I almost suffocated in the amount of foliage that surrounded me. Everywhere I looked, Mother Nature’s flourishing wrath tried to haunt me. The tentacle-like grass grasped at my feet, the towering trees tried to separate me from the sun, and the crape myrtles used their hypnotic bushels of flowers to charm wasps and aphids, who then bowed down to the shrub’s commands to terrorize anyone that walked to close. 

            But Death not only used the greenery to hunt me down. Valleys hid in plain sight, along concrete paths, appearing only suddenly when trying to trip up wheels and leave nasty gashes. Though, the most unpredictable death traps were those who were also traveling the concrete paths. While trying to avoid the valleys, savages would try to push me aside if I hovered to close to their territories, nearly taking my life in the process. 

            Despite narrowly avoiding the reaper’s scythe every few seconds, the untamed environment was my home for 12 weeks. I was stationed here to refine my skills as a journalist. But staying in an unfamiliar territory, especially one that was the opposite of where I was stationed beforehand (a desert), challenged my way of life, and truly tested if I was in the right profession. 

            

            “Sofia?” a stranger called from between the trees.

            The overgrown trees and exotic animal call soundtrack crumbled, as I sat in my uncle’s dining room, picking at the food from a takeout box that laid in front of me. Golden, crispy katsu chicken and glazed teriyaki chicken from the Hawaiian BBQ joint down the street stared at me, as I teased it with my fork. 

            My attempts to sweeten my reality always put me in a daze, as I would try to trick myself with disillusioned eyes. But no amount of daydreaming could hide the fact that I was stuck in Dallas for 3 months in the summer all thanks to an internship, dealing with the sweltering heat, and a crazed pack of road ragers.

            And within the contract I signed to participate in the internship, the fine print required I rip the threads tying me to my family and re-sew them to my Uncle Jorge’s family, a relative I had never met, but happened to live in Dallas. But could I really call these strangers ‘family,’ even though blood tied us together?

            “Are you excited for your first day tomorrow?” my uncle said.

            “Sorta.” I muttered, still hypnotized by the uneaten teriyaki chicken in front of me.

            “Well, The Dallas Morning News is a big place, so I’m sure it’ll be fun.”

            “Yeah, hopefully.”

            We were an ensemble of four: me, my uncle, his wife, and their mutt, Toto. One thing I quickly sensed when I first started to live with my uncle, were the ghosts who had lived in the house before. Picture frames lined the walls, showing my uncle’s trio of kids, all of whom had moved out. The house rejected my presence immediately. For example, the bed I slept in had been accustomed to another body and had tried to reject me on the first day by making me wake up with back pain from the stiff mattress.

            While eating at my Uncle Jorge’s table with him and his wife, I would fill in the empty chairs their children once sat on. More specifically, I filled in the space left by their youngest daughter, who was close to my age, and happened to be in a summer internship in Arkansas. It was like a transaction — they provided me a home, and I filled the void of their daughter.

            Though, the awkward dynamic was the first sliver of problems I faced in Dallas. The internship with The Dallas Morning News caused an internal turmoil, unlike anything I had experienced. 

            My bottled-up nervousness spilled over once I walked through the glass doors of the newsroom. I met my editor, Anna Butler, who shook my hand that was drenched from a pool of sweat. She took me up to the second floor where my team, food and events, was. I sat in my assigned desk and tried to get all the orientation stuff out of the way. 
            Then, the day reached noon, and it was time for my first meeting with the other interns who were selected for the program. The interns were around my age, and it was an opportunity to break out of my introverted cocoon and emerge as an extroverted butterfly. I sat at my desk until 12:03 p.m. Although I was aware that I was late, it was a tactful decision to allow fate to decide which intern had an empty seat next to them, which would lead us to be intertwined for the rest of the summer all because I sat next them on the first day. I walked into the meeting room with the other interns, yet none seemed to notice I was a couple minutes late. With the one intern who met my eyes, I smiled. Though, she decided to not share the warmth and instead looked down in response. 

            “Oh.” I thought. 

            My butterfly wings shattered, and I regressed back to a measly worm that shivered at the thought of meeting new people. The meeting went by, yet I hardly absorbed anything, with my thoughts hyper-fixated on the intern who seemingly dismissed my existence by not acknowledging my smile. 

            After the meeting ended, the interns shuffled out, and I was the last to linger behind, clutching my laptop and walking back to my desk in a slouched form. Though I was dejected from not making any friends on the first day, a familiar face walked to my desk a couple hours after the first meeting. His name is Tom Huang, a somewhat celebrity figure at The Dallas Morning News. I had first met him when he scouted an intern from UTEP. He is a quiet man, with not much to say, which prompts one to spill out their deepest, darkest secrets to him because you’ll know he will listen. He whisked me away from my desk and took me to get coffee in a shop near the office. As we walked, he asked how my first day was going.

            “It’s okay,” I said.

            He responded with silence.

            “I tried to interact with the interns, but none really seemed interested in mingling.”

            Crickets.

            “But maybe it’s the first day jitters, I’ll try again tomorrow.”

            Then Tom gave a smile and said, “Don’t let the nerves from being in a new city stop you from doing what you want to do.” 

            And those words became the mantra I used to carry myself throughout the internship. 

            The next day, I tried to talk to an intern again, this time with a different tactic: a compliment. During our second intern meeting, I grabbed the last threads of my sociability to compliment an intern’s shoes. She said thank you, but the conversation led nowhere from there. And unfortunately, that’s how it remained throughout the entire internship. I couldn’t find my place amongst the interns nor at home with my uncle. I felt like a puzzle piece, trying to fit itself into its assigned spot but having a slightly warped shape that made the fit snug, and uncomfortable.

            Despite not achieving any social goals, I still took Tom’s advice towards other aspects of the internship, as sitting alone during the intern meetings was the least of my worries. My plate was full since day one, with stories pilling on top of each other like a meaty Thanksgiving meal. And I found journalism itself was the cure for exclusion from the intern cohort. With Tom’s advice echoing in the back of my head, any story I tackled was met with my new refined-self, one that wouldn’t allow for the nerves to shackle her. The enthusiasm for journalism stretched so far that it landed me front page more than once. 

            Yet, even as I started to grow fond of Dallas, I found myself capricious. Where were the mountains that would appear every time I looked up towards the sky? Why did the sunsets here feel so artificial? Why couldn’t I call this place home?

            Success in my work couldn’t replace the feeling of being at home. I would weigh my proclivity to journalism and missing home. With as much fun as I was having, I still found myself keeping note of how many days until I went home, which eventually whittled down to one. 

            It was 7:00 a.m., and I drove to pick up my mom from the airport. The drive back felt endless, with the GPS’s clock ticking away at a snail’s pace. 

            Though I was anxious to get home, I remembered how the bed that wasn’t mine became molded to my shape, and I no longer woke up with back pain. I remembered how ordering takeout from the Hawaiian BBQ joint down the street soon became a ritual with my uncle and his wife. Most importantly, I remembered what my last words to Tom were. 

            Towards the final days of my internship, Tom invited me to get “farewell coffee,” like my welcome coffee from the first day. We walked to the coffee shop, and I absorbed the downtown Dallas ambience for the last time: a homeless man snoring on a bench, the ear-piercing sounds of the car honks from grumpy drivers, and the loud silence of Tom. 

            When we reached the coffee shop, we ordered and chose a spot to sit until we received our coffees. He asked me about the internship, and I decided to omit that I never grew close to the interns, and instead brought up what went well.  

            “I really liked reporting in Dallas,” I said.

            He smiled and swiveled his coffee in response.

            “Telling me to not be nervous on the first day really helped.”

            “I’m glad,” he said. 

            When my mom and I eventually reached Fort Hancock on our drive, though we were still about an hour away from home, I recognized the familiar ambience. The mountains present in every landscape, the sweet smell of a creosote bush, and the cacti that enticed me to jab my finger into its spine, all of which were reminding factors that I was home.

            But even as the blazing sun now toasted my skin making it as brittle as a ceramic pot, I realized it was the type of heat that can only happen in El Paso, my home.