Travelling River

Two

{River}

I spend the next few days listening to some of June's music, I feel like I need to be at least a little prepared. Jim had told me that all the kids had meet&greet tickets, and so he had also bought one as to not get separated from them. Which means, I now have meet&greet tickets to an artist I didn't even know existed 3 days ago. On Friday we had an extra youth club meeting planned, so we could get the final details down for our trip. I've been at 3 meetings now in total, and I feel like I've gotten to know them all pretty well. All the kids know by now that I'll be joining them. Ray and Yao came running towards me on Friday, hugging and thanking me. Even Eloisa, the shy girl from earlier, gave me a quiet thank you. In total I will take 8 of the kids with me. We will meet up at the airport, where I will greet all the parents, and assure them only holy things will happen this weekend. Then I will take these 8 kids with me on a plane, and then a train to the city center. The more I think about it, the more nervous I get, this is a huge responsibility. After the concert they will all spend the night in a hostel room they rented. Jim had hired himself a hotel room nearby. Mostly because there wasn't space for him in the hostel, but also because he wanted to give the kids a little bit of space and freedom. I like the idea of having my own room, and not having to deal with giggling and snoring teens all night.

Saturday morning I'm waiting at the airport for the kids and their parents. I barely slept last night, studying all the information Jim had emailed me, making sure I wouldn't use the wrong name or pronouns in front of the parents. As I was waiting I got more and more nervous, "Argh, what was the stupid church called again." I mumbled to myself. I got jerked out of my thoughts when a body bumped into mine and two arms wrapped around me, it was Dory. "Goodmorning Dorothy, are you ready?" She squealed, "YES!". I greeted her parents politely, they seemed pretty calm, not a lot of questions. Everything went well with the other parents, I made sure to wear my straightest, most Christian outfit, whatever that may look like. Whether it helped or not, we'll never know, but one way or the other, the parents all trusted me with their kids for the weekend. Security went smoothly for the most part, except for Ray who had forgotten to take his pocketknife out of his bag. That was a bit of a hassle, Ray didn't want to leave his pocketknife behind, but obviously we couldn't bring it on the plane. After some frustration Ray finally accepted his defeat, and now here we are at the gate. The plane is supposed to board in about ten minutes, and the kids all seem very excited. It was fun meeting their parents, some of these kids seem carbon copies, while others are complete opposites. Yao for example is in his goth phase, but his mom was a literal ray of sunshine, dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. Eloisa's mom was one of those typical overprotective moms. The type that would rather hold their child's hand through everything in life. It was clearly hard for her to let Eloisa come with us on this trip, but as the mom said "I know she'll be safe in gods hands." I sure hope so, because the list of allergies, medicine and other things to be aware of with Eloisa was endless. At least there was no doubt where Eloisa got her shyness and scared view of the world from.

When the plane lands I take my phone out of plane-mode to let the parents know we have landed safely. I don't have any messages or calls, but I do have an email. "Information - June concert" it says at the top. I click it curiously, expecting some extra information about the time the doors will open or something. My mouth falls open while reading the email and I look up at the kids. We are sorry to inform you that the meet&greet has been cancelled for the Juniper concert due to a mistake at the venue. The email says. I let out a sigh, how am I going to tell them this, I can't break their hearts like this.