Nick Webster

Becoming Little Stars

             The morning sun came with a nice warmth.  I initially fell asleep huddled next to Nikki.  However, when I woke up, Nikki was gone.  I also felt tired much more quickly than I did in Moscow.  I wasn’t sure why.  But for the first time in a long time, I slept through the whole night.  It felt so good.

            When I woke up, I was alone.  What was I to do without Nikki here?  I thought we were supposed to stick together.  Now, she’s nowhere to be found.  Was I supposed to stay here and wait for her?  Was I supposed to find food?  What if she just left me?  I don’t think she would do that, but you can’t even tell what she’s going to do.  She’s super nice sometimes but then she turns mean the next minute.  This wasn’t the first time she disappeared when I woke up either.

            I decided that I would walk around and find some place to potentially eat.  I didn’t have any money, so I couldn’t buy anything.  I had to wait for Nikki for that.

            I started leaving all the bushes and trees.  Right before I popped out of the last bush, someone grabbed me from behind!  Oh crap!  Is that why Nikki wasn’t here?  Did she get kidn*pped by those people who tried to grab us yesterday??  Wait a minute… I was startled at first, but the person who grabbed me has much smaller hands and isn’t nearly as strong as any of those guys yesterday.

            “Lesson one: Always check behind you,” a voice said.  Nikki.  She’s pretending to be those guys from yesterday.  She had one hand on my mouth, so I couldn’t talk back to her.  She grabbed one of my arms with her other hand and was forcing it upward behind my back.  I wasn’t in any pain, but I knew that if she thrusted my arm upward, she would break my arm.  I knew she wouldn’t do that, but it doesn’t hurt to practice my defensiveness.

            In one swift motion, I did a front flip with my body, while simultaneously kicking her right in the stomach.  My foot landed perfectly, and she was thrown back a couple of feet.  I didn’t land it perfectly, but it was enough to keep enough distance between us.

            Nikki coughed a couple of times.  “Wow.  I didn’t think you had it in you.  Impressive.”  She coughed a couple more times.  It was nice to best her at something for once!

            I stood up to my feet.  I was still on my guard in case her coughing was acting or she ready to retaliate.  She didn’t do anything, though.

            I let her catch her breath for a moment.  Then I asked, “What are we going to do for breakfast?”

            “It’s a good thing I haven’t eaten yet.  Otherwise, you probably could have just had mine,” hinting at the fact that she probably would have thrown it up after I kicked her.

            I gave a slight chuckle and said, “Yeah… sorry.”

            “Don’t apologize for being prepared,” she said.  “But since you’re asking, there’s a number of different places we can go.  There are several places to eat nearby, and we can buy them Mr. Anti-Crime.  Let’s go, but let’s head in this direction,” she started walking toward the direction she wanted us to go.

            As we were walking, she started talking about the history of the place we were at.  “I bet you didn’t even know we were near the Eiffel Tower.  It’s one of the most famous places in the world.”  We were able to see it through the tree lines.  She pointed it out, “There!”  She was rather excited to point it out.

            “Wow!” I said to her.  I thought for a second.  “Shouldn’t we avoid popular places?  I feel like we should start heading out of big cities.  I just feel like there’s too much risk being kidnapped.”

            “Oh, don’t let a few guys scare you,” she said with a laugh.  “Don’t worry.  I hope to leave this place as soon as possible.  No worries.  I did some more research.  There’s a city called Chicago in the United States that we should go.  I’ll tell you about it over breakfast!  Come on!  Last one doesn’t eat!”  She started running through the park.

            “But I don’t know where we’re going!” I yelled as she started to get away.  I soon after tried to catch her.

            We eventually came to a restaurant.  It was an outdoor restaurant right next to this Eiffel Tower.  It was a really beautiful building and park surrounding it.  I wondered how many people had the chance to see such a magnificent sight in their lifetimes.  There were certainly a lot of people around at this time.

            When we sat down, Nikki started telling me all about the United States.  “It’s the one place in the world that most people consider a place for ‘refugees.’  Refugees are people like us.  People with no home searching for somewhere to stay.  They’ve had a long history of welcoming foreigners, and there are a lot of different ethnicities, religions, and cultures there,” she started.

            I didn’t know what any of those things were.  “What are ethnicities, religions, and cultures?”  Nikki already knew so much more than me.  “I think I read about culture in the encyclopedia, but I didn’t really know what the word meant.”

            “I’m glad you asked!” she cheerfully said.  “An ethnicity is your social group with your common culture.”  She sounded like she was a walking dictionary.  “Religion is the belief and worship of something that controls the universe, such as the belief in a god or goddess.  I’m going to be a goddess one day!” she said as she looked like she was drifting off into a daydream.

            “You want to control the universe?” I asked very curiously.

            “I don’t know.  Maybe one day.  It would be cool!” she said, but she quickly moved on to the last word.  “Culture includes the customs, arts, and institutions of a group of people.”

            “There are still several words there I don’t know,” I said.

            “Well, I think we have all the time in the world,” she said.  “But first, we need to talk about the United States some more!”  The worker at the restaurant gave us our food, so she temporarily stopped to eat some of her food.  After a few bites, she continued, “So, we need to eventually make it to Chicago.  I think our best chance at finding a nice and quiet life is to become foster children.”

            “What do foster children do?” I asked.

            “Foster children aren’t known for what they do.  They’re known for what they lack.  Foster children are children who don’t have parents, like us.  If you enter a foster care system, you can meet parents who might want to adopt you.  The United States is very welcoming to foreigners and very welcoming to offering new homes for children who don’t have families.  It’s a win-win for us because we’re both of those!” she said that so cheerfully, but it sounded sad and pathetic.  Nikki continued, “There’s used to be a place called the Hull House in Chicago.  It used to be one of the best places for foster children to go.  It’s closed now, but there are several other adoption agencies that have taken its place in that area.”

            I pondered for a minute.  “Alright, when do we leave?  And how do we leave?”

            “Lucky for you, I did a little bit of scouting.  We don’t have a lot of money, but I learned that if I buy plane tickets further in the future, the prices tend to be lower.  We had just enough money for two tickets,” she explained.

            She paused for a very brief second.  But I used that pause to interject, “We had enough?  What happened to the money?” I asked starting to sound worried.

            “Don’t worry, silly!” she said.  “We don’t have much money anymore because I bought us tickets!  We leave in eight days.  I could have waited even longer for cheaper tickets, but I don’t think I want you being scared of every little man that drives by us,” she said teasing me.

            “Hey, I could have saved your life!” I exclaimed.

            “Could have, should have, blah, blah, blah!” she started giggling.  She’s ridiculous.

            Her comment lightened my mood.  Even though she can be frustrating and hard to take seriously, she’s humorous and tries to be fun to be around.  I feel like I’m the opposite.

            I smiled but didn’t make eye contact with Nikki.  She kept giggling for a little bit.  After a few moments, I asked, “What are we going to do about getting money then?  You seem to want to start fresh and not steal anything.  We’ll need a way to make money still,” I pointed out.

            “Oh, I’m the one who is supposed to come up with that plan?”  She punched me on the shoulder after she said that.  “Do I have to do everything?”  She wasn’t serious, but I was still asking a pretty serious question.

            “Is there any way you can make money on a computer?” I asked.

            “I haven’t really looked very seriously at anything like that, but I bet you I could eventually find a way to make some money,” she said.  “We don’t have a consistent and secure access to a computer anyway.  When I’ve been looking up stuff, I’ve been… sneaking into places.  But I haven’t been stealing stuff!”  She went from super ashamed to super defensive really quick!

            I gestured for her to calm down.  “Okay, okay!  No worries.  What about if we see if any businesses are willing to offer a few dollars for work?”  I didn’t really have any bright ideas.

            “Well, I guess we’re going to have to figure that out then,” Nikki said.  She looked at me like she was ready to take on the world with me.  Together, we would be invincible.

 ***************************************

             The last seven days were so much fun.  It was definitely not like Russia.  Nikki and I had such a great time in France that I really… didn’t want to leave when it came time.

            We tried several different things at making money – some were more successful than others.  At first, we just went from business to business and asked for any type of jobs where we could earn some money.  We didn’t really get very far trying that.  We made a few dollars at a couple of different business doing minor tasks.  I think they just gave us some extra cash of out pity, though.  I felt like the “work” was the easiest thing in the world, and they just gave us some money simply because we were asking for work.  But we were really appreciative of them regardless of how much money they gave us or why they gave it.

            Next, we decided to try something else.  Why not figure out a fun way to make some money?  Nikki some research one night on how to make money completely from scratch.  She found out that some people in big cities will sing and play musical instruments on the streets and people will just give you money if they like your performance.

            Nikki and I learned along the way too!  She figured out what songs were the most popular, so more people would know those songs and want to stay and listen.  She had good planning before we started it too.  If we were going to draw people toward us, including potentially crazy people, we would need a different look.  We both cut our hair and bought different articles of clothing.  We wanted to stick out when we performed, but we also wanted to look like normal kids when we weren’t performing.

            There was obvious risk involved too.  We, of course, risked drawing those people who tried to kidnap us.  Our plan was to stay out in the open where other people would see us, and when it was time to quit for the day, we would make sure absolutely no one would notice where we stayed.  We always stayed in the park too.  Nikki only needed like 30 minutes of sleep each night, and she stayed with me every night.  When she needed to sleep, I would wake up and stay on guard for us.  We never had any incidents of people finding us and trying to kidnap us.

            The most fun part was listening to, learning, and then singing a bunch of new songs.  We also made up some dances on the spot as well.  We not only learned more French by singing these songs, but we also learned a new language.  English was a common secondary language in France.  But many of these songs were in English because they were popular in the United States, and the music in the United States was very influential throughout the world.  Many songs from that country were popular in France, especially among young people.

            Some of the French songs that we learned and sang included songs called, “À Fleur de Toi,” “Il Avait Les Mots,” and “Quelque part.”  Some of the English songs that we learned were called, “Beautiful Liar,” “Relax, Take It Easy,” and “Please Don’t Stop the Music.”  They were all number one hits in France within the two years.

            Nikki was a really good singer.  She sang the songs that female artists would sing, and I sang songs that male artists would sing, but she sang more often.  We both agreed that she was better than me.  We could both tell that other people liked her more than me as well.  I eventually switched to playing instruments.  I think the songs she sang were catchier and more popular than the ones I sang.

            We both received a lot of compliments regarding our musical talent, especially Nikki.  She was a great singer, and I would play various random ‘instruments.’  At first, I would use boxes, trash cans, metal cans, glass bottles, and other random items that would make noise.  I didn’t receive any compliments using those items.  I don’t think they made the best sounds.  However, after the second day of singing and playing on random instruments, some random person who had been watching us offered me an actual instrument.  It was an older wooden instrument called a “guitare” in French, or a “guitar” in English.

            It took me a few tries, but I eventually figured out how to play it.  It was difficult to reproduce the same sounds that I heard in the songs we listened to.  I never played it perfectly, especially songs that didn’t have a guitar, as not every song used guitars.  However, I tried my best and made very similar sounds.  The person who gave it to me gave me a lot of compliments.  He was surprised that I could learn it so quickly and without being taught.  I’m not sure what the big deal was.  Each string makes the same sound very time, so it’s not like I had to figure out a new sound for the same actions every time.  I wished we would have started singing and making music from the beginning of our adventure here in France, but we only sang and played for about four days.

            We were starting to make much more money on days three and four.  We even had the same people come back just to hear a new song.  It was so fun!

            But our fun soon came to an end.  Our plane left at 9:10 in the morning.  We were both excited and sad about leaving.  We were excited to start a new chapter in our lives and bring the momentum that we created here in France with us.  But we were obviously sad that we would stop singing and having fun with the crowds here.  Perhaps we could start it up again in the United States.

            The night before our plane left, we walked back near the airport.  We found an alley to stay in overnight.  It was a little chilly that night, but we survived.  We had breakfast at a restaurant right outside the airport.  I had what they called a “crêpe.”  It was a good final meal to have here in France.

            Nikki and I walked to back into the international airport.  Earlier, we had compared tickets.  We were both sitting on the right side of the plane.  There were three seats in the row, and we occupied the two outside seats.

            We were both impatient during the wait for the airplane.  But we knew it’d be worth the wait.  When our plane was finally ready, we hopped into line.  There were a lot of people lining up for the plane, but we weren’t exactly early.  We probably shouldn’t have had breakfast because we were toward the end of the line.  It took several minutes for the line to go through the check-in station, and we were arguing about who was going to get the window seat while we were waiting.  We were almost up soon!

            There were only a couple of people were ahead of us in line, and then a worker would check our tickets.   There was a mom and a kid behind us in the line.  Unfortunately, the kid was rather rowdy and energetic.  He accidentally spilled a drink on Nikki a couple of minutes before we were ready to get our tickets checked.  He apologized several times for accidentally spilling his drink on her.  The worker who was checking people’s tickets saw what happened.  “There’s a bathroom right over there,” she pointed at the other end of the hallway.  “You’ll have plenty of time to clean up.  The plane doesn’t leave for another ten minutes.”

            “Agh,” Nikki scoffed at the situation.  “Go on in without me.  I’ll catch up in a little bit,” she said.

            I went on to the plane and found our seats.  Lucky me!  Turns out that random kid helped me get the window seat.  I waited for what seemed like a really long time for Nikki to get on the plane.  Before I knew what was happening, the plane started moving on the ground.  Uh oh!

            “Wait! My friend!” I said in French.  I tried to get the attention of a worker.  We were leaving without Nikki!  I said, “Wait! Wait!” a couple more times and finally got the attention of a worker.

            Unfortunately, she was not very nice.  She hushed me and told me to stop talking while the plane was moving.

            “My friend is not here!” I said to her.

            She didn’t seem too concerned.  “The plane is leaving --- she is here or not.”  I didn’t understand one of those words, but it sounded like the plane was leaving with or without her.

            I just gave the woman a really sad look, but she moved on.  What was I going to do without Nikki??  Well, she’s my lifeline – she’s so resourceful and knowledgeable. 

            I had to hope that she’ll find a way to get to Chicago.  It might take a couple of days, but we both had earned quite a bit of money.  She had every last dollar we had earned.  I talked myself out of a panic.  It might be a struggle for me at first in Chicago, but it’ll be better when Nikki arrives.  I’ll just hang around the airport until she arrives.  It would only be a few days at the most I told myself.  I hope.