As I stepped off the bus, I smiled and looked around. Yeah. This was definitely a million times better than any boring plain in Iowa. Smoothing a hand through my hair, I stepped out of the way and let the people getting off the bus behind me disperse around me and make their way to wherever it was they were going, but I just took a second and took everything in. People hurrying along the sidewalk to get from point A to point B, snow falling outside and traffic practically jammed bumper to bumper in an effort to get to wherever it was they needed to go. Remind me again why I hadn't come here for good, a million years sooner?

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of the girl I'd met in London, Sadie Harrison, waving to me and smiling like she'd just won the lottery. I waved her over to me, grabbing my bags of clothes and necessities from the floor of the bus station. We'd met in London, as I'd said, two years ago. I'd gone there on my summer vacation in my junior year of high school to celebrate...well, surviving another year in nowhere, Iowa, met Sadie at a restaurant, and we'd clicked right away. We'd come to find that we'd been staying in the same hotel and spent the whole vacation seeing the sights together, just doing all the things girls did. And ever since, we'd called or emailed each other every day, and Sadie visited on vacations and time off. And when I mentioned wanting to get the hell out of Iowa, she told me quickly that I could come stay with she, her boyfriend Kwest and her sister, Jude—yes, the Jude Harrison—in their parents' house in Toronto.

I thought it was strange that she just invited me to stay at their place after only meeting me once, but she had told me when I questioned that they'd had far shadier characters than me staying there time and time again, so the part of me that felt bad was rapidly replaced with gratitude.

Sadie got up to me, and I dropped my bags like I hadn't spent thirty seconds trying to gather them all up, throwing my arms around her neck as we shared an excited squeak. "Aubrey!" she beamed. "I'm so glad you're here!" she exclaimed as she released me from our embrace and grabbed a couple of my bags from the floor, helping me with the possibly fifty pound burden that I was carrying.

"Me too..." I smiled and took a breath, still taking in everything around me as we passed by. This was culture shock, but of the best possible kind. The moment I'd been waiting for...for essentially all my life. No more Iowa, and in a place with more than four hundred people, thank god. "Wow is this insane...the most traffic we get at home in Minburn is like, a sixteenth of this..." I chuckled and followed her as she led me out to her car.

With a laugh, Sadie opened the door and grabbed her keys from her pocket, pushing the button to unlock the trunk of her car. "Well, you've got a lot to get used to, my friend..." she told me. "Hey, Aub, I hope you don't mind coming to G Major with me...I have something I need to do for work; shouldn't be more than twenty minutes, if you don't mind just hanging around in the front..."

My grin that I'd been wearing since boarding the bus in Iowa somehow managed to get significantly wider and I shoved Sadie with my shoulder. "Hm, let's see...my first day in Toronto, hanging around at a major record label—no pun intended—in the same building as the people I listened to on my iPod on my way up here...I don't know, Sade," I pretended to think about it as I put my bags in the trunk and closed it after me.

"Well, in that case, I could just drop you back at my place where you could watch reruns on TV all day and wait impatiently for me to get home so we can go on a giant shopping spree..." Sadie crossed her arms, nodded her head soundly and sat in the driver's seat.

I cringed and stuck my tongue out in disgust as I followed her around the car and plopped down into the passenger's side seat. "You make a convincing argument, Harrison. The UN could have used a girl like you, you know..." I teased.

"Well, when you see G Major, you'll know why I needed to stay..." she laughed a little. "The UN may have needed me, but they needed me more..." she said, pulling into the bumper to bumper traffic and letting out an exasperated sigh as her cell phone rang, almost as though on cue. "See what I mean?" she asked as she flipped it open and continued toward the studio, leaving me to look around at everything as we passed by.

Coffee shops, clothing stores lined up right in a row, music stores, everything you could ever ask for, right in a row. You had to go almost fifty miles to get something like this in Iowa. I couldn't pull the smile off my face, that is, until Sadie flipped the phone closed, groaned loudly and seemingly deterred from her initial course down a side road. "...I take it that wasn't a very pleasant phone call..."

Sadie laughed and shook her head. "No phone call with Darius Mills is pleasant unless your name is Jude Harrison. And sometimes not even then..." she rolled her eyes.

"Well, you've got half of it, right?" I asked, trying to lighten things up a little bit. But the look on Sadie's face suggested that I...hadn't succeeded. Or even come close.

The grouchiness faded, though, and she let off a sympathetic smirk. "I'll let that one slide since you're new in town," she joked, "that and I have to crush your 'meeting the people on your iPod' dreams..." she sighed again. "I'm sorry, Aub...Darius gave me a big thumbs down on you visiting G Major today, since there's so much going on right now..."

I shrugged and smiled. "Not mad. I'm pretty sure nothing could bring me down right now..." I told her.

She smiled and turned onto a side road, now that we were out of town. I had never been to a place where the houses were so close together. I kind of liked it. "I knew I liked you for a reason. I hope you don't mind being home alone for a little while...with the reruns and the takeout, since neither Jude, Kwest or I will be home until, like, ten tonight, at the earliest..." she bit her lip.

"The downside to working for a major record label, huh?" I asked with a shrug. "Don't worry about me. If I get bored, I can just trash the house and run up the phone bill astronomically high...or take a walk around town...one of the two," I teased.

"Kwest cleans, and the phone is Jude's bill...so, by all means..." she smiled evilly as she pulled into the driveway, took the keys out of the ignition and walked around to the trunk with me.

I laughed and gave her the thumbs up. "I'll be sure I tell them that you said that..." I winked as I followed her around the vehicle.

She chuckled lightly and pulled the biggest bag out, setting it on the sidewalk beside the car. "I'll help you get these out of here but I hope you don't mind if I just drop and go or something...I'm in a serious rush..." she flashed me an apologetic look.

I shook my head and smiled sincerely at her. "Sadie, don't worry about it. We have all of tomorrow...and like, forever, to hang out so I'm not worried. Go do your busy work thing, and we can talk about stuff when you get home..." I smiled as I grabbed a couple of my bags and started backing toward the front door.

Sadie smiled gratefully and hurried back to the driver's side, waving goodbye to me over the top of the car and biting her lip. "Try not to have too much fun without me, huh?" she teased, then pulled away. And as she made her way down the road, I saw her pull her phone out and get frustrated again...such was the life of a woman working for a major record label, clearly.

I finished carrying the load of bags that I had to the front step and grabbed for the doorknob, turning it, then staring blankly at my hand. Locked? No way. I tried again and let out a frustrated grunt. Reaching into my pocket for my phone to call Sadie and ask her for a spare key...I was even more devastated to find that the battery was absolutely dead. So...stuck outside until ten p.m., at the earliest? And...it was two p.m. then. I had a...really long day ahead of me...