Chapter 4

Greece was great. The bright sun and the blue seas enchanted me. Spending time with Agatha made me forget about all my problems back home. We did so many things together; I was really enjoying time there. But I felt this thing inside, like I missed somebody back home, making me want to go back when I was having such a great time that when it was time to leave, I didn’t want to go home.

In the plane, I had 15 hours to sleep, think, watch movies, listen to music, and do whatever I could so I didn’t get bored. I had just enough time to do all of these, and I still got bored.

When I got home, we went out for dinner in a small place downtown called Browne Grill. Just then, my phone rang, I looked at it quickly but I put it back in my bag; my parents hated it when I got a phone call in the middle of a meal. I only saw that the first letter of the contact who called me was a T.

I immediately thought of Tom. That was until I checked my phone and returned the call; it had been Tyler. I had mentioned him before but didn’t say much about him. Tyler is a 16-year-old boy who I met in my guitar lessons; he plays the drums and sings in a band called Purple Ice. In the guitar lessons we became friends, he was beginning like me, because he also played the drums.

When I called him back he said that he had two tickets to go to my favorite band’s concert. It was in a week, and my parents were okay with it.

But the week before the concert I saw Tyler. We went to get a shake at 60 Shakes, a shake place I loved, it was all retro and played music from the sixties. In this place you could order a shake made out of ANYTHING! My favorite one was definitely nutella strawberry. He ordered a 3 musketeers banana.

Tyler was a really cute guy; he had pale blue eyes and dark brown hair. He was about my height and his parents were Australian but they had been in the USA for long.

Tyler was a really cool guy; he played the drums and the guitar and sung too. He and I talked for hours. He was so interesting and fun. We laughed a lot. Suddenly my phone rang. It was Tom. I stood up and signaled Tyler to wait a sec. I answered the call outside of the shake place.

- Hey! What’s up? – I answered.

- Hey Aly! How are you? – He said.

- I’m good, how about you? – I said.

- I’m pretty okay, I guess. – He said. – And how was Greece? –

- Really good. I got back the day before yesterday. – I said.

- I need to go now; I just needed to say hi to you… -

- Okay bye! – I said and he hung up. I went back into the shake place and sat down.

Tyler was slurping what was left of his shake.

- So what time should I pick you up on Monday? – He said smiling.

- Whatever works for you is fine. – I said.

- Okay, maybe 7:30? –

- Yeah, that would be ok. –

- Okay see you then. – He said. He walked home with me and hugged me goodbye when we got there.

I entered my house and went to the computer. I chatted with my friend Becca who was on vacation in Los Angeles visiting her granddad. She told me that she saw Tom walking in the street but couldn’t say hi to him. I lived in a small town in California and during the hot summer, there was not much to do. So I burrowed my dad’s camera and walked around town taking cool pictures. I had some pretty cool ones but I still got bored because my friends were so lame that nobody was in town and the ones who were didn’t want to go out.

All along the week I had nothing to do and for some weird reason I could only thin about two things…

The concert on Monday night and I wondered when would Tom call me.

Whenever I thought about those 2 guys, I felt like I had dragonflies in my stomach…