"White pelicans are gregarious. What one does, they all do."
The boy looked at his father and resisted the urge to ask why the hell he should care about that, but he knew better. He redirected his eyes towards the road for the thousand time, the road that now felt infinite, not just because distance itself, but because he dreaded its ending.
His father stopped talking, now satisfied with his new episode of random wisdom, surely believing that his son was just a tiny bit more mature just by virtue of hearing him speak about pelicans. Each one was in their own world, of smiles on one side, and frowns on the other, each one remembering different aspects of the last couple of weeks.
“Son, it’s an adventure!” –the older man said after explaining his sudden change of heart, and job. For his father everything was an adventure, but this one seemed to be a completely new season.
Him?, he was explicit in preferring to stay. Few friends, but true and well known, he would miss them too much, and said so much, between blushes and mumblings. And those friends tried to do something, getting the help of all their parents so they could say with an adult’s authority:
“We really think that Jonny doesn't want to move from Nebraska to Maine”.
But it was to no avail. The man was adamant about it, insistent in a way stronger than The Hulk’s pants, and like that, father and son packed their things, and started the long journey to a new beginning, pretty much another world for the teenager so used to the comforts of his birthplace.
Life was already shit without having to start all over again, and he really didn’t care all that much about the “no so good” memories that his father wanted to avoid. Or escape from, that was the real purpose of everything, and thought of it as a sign of weakness, of someone unwilling to face things head on. But he was still a minor, so no voting right?. He returned to the conscious world just in time to hear the older man say:
“… and that’s how you get a fine pen free, isn’t it nice?”
A pen. Was he really joyful or he was just trying to bury any doubt with each and every little thing that could be called good?. Jonny was betting of the latter, but who was he to say?. The asphalt was still blurry, but the landscape was so different. This wasn’t his home, but it was to be, and when his eyes caught the sign saying “Welcome to Maine”, he just hoped to find something as interesting as IT, and maybe that way he could use that free pen to write himself a life worth reading.