The Most Memorable Moment

Chapter 3

“We call her The Ninja. She literally appears and disappears in a second. There have been rumors that she escaped from some freaky roadside show,” Josh was saying about Dana. He obviously saw the horror on my face, because he laughed and added, “but we all know that those are just rumors. She’s from Nebraska. At first she may seem like a tough cookie, but she’s really sweet once you get to know her.”

I liked listening to Josh talk. There was something extremely genuine about his words. He was someone you could trust. “What about you?” I asked, looking up at him. He was at least five inches taller than me.

“Me? I was born and raised in Florida.” That explained the tan. “My parents and I lived just north of Miami. I visit them every summer.”

“Did you have a lot of friends there?” I asked. I don’t know why I felt compelled to ask such a personal question.

He just smiled. “Of course. I had tons of friends, a beautiful girlfriend too. I came here my freshman year. For the first semester, I still tried to make it work with her. We video chatted every night and wrote old-fashioned letters back and forth for a while. Then suddenly she stopped replying.” His expression looked nostalgic.

“Did you ever find out why?” I asked. He was silent for a moment. I’d probably pushed a limit. We stopped outside of the cafeteria, where there was a vending machine. Carefully, Josh removed a dollar from his pocket and stuck it in the machine. After he pushed a few buttons, it spit out a Snickers bar.

“Do you want something?” he asked. I shook my head. I couldn’t ask him to buy me anything. He ignored my decline and pushed a few more buttons, handing me a bag of M&Ms.

“Dude, these are my favorite,” I said, blinking. “How’d you know?”

He just shrugged. “You seemed like an M&M kind of guy.”

I grinned and tore open the bag. “Thanks.”

A few minutes later we were walking back on the path that led to the dorms. Instead of going into the dorm, we walked around it. There was an unpaved, beaten path behind it. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“You’ll see. Trust me.” There was another long pause. “You asked me why my girlfriend and I stopped talking, right?” I nodded. “She stopped replying to my messages. She wasn’t answering my chat requests. My best friend called my a week later. He sounded pretty distraught. This whole time,” he started laughing a little, “I thought she was dead or something. So my buddy called me up and he was like, ‘dude, it’s about Emily’. That was my girlfriend’s name. It turns out that she was cheating on me with some guy from our town’s McDonald’s.” Now he was cracking up. “And the whole time I thought she was dead!”

I didn’t see what was so funny about the whole thing, but I laughed along anyway. Josh pulled back some branches that were covering the path so that we could walk through them. “It’s getting dark, Josh. Shouldn’t we be heading back?” I asked.

“Nah. Nighttime is when the real festivities begin!” he said with a smile. I relaxed a little. His smile was comforting. “So what about you? What was life like where you’re from?” he asked me. I had to think for a minute.

“I don’t know. My town in Ohio was a pretty big place. It was easy to get lost in the crowd. Sometimes it got monotonous.”

“And your friends?”

“I didn’t have many. The few I had were good friends, but they got boring too. I guess there wasn’t anything great about that place.” Josh nodded as if he understood exactly what I was saying. We walked in silence the rest of the way.

I was staring at the ground, completely lost in thought, when I ran straight into Josh. He had stopped. “We’re here,” he said excitedly. I looked around him to see exactly where “here” was. What I saw surprised me. It was a lake. The water was tinted a golden red, reflecting the sunset in the sky above. I guess this was the reason why I hadn’t seen any other students around campus yet. They were all here.

Hundreds of students were splashing and laughing and running around. Some were sitting up in a poorly made treehouse; Others were swinging on the rope and tire swings. A large group was lounging around a campfire. It looked so cliché that I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. “What’s this?” I asked Josh. He smirked.

“It’s the annual end of summer party,” was his response. “Go have some fun. Meet some people. We only have a big party like this once a year.”

“Where are the teachers?” I asked.

“Teachers? You can’t invite teachers to a school party, man. Where’s your head? You want something to drink?” Before I could respond, he handed me a red plastic cup that he’d grabbed from a table. I took it gratefully and lifted it to my mouth. I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe Hawaiian punch. What I got was definitely not Hawaiian punch. I sputtered and coughed for a moment, staring at Josh with wide eyes.

“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you not drink?” I couldn’t form words to respond. He shrugged and took the cup back, walking away with it. Once I regained my breath, I looked around to assess the party. Only a few people were drinking, but I’m sure more would be too as the night went on.

“Hey!” I heard from behind me. It made me jump. I turned to see who it was. Dana was walking up to me with a cute brunette, whom I assumed was her friend. “Clay, this is Beatrice. We all call her Betty.” Was this the Ugly Betty she had mentioned earlier? Because this Betty was not ugly in the least bit. She was actually quite beautiful. “Beatrice, this is Clay. He’s Josh’s new roommate.”

“Hi,” I said shyly, giving a little wave. She flashed a smile. It took me a moment to realize that she had braces. It wasn’t really the first thing you’d notice about her due to her giant brown eyes. “What are you guys up to?” I asked, directing the question more at Dana than Betty.

“I think they’re about to start making hotdogs over by the fire. We’re going to go check that out, then we’ll probably jump in the lake for a while. You’re welcome to join us if you’d like,” Betty said quietly. She was extremely soft-spoken. I had no idea why, because her voice was awesome. She spoke with the remains of a British accent.

“Okay, cool. Maybe I’ll do that,” I replied. “I’m going to see what Josh is up to first. Did you see where he went?”

“Who knows,” Dana shrugged. “See ya.”