Gate 216

My Story

It was never meant to end this way.

I've lost count of how many times I've repeated that phrase the last few years. I know I can't change it now, but that doesn't keep me from wishing I could. But I digress...

Think of every story you've ever read. If you're anything like me, the stories you've read usually have a beginning, middle, and end: preferably happy, sad, and happy respectively.

But life doesn't work like that.

The endings come at the beginning, the middle's all jumbled up in between everything else; it's convoluted, it's complicated, and it leaves you in tears more than smiles.

So, that's what this story is: life, written down in black and white. Or, at least, as much as possible.

The end of everything I knew, everything life was for me, was the beginning of the real story. I'll let you decide where the end stops, and the beginning starts.

The story's end starts about ten years ago, when I was a sophomore at MIT. I had a normal college life: a nice apartment near campus( I simply could NOT do dorms), a great roommate called Samantha, a close friend from home named Jonathon, and almost anything I needed from my parents, who both worked on Capitol Hill. Oh, by the way, my name's Katrina, Katrina Carvihall, or Kate for short.

I was watching TV that night, and Sam was studying in the back room. I flipped by the news for a minute, and saw Washington at the bottom of the screen, so I stopped. What I saw froze me for a good thirty seconds.
The Pentagon was in flames; the White House was nearly burned to the ground. Washington was almost devastated, and the country was about to be in ruins around our ears. I ran to the back room. "Sam! Have you-" The phone started ringing just then, so I turned. I was almost afraid to answer, and afraid of what they would say. It turned out I had nothing to fear: it was Jonathan. "Have you seen the news, Kate?" he asked me. "Sure have," I answered. "I need to get to the airport." "You can't want to go down there!" he exclaimed. "The airports are blocked up for hours with people trying to get out, not get in!" I was silent for a while on the other end. "It's my parents, Jon. I have to do something." "What exactly do you think you can do?" I was silent. I wasn't about to answer that. Finally, he sighed. "When do you want to leave?" I smiled. "Thanks Jonathan. I need to leave ASAP." "I'll get the tickets from Brad next door: his dad's a pilot." I hung up, and called Sam. "Sam, we're going to Washington!" She came out, still in her pajamas. "What is it with you? Whew, I was almost scared you were serious. Now why are you not-" She looked at me, and stopped short. I was giving her The Look. Now this is something I have perfected through 20 years of siblings and roommates: it means "Do Not Cross under any Circumstances". All of my friends know better than to question me. Sam, especially, quails at this stare. "You can't be serious," she said, starting to back away. "How can we go to Washington right now?" Now Sam does not like surprises, or short-notice anythings. She likes to know about things with enough time beforehand to think of everything that could possibly go wrong: so this was too much for her to just up and go to Washington. I turned the TV back on, and said, "I have to go help." Sam's eyes grew wide, and she stood frozen on the spot, watching the same pictures I had just seen. I turned and calmly began packing some essentials in my backpack. Once I finished, I went and shook Sam. "Come on, I don't know when Jonathan could get tickets to fly down there, but it may be at any time." She stood for a second, then turned and said, "We can't go there! Do you want to be fried like cornbread?" "Two of those people are my parents, Samantha," I told her on my way out the door. "I have to go find them and get them out of there, before they become cornbread. Are you in or out?" I asked, pausing in the door. She sighed. "Hang on, let me get what we need." I smiled as she scurried around, grabbing everything we could possibly have wanted for a week-long vacation to the Antarctic. "Sam, we don't need everything in the dang apartment: just throw some clothes in a backpack: that's all we'll have room for." "But what about food? Kate, there's none in Washington, I can tell you that! What do we do about that?" "We will not starve. Do you trust me enough to give me that?" "I think the fact that I'm even going is enough to tell you I trust you," she said. "But I guess if you say that, then I'll take your word for it." I smiled: this is why she was my best friend. "Thanks. Let's go!"