I updated Wish Upon a Satellite! Liam, one of the main characters that you might remember from my previous novel, finally shows up. He's a black trans athlete who loves telling stories, he's the best. Here, he's telling Ciel about his adventures in New York City (inspired by a true story of mine >.>) Full chapter in the comments! I figured it was timely to share a story about a young trans athlete who's team is supportive of him.
***
“So we were leaving our hotel and heading to the airport shuttle, a twenty-minute walk away. There was the coach, three other guys, and one of my teammates’ dad, Mathieu, who volunteered to come, and I was only carrying my small luggage. You know, that blue bag with four wheels that you can simply push instead of pulling it? Well, I was pushing it on the sidewalk, all chill, when all of a sudden my mom messaged me. She wanted to know how the last competition went, so I started telling her about my teammate’s broken toe. I think I already told you that part.”
“Oh yeah. I still can’t believe a rat led to that.”
“Right?! It was huge! Anyway, I get very much into the story - you know how Leos like to boast - and my mom is all flabbergasted. We arrive at a red light, so we wait on the sidewalk, and there’s tons of people. Typical New York afternoon. Since we have to wait a moment, it’s a good time to use both of my hands to text my mom. I’m not too much of a single-hand texting type of guy, my thumb gets numb after a while. Then the light turns green, we start walking again, one block, two blocks, three blocks, all the way to the airport shuttle, and everyone starts loading their bags, and I’m just like : ‘Hey… My bag! I don’t have my bag!’ For a moment, I just look around, thinking some jackass was playing a trick on me, but that’s when I realized I’ve actually been walking this entire time without it! I left it at that red light!”
“Damn!”
“I start panicking. And you know me, I’m not one to do that.”
“I’m not sure I ever saw you slightly stressed about anything.”
“Exactly! But there was my sketchbook in that bag, and my meds, and my passport, and my favourite hoodie, everything. I tell my coach: ‘Hey Coach, I don’t have my bag!’ and he looks at me and he’s like: ‘What do you mean, you don’t have your bag?’ and I reply: ‘I don’t have it! I think I forgot it a couple of blocks on the way here, at the red light!’ And he starts cursing, he’s all like: ‘What the heck, Liam!’ You know, because it’s New York and it’s full of people and the airport shuttle is about to leave and we have a flight to catch. Now we’re both standing there, it’s super tense. He asks the bus driver if he can wait a couple more minutes, but he’s on a tight schedule, and so are we, so the coach tells the other boys on the team to just go to the airport with Sasha’s dad, Mathieu, and you could tell from that poor dude’s look on his face that it was every single of his worst fears happening all at once. Coach basically screams to him to take care of his bag, left under the bus. It was kind of funny, because we started sprinting but coach was still yelling to him: ‘It’s the burgundy bag with a perch on it! The burgundy bag with a perch on it!’ and Mathieu was soooo confused, he had no clue burgundy was even a color, just some backwater region in France, and he didn’t understand what Coach meant by “perch”, but he meant the fish, of course.”
“Of course.”
“And then we run, I run like I never ran, we jay-walk, we skip red lights, we don’t take a single moment to catch our breath. I try to remember which corner it was that I left my bag at, but it’s hard, because I was texting and not paying attention at all, and have you ever been to New York?”
“Nope.”
“It’s just skyscrapers everywhere! Buildings, buildings, pavement, a ton of Starbucks, some Panera Breads, more buildings. Every corner kind of looks the same, it’s so intense. And the people! There’s people everywhere.”
“Like Toronto?”
“No, not really. “
“Toronto is the only other city that I visited. There were quite a few people. We also went to São Paulo when I was a kid, but I don’t remember anything.”
“Oh. Anyway, we were just running all the way from where we came, trying to avoid the people, and I couldn’t tell which street corner was the one where I left my bag at, and I started getting desperate about ever seeing it again. But as we were approaching the hotel, we bumped into a blockade, a perimeter of police officers, police cars with their sirens on, a special services truck and a yellow ‘danger’ band, like in the movies. It looked really serious! We tried to go through, but someone screamed at us : ‘You can’t pass, there’s a suspicious bag!’ And I looked on the other side of the ‘danger’ band, and guess what I saw?
“Your bag?”
“Precisely! They thought it was some sort of bomb!! Someone wearing a hazmat suit was getting out of the special services truck with a bunch of complicated looking equipment, ready to blow up my bag!”
“No way!”
“Yes way! I run to a police officer, and I say: ‘That’s my bag!’ He turns towards me, he looks so tired that he’s not even upset, and he repeats what I said: ‘That’s your bag, really?’ And I’m just so relieved it’s still there, and I’m so happy it wasn’t stolen or blown up already that I start laughing and crying tears of joy, and I want to hug the police officer, but he gets very defensive and shouts ‘Step back!’
www.facebook.com
women 
www.facebook.com
The suspense was becoming unbearable.
