October 13th, 2024
Dear Yesterday Me,
Right now, you’re lying awake in some strange AirBnb in what feels like the middle of nowhere Vermont. You’ve just spent twelve hours in the car; doing your math homework, playing twenty questions, and trying your best not to get so motion sick that you have to choose between an improvised barf bag or making the car pull over. And when the car ride is half a day long you really don’t want to have to make everyone pull over.
Right now, you’re relieved that you ended up with a room to yourself but still anxious that you’ll sleep-talk loud enough the others will hear you through the walls. You could say something weird or scary or concerning and wake all of your friends up. At 6 in the morning when the other half of the road trip group gets in, you’ll realize sound travels too well in this cabin. It’ll stress you out a bit more for the rest of the trip, but it’ll be okay.
Tomorrow will be a relaxed day, even if you don’t feel it yet. You’ll spend the morning hunting down a bakery for breakfast—at one the line was out the door, another was inexplicably closed, and one more had one poor barista trying to manage the entire place by herself. You’ll make a little bit of progress on your midterm paper, not quite enough to assuage all your school anxiety, but enough to take the edge off. You’ll learn a new game—Set—and quickly become a bit too intense playing it.
The middle of nowhere Vermont will turn out to not be nowhere. Before you know it, you’ll become attached to the crisp air, vibrant foliage, and cozy little shops. Sure, you miss Virginia and sort of wish you were spending break with your family. But you’ll learn tomorrow that the weird sideways window on that antique store is called a witch window, and maybe you wouldn’t have ever learned that if you’d stayed home.
October 14th, 2024
Dear Yesterday Me,
Right now, you’re falling asleep on the floor of the living room, listening to the sounds of your friends cooking dinner in the kitchen. You’ve always loved falling asleep before anyone else does. There’s something that feels so comforting about it, like you can fall asleep knowing for sure that nothing bad could happen to you. All of your friends are still awake, and they wouldn’t let that happen.
Today was fun, but long. You’ll wake up in a little bit for board games and macaroni and cheese and more Set, but for now you’re just about to let your heavy eyelids shut.
Tomorrow will be frustrating. The group, about 10 minutes into the drive for our day trip to Salem, will decide the drive was too long and not worth it. And you’ve wanted to go to Salem ever since you read The Crucible in 10th grade. But there will still be other things to do.
You won’t be very helpful in the escape room the group visits on a whim. But at least this time you didn’t break a lamp by accident like you did once in an escape room in high school. You’ll still have fun, and the group actually makes it onto the leadership board. You’ll pose for the group photo for the escape room’s website and laugh when the man running the place mishears the team name the group comes up with.
Oh, and don’t worry; you’ll finally get to go to The Great Moose Vermont Shop—the tacky little gift shop at the end of the road we’re staying on, the one with the anthropomorphic moose wearing a hoodie standing in front of it. I know you’ve been joking about going since the group first passed by it, but it’ll genuinely be one of the highlights of the trip for you.
At first, you’ll plan on just buying a few postcards—one or two to keep for yourself and then a few to mail to some friends. But then your friends point out the design on a t-shirt too high to reach, depicting a turnip with a strange smile and a look in his eyes that he’s keeping some sort of deep, dark secret from you. And the turnip’s name is Gil Feathers? What?
Your friend insists they have to buy it…but they don’t want to be the one to ask the lady at the front desk to get it down. So you’ll be the one to do it.
And you’ll chat with her. You’ll learn that they have two more Gil Feathers shirts in stock, and that they were made by a local artist, a 90 year old man who travels to gift stores in Vermont looking to sell prints of his art. And that gilfeather is a type of turnip, the official turnip of a nearby town that hosts a gilfeather turnip festival every Fall. You didn’t even know towns could have official turnips. What a revelation.
Over the course of a thirty minute conversation, you and your friends will buy the three shirts, and continue to learn from this shopkeeper. She’ll ramble about the New England vampire craze, where people used to dig up bodies of suspected vampires, so they could burn them and ensure the undead stayed dead. She’ll give you recommendations for a scenic overlook complete with maple flavored ice cream. You’ll learn that she’s in town because her son and his wife are expecting their first grandchild. You’ll realize that her son is the man who ran your escape room, the one who heard your group name all wrong. “It’s a small world” is certainly a cliche, but you’ll feel it in a profound sort of way. This will be the point of the trip when you’re certain you made the right decision on going.
Sorry I’ve gone on for so long. I’ll let you rest now.
October 15th, 2024
Dear Yesterday Me,
Right now, you feel trapped. You had fun in the haunted hotel (it was campy, not actually scary like you feared) and playing board games with your friends. But now it's nighttime. You have to wake up early but you can’t fall asleep. You’re playing and replaying every awkward thing you said or did on the trip while you panic about all of the homework you have to do when you get back to Virginia. The internet crashed in the haunted hotel you’re staying at, so you can’t even distract yourself with stupid videos on YouTube or call your sister to talk through your worries. You pace in the haunted kitchen and try to take deep breaths.
It’ll be okay, I promise you.
Tomorrow, you and your friends will figure out how to make a fourteen hour drive home genuinely entertaining. You won’t write your paper on the drive like you’d planned (with your motion sickness, who were you kidding anyway?). But you will learn so much about your friends; their dreams and desires, their values and beliefs, and what cryptid they think they’d be most likely to beat in a fight.
Next week, all of your work will get done, I promise. And you’ll be grateful that you have these friends and that you got to spend this time with them and that you didn’t let your worries win.
