Boom. The sound of my heart pounding against my chest, echoing throughout my body. Boom. The sound of my hopes shattering after hearing my mom, quite bluntly, saying six, impossible words: “We might have to move again.” I can’t breathe, hear, see anything. My mind is suddenly drowning in a rough, vast ocean. So random. So out of the blue. No warning. My knees start to shake, my hands begin to tremble. My heart is ready to leap right out of my chest. 

“We’re not positive, but your Dad got an offer for a promotion, and his new office would be in Cincinnati.”

But it doesn’t matter that it’s not for sure. Doesn’t matter that we won’t be moving out of state. My mind immediately jumps to what will be gone, who will be gone, and what I’ll miss if we move. My head is spinning and I can’t sit still. Although I’m happy for my dad I can’t help but feel sorry for myself and ponder the question: Why me? 

I try to look up at my mom with a smile and say it’s alright, but the lump in my throat doesn’t allow any words to come out. I choke up but try to recover my composure. I, again, attempt to look up at my mom, but this time not making the fruitless struggle to speak, I only nod and make a poor impression of a smile. My mom puts her attention back onto the road.

At night, my eyes won’t close. I try to wait and make sleep come to me, but it pushes me away, tormenting me for another minute. Each time I remember another thing I won’t be seeing again, it’s another stab in the chest, penetrating through my body into my soul. I try to think of anything, anything at all to take my mind off of moving. I think of basketball. I think of the ball rolling off my fingertips, drifting through the air, with my teammates by my side. My teammates. Another stab through my chest as I struggle to keep the tears from rolling down my cheek.  

I gasp for air as I wake up from a dream I can’t recall even seconds after having it. The bags under my eyes and crumpled sheets are enough to let my parents know how my night was. They don’t ask. The following two days proceed as normal, but certain things remind me of things I'll be missing after the move. The next day, however, my mom calls all of us into the living room for a family meeting.

“There’s….. something I need to tell you all,” my mom explains as we all take a seat on the living room couch. Recognizing what’s coming, but unable to do anything to alter the result - I wait.

“It’s about a situation I’ve been meaning to explain,” I zone out immediately after she says that, only hearing fragments of sentences through my thoughts.

“Promotion……Moving………Pretty sure………..Cincinnati” is all I hear as my eyes threaten to flood and overflow. Everyone looks solemn but my brother Cody, who is awestruck. I quickly realized that my Mom must not have warned him that it was a possibility. We all try to soothe him, telling him it’s going to be okay, even though it doesn’t feel like that’s the case at all. 

After the long talk, my brothers and I attempt to tear our minds away from the subject to any extent. We go downstairs to play foosball but aren’t truly thinking about the game. I mope around for the rest of the day, not appreciating all of the good things that happened that day. At this point, I don’t even try to act happy or have any enthusiasm whatsoever.

 I‘ve worked hard and thought a lot to figure out what friend group I wanted to be in, and now that I’ve accomplished that and am with the people I like to be around, I’ll have to say goodbye and start over. It is so frustrating for me because I have only recently been with these new friends, and I have had a ton of fun with them. Now, I have to do that same process over again in a new environment and without knowing anybody. 

The day after the talk, we go outside to do the one thing that might take my mind off of the move. With the feeling of the leather ball in my hands, the fresh air filling my lungs, the sound of the ball bouncing on the concrete court, I at last feel collected. With each bounce of the ball and each swish of the net, I remember less and less that the move is inevitable. I smile a true, genuine smile for the first time in days, sinking into the zone as my shots drop.

 I am sailing towards happiness, seeing my destination is so near. I reach toward it, so close, but not yet near enough to grasp.

“When do we have to move?” Cody asks and the wave of realization snapped me back into reality, flooding my thoughts, and washing me up exactly where I had started. My spirits had been lifted by getting my mind off of the move, but one sentence caused the wave to tether my spirits to the ground, unable to rise again. 

“We’re not sure,” Caleb replies, “We’ll have to look at houses and sell ours so it’s a bit unpredictable.”

Looking at houses. Inspections. Showings. All the words I’ve heard too many times in my life. I wasn’t old enough to remember or truly care when we first moved from Ellicott City, Maryland to Columbus Ohio, and the second time was far enough to care because we were still attending the same school, but I remember it wasn’t a fun process. It was not brief either. Between seeing homes with our realtors, holding showings to sell our own home, stressful final inspections of the house we are attempting to buy, and moving in, it took 6 weeks out of my life. 

About a week before we started looking for houses in Cincinnati, I had the first real excitement in a while. My friends are throwing a going-away party for me at one of their houses. Christian Geistfeld, Andrew Petzinger, Nick Martin, and Henry Thackeray all meet me in the front yard. They immediately start asking me questions I don’t feel like answering, but I do so as briefly as I can. We travel to the basement and have a Nerf Gun war. We load our guns and the adrenaline takes over. My sailboat is now back on the right path, sailing through the calm sea to happiness. 

We all lie down on the couch and the beanbags, dying of laughter. We gasp for air as we try to calm our ten-year-old selves. The knock of the door sends us running up the stairs, each of us wanting the first slice of warm, cheesy pizza. We take our slices back down to the basement and turn on the Jumanji movie. After the movie, we play on Christain’s mini basketball hoop in his room. We hear a knock on the door, but knowing it’s not more pizza, we groan. Luckily, however, my mom is the chatty type so we get another 10 minutes to ourselves. Mrs. Geistfeld calls us to the kitchen, I think it’s over but they have one more thing for me. They each hand me a card, wishing me luck and telling me that they’ll miss me.

“This way you can always see our beautiful faces,” Andrew says as he chuckles and hands me the picture that everyone had just taken together. I smile and choke out a thank you through the lump in my throat. I say goodbye to everyone one last time as I hop into the car. 

“Remember to text us or we’ll think you disappeared,” Henry calls after me.

I smirk and give him a thumbs-up as I shut the car door. As I ride home I read the cards. All complimenting me and saying they’ll miss me and how they’ll always remember me. I feel the same about them and don’t want to leave but I don’t have control over that matter.

I look at the picture, the sun shooting rays of light at our eyes, blinding us. Christian caught in the middle of a laugh. The warm wind whistles in our ears, the green grass leaning toward us, yearning for us to run on it.

“You do realize we can come back to visit, right?” my mom asks, seeming to see my thoughts, “It’s only a two and a half-hour drive.” 

I hadn’t thought of this. I had been too worried about the move that I didn’t realize how easy it would be to come back and visit. There are also things that I’m glad I won’t have to deal with once we move, kids like Jack DeCapua, patronizing me and making me seem a lesser human because of my size. There is always a bright side amid the darkness. I had so much fun with my friends, not thinking about the future but living in the moment. I crossed the sea and achieved true happiness and in that process understood what it truly signifies. One must not always worry about the future, for great things are already occurring all around them. I will never forget this moment because it has shown me how to enjoy the little things while they are still there. Great things don’t last forever, live them in the moment.