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chapter two

"Why couldn't Clay come?"

I park the car into a spot between two other vehicles, almost hitting one of them.

Still, it's only an "almost", so I don't worry about it any longer. I just turn off the car and open the door. Kara does the same.

"He had to be on a stream of one of his friends", I explain. "Didn't he write that in our group chat?"

Kara shrugs her shoulders as we start walking, after I double-checked if I really locked the door. I don't want to explain to my parents, that someone broke into their car.

"Ough!" Kara exhales with a deep frustrated moan. "I thought we could finally do something again together."

"Am I not enough?", I ask playfully.

Kara grimaces. "You know what I mean."

I just grin as we turn on a trail.

One thing we have just always loved doing, is hiking – or at least walking. It's a time for us to just talk about anything. We literally did this every day when we were younger. Now it's even rare for us to meet up, so hiking is something really special.

When we both had time to meet up over the last year, we mostly tried to do something special, instead of just walking. But I realized that's exactly what I missed: our walks.

I've already met up with Kara the day I arrived at home, heading over to her house. I had it easy when I was younger: my best friend has always been my neighbor.

The next day I met up with Clay, because Kara didn't have time. It was relaxing to have a full day of Clay for myself, but I actually looked forward to spending today with both of them.

But of course, Clay had more important things to do.

"Sooo, how's your college?", I ask Kara, walking next to her.

Even if we had already spent a whole day together, I feel like we haven't talked about the basics yet.

Kara lightens up. "Great!", she says. "I really love it. And you know, I can visit home almost every weekend and still do my work from there."

I smile – weakly. I know I shouldn't be, but I'm kind of jealous of Kara, still having such good contact with friends from home. She can meet up with Clay more often, even if he's also not that often here. His new house isn't that far away from his parents'. Maybe thirty minutes from here.

But when I look at myself, who normally only visits home every second to third month, I feel a lot of sadness. I mean, I've made new friends at my college, but also, I lost so many from my high school years.

"I actually helped out Clay a couple of times for his coding stuff for some of his videos. I mean, not that he's bad at it, but I really think he would be kind of lost if it wasn't for me and my major." Kara laughs and explains some terms of programming and other computer-tech-stuff, which I don't even bother to understand.

I know how to use my phone and my laptop and that's all I want to know.

Kind of made me a bit of an outsider in some conversations between Kara, Clay and me, because they could talk about coding for hours, whilst I just kept quiet.

"How's your time at college been? You finally get along with your roommate?", Kara asks me.

I snort a little. "No, he's still a bitch", I say. "Remember the sweet guy I told you about – Theo?"

"The one who helped you bake a cake, as you've been crying in the kitchen for an hour?"

I nod.

"Yes, I do remember Theo. Lovely guy."