A Toast to Death

Chapter 1

Some adults say college will be the best four years of your life. Well, I sure hoped so. Come to think of it, that's also what they said about high school, and you want to know what happened then? They lied because it wasn't. I changed schools a lot in my life, including high school.

My dad was in the military, and you know how that goes. We had to move every two years until I got to high school, where it was every year. ALL FOUR YEARS. Imagine ending every school year knowing you're never going to see those people ever again, all because you have to move to a whole new state. The fact that I've been to eight states would usually be a flex if it was just to visit, but not to live there.

Making friends was even worse. Not because I was ugly or anything, but because I was the type of person to keep to myself, and for some reason, that made people think I was mean. As an only child, I only had one consistent friend all my life, and that was Steph.

Stephanie Bree, my sister from another mister. We were practically twins because we were born twelve hours apart, and I'm older by the way. I met her on base when we were like three years old. I didn't think much of it though, but our mothers were close since our fathers are both in the military. We never lost contact because we hung out every year on our birthday.

One day, when we were thirteen, we were living on the same base again, and she came to me crying. I asked her what was wrong and she couldn't tell me. Turns out some boy had bullied her while his friends were laughing, and what did I do? I went up to him and punched him in the face. Turns out though, that he was the son of my dad's boss, and boy, were they both mad.

Punching Dawson Foster was the most satisfying thing I had ever done in my life. His best friend, Tyler Gittens, was nicer though. Part of me wondered where they were, but most of me didn't care to be honest.

Despite living in Florida, Georgia, Minnesota, Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, Nevada, and Colorado, in that order, I chose to go to college in California. My parents didn't mind because no matter what state I picked, I'd have had to pay out-of-state anyways. I was kind of excited because I got to have a consistent thing in my life for the next four years, even if it was college.

I was also excited because I got to go to college with my all-time best friend, which was going to be fun. After all, we had planned it our whole lives. I would study Aerospace Engineering, and Steph would study Psychology. I thought Aerospace Engineering was fascinating because I had always loved space since I was a kid. It's just so full of mysteries, and I love mysteries. Steph realized she wanted to do Psychology after she had an interesting Psychology teacher in high school. I was happy she was doing what she loved, even though her parents didn't agree to it at first.

When Steph and I found out we got accepted, we applied to be roommates, and guess what! We were roommates! That meant the move-in day was going to be fun, and it sure was. It was on a Saturday, and we were asleep in our hotel room when all of a sudden someone started banging on the door.

"Natasha Crawford! Stephanie Bree! It's 9 am! You don't want to be late for your check-in at 10:30 am!" That was my mum. She used our full names, which meant she was serious.

We jerked up and checked our phones. We had just slept less than two hours ago, after binge-watching all three seasons of a comedy show for almost eleven hours that night.

"We're up! Thanks, Mum!" I responded as we scrambled trying to get ready. We were ready in an hour, which is a record time for us getting ready together.

Steph and I had both gotten a car for graduation, but our parents still insisted on driving us to our residence hall to "spend more time with us," which I thought was cheesy at first, but considering their only daughters had spent their entire summer away from them in New York, it only seemed fair. Ah, yes, New York. We did that because it was one of the few states none of us had been to, besides California.