Gómez Pulido Gabriela, The City That Never Sleeps

THE CITY THAT NEVER SLEEPS

Written by Gabriela Gómez Pulido

“How in the world didn’t we get murdered, or hurt, or even stolen? How come nothing bad happened to us? How come no one knows about any of this?” I really don’t get it.

We were so immature and stupid, but you know what? it’s better to see the glass half full than half empty, It was an important learning experience, trust me, and that is what life is all about. Let me start from the beginning.

Can you imagine 6 underaged girls leaving home the last week of junior year and flying to New York City, the city that never sleeps? A place where tall almost never-ending buildings are touching the clouds, where people don’t slow down, not even to take a breath and come here searching for the great opportunities of their life. Where the lights seem brighter every time and the night sky feels like an enormous space of dreams, hope, and energy just floating in the sky waiting for them to be materialized. If you ask me, that place is where freedom is alive so as you may be thinking right now, Yes! we took that opportunity and turned it into chaos.

On the 31 st of May at 8:47 pm, that’s when my parents brought us to the airport, I was with my friend April and my best friend, Olivia, we were supposed to meet our other friends in NY right when we landed because we hadn’t bought the airplane tickets together so we had to take different flights.

I remember my parents being so calm and nice about it, they knew that we wanted to be independent and were rational about going out of the city alone. As soon as we got out of the car at the front gate of the national flights, my father said;

“Remember you have an important responsibility here, you are going to be alone, with no adults to guide you nor protect you around. If something happens to you, there will be no one that can help you, So, be careful. I love you and have fun! but not too much.”

And then he laughed,

“Yes, dad, everything will be fine! I will call you when I get there!” I said with a silly smile.

In my mind, I was thinking; “what could possibly go wrong on this trip? I am going to NY with my friends, we are about to see the band of our dreams and on top of that, we can do whatever we want! it is going to be unforgettable” I was equally bemused by this trip but little did I know that I was right about one thing... That it would be unforgettable.

Olivia and I said goodbye to our parents and head of to the check-in section and dropped off our luggage. We were so excited. When we got into the airplane at 9:49, we listened to music and played games. It was dark almost as if there was no light on earth or even the universe, no stars could be seen but as we got closer to our final destination I felt an enormous, strong wave of energy. I felt joy and excitement. It was an awesome feeling, I thought that everything was possible there. At 11:35, approximately two hours later we landed.

As I have told you before, we were meeting our other two friends at the airport, so while we were waiting for them, we went to the only restaurant that was opened at the airport. Emma called me and informed me that the airplane had landed, she was with Megan. I told them to meet us at the “in-n-out” restaurant where we were already, so we could eat all together.

We were tremendously tired so we ordered an Uber and it drove us to the upper east side in Manhattan where the hotel was. Then we went to sleep immediately.

The next day was so much fun, we woke up early and went to eat breakfast and for the rest of the day we just hang around the malls, times square and Central Park. At night we went to the concert that we’ve all been so excited about and we had the best time of our lives.

The following day, that’s when things took an unexpected

turn. It was almost noon when we woke up. We all got ready and decided to go to the market where they sell lots of different things, such as clothes, food, accessories, toys, etc. then we ate lunch. Everything seemed just fine until 5:38 pm when my friend Emma got a call from a friend of her named Thomas, that we all knew but we weren’t so close to him.

He told her that he was also in NY for the same concert and that he was with some friends too. Emma looked at us pretty confused. Then the boy said on the phone;

“So my friends and I, are going to hang out at my parent’s apartment here in the upper east side at night, like 9:00 pm. My parents didn’t come with us so we have an apartment for ourselves. Would you and your friends like to come? we have drinks and it will be fun.”

Emma looked back at us trying to tell us what he said and she responded with her little shaky voice;

“Okay sure, that will be great. Thanks.”

They hang up the phone and Emma explained everything to us, then we agreed to go because we had no reason, not to! the day continued and we continued shopping and exploring more about the city. When it was late in the afternoon, we all were a little tired so we went to the hotel to relax a little bit, eat something and then get ready to go out.

We took an Uber to the location they were at. When we arrived and got out of the car, there was this huge, enormous tall building. The outside of the building was only windows and every light of the city could reflect on it as it was absorbing all the light and lighting itself up. It was beautiful. We were so amazed and surprised about how fancy and extraordinary this skyscraper was. When we got into the apartment we saw about six or seven people that we had already seen before but never talked to, they were nice. As the night went on, we started drinking alcohol, trust me, not a very good decision.

For hours we played games and started getting a little bit dizzy and light-headed. I think you guess where this is going…

At 12:30 am we were all drunk, some people were throwing up, others were doing crazy stuff and others were just drinking more as if they didn’t feel anything. Olivia and I had the great idea to go into a neighborhood were 13 years ago there was an unsolved case of death of a man. This news got very popular when it happened and for all those years it still was. So everyone else in the room, as drunk, irresponsible, and stupid teenagers they were, they all thought it was a good idea to go and explore.

This neighborhood was close to where the apartment was located, so we just walked. When we got there it was dark and no soul was found in the streets, the atmosphere was scary but in our state of mind, as drunk as we were, we thought we were the new Sherlock Holmes. It was an alleyway between two short buildings with about four or five floors. One of them had in the side a staircase that was where the murder happened, it was where the victim supposedly jumped or was pushed off. We were joking around about the crime and out of the blue, Thomas started to climb that staircase. As he was getting higher, he felt very dizzy and fell off. He hit his head with the pavement floor. We all got sacred, there was blood in his head and his shirt, but he tried to sit down as if it was just a minor injury. Right then a man out of the darkness started to scream;

“Who is there! Get out of here now or I will come for you! Stay away!”

I heard the loud footsteps stepping the cracks of the floor, he was running towards us. With my head all confused and disturbed I screamed;

“Let’s go, let’s go right now!”

All of us started to run, some of us tried to help Thomas, others were simply just running without a place in mind to go

to, shortly after, we finally lost the man. With what was left of our conscious minds and reasoning we decided to get an uber again because we weren’t in conditions of walking to the apartment again.

It was 3:00 am at this point, we didn’t know what else to do, finally, we got an Uber and it took us to the apartment. I felt some kind of stress relief and safety. Right as we entered the lobby I realized that I didn’t have my phone or my wallet, Megan had lost her purse and we were all full of dirt, blood, and alcohol. It was a disaster. Keep in mind that it was about 4:00 or 5:00 am and the next day we had an early flight back home.

We managed to get into our hotel room and pass out. The next morning at 7:00 am the alarm woke us up and we all hangover started to talk about what had happened last night. I was really mad about losing my phone and wallet but it was a price to pay with all the stupid stuff we did. After a few minutes we went down to the lobby to call the residence where Thomas lived to see if they could tell us anything about him, the call was transferred to his apartment, and one of the guys, told us, that he spent the night at the hospital, and they explained that right after we left, one of the other guys called a taxi, and drove Thomas to the nearest hospital to see if he was going to be okay. He only received some stitches and morphine and now he was okay, just resting at his hospital bed. We were very happy to know that he was going to get better, we hung up the phone and ran to brush our teeth, went back down to the cafeteria but we couldn’t eat anything, the smell of food made me want to vomit. We headed to the airport and fell asleep on the plane. When we landed home we looked like trash, our parents came to pick us up from the airport. They couldn’t stop asking what had happened but we lied.

We didn’t tell them the truth, knowing that it was a childish and irresponsible thing to do. Once we arrived back home,

we called back Thomas and his friends to see how he was, and gratefully he was doing much better now. Believe me, it was a close call That only God knows, I will never forget, I learned a lot from what happened on that trip. It made me more mature and teach me to take things more seriously. We all promised not to do that ever again.