Chapter 19

AUGUST 27^th 2011

            I stepped off the escalator and took in the sight of the oh-so familiar food court of the small mall near my house.

            “Carrie, I’m going to be in Boyner, ok?” I nodded to my mom and she left me to myself. As I turned to watch her walk away that’s when I saw it. It was still there, looking colorful and storybook like. The same woman was working there and even looked like she was reading the same magazine. I slowly approached the old-fashioned candy booth, each step seeming to take a lifetime. The buckets of different flavors and shapes of sugar were all the same. Even the arrangement of lollipops on the top shelf looked the same. It was all too familiar.

            The last time I had been there had been with Austin. It had been the day before I had left for the states; our date. He had paid for absolutely everything that day. The movie. The chocolate. The candy. The popcorn. Just the thought of it made me smile again.

But now it was the end of the summer. I was back in Istanbul and he just simply wasn’t here anymore. I had accepted that fact and had moved on but still seeing places that brought back so many marvelous memories made me nostalgic. I had felt the exact same way crossing the road before we entered the mall. The road where Austin had first taken my hand. There was no way I could easily forget that.

I didn’t even want to.