoke gently, knowing what I must be going through, after all he had been through the same thing some 20 years earlier.

I knew he was excited about being here. Dad’s a business consultant specializing in helping companies get their products to new markets. I had seen the sparks light up in his eyes when he told us about the job offer with a company in Argentina. I knew we would be coming here. He was going to spend a year with a company helping them break into the U.S. market, advising them on advertising, distributing and anything else they needed to know to sell their product in the U.S.

I would have loved to stay back home with my mom, but she was going to be traveling a lot over the next couple of years. She’s a doctor, but does mostly research. Her team had made a discovery about the human genome, which had the medical and scientific communities very excited. They would be spending a lot of time going to different universities and research facilities to share their discovery, and hopefully expand on it.

“Dad, how did you cope with it, when you came here and couldn’t talk to anyone?” Dad had come here on a mercy mission with our church 20 years earlier, right after he got out of high school. He spent a year here helping the people, building houses, digging irrigation ditches, things like that.

“It was different for me. I was older than you. I had friends and people with me that were also from America, so I wasn’t lonely. I never felt like there wasn’t anyone I could talk to. But you’ll do fine, your 14, your brain will pick up Spanish a lot faster than mine did. And soon it’ll be like you were born here.”

He opened up the paper and I knew our conversation was over. Once he starts reading, you didn’t interrupt him unless the house was burning down. I sat there still feeling queasy, but resigned. It wasn’t like I had much of a choice.

The house had warmed up a bit. Dad had left the burners on the stove going. I guess nobody down here had heating or air conditioning. Suddenly I wondered where the newspaper boy lived? How cold was his house? Did he even have a stove to heat up the house? With those thoughts running through my mind I showered, got dressed and waited for dad to take me to school. I couldn’t help the feeling of dread that had crept over me though, and I just wished the day was through.
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