Nowhere

It was October 5th, 1981. 5 years since I saw Natalie off to Tanglewood and she saw me off to MIT. And there I was, waiting in the same place. But I wasn't sure why, because I knew Natalie would never step off that platform.

You see, it all happened 5 months before. I was in my MIT dorm room, it was quite the opposite of a regular Massachusetts day, and it was hot, arid, and cloudless. I was doing homework for my engineering class. I was calculating the parameters of a V6 engine. Actually I was more looking at it, because I was waiting for Natalie to call. She usually called around 12:30 PM, it was her free period. I continued looking at my engine when the phone rang. I picked up my cell phone which my parents had bought as my 22nd birthday present. I didn't see why people were so crazy about them; they were comically large and looked like bricks with antennas. So I picked it up and it was Natalie

"Hi," she said nervously, and I already knew something was wrong.

"Hey," I said, pretending I didn't know anything was wrong.

"I-I can't tell you this any other way than just to tell you, I'm pregnant," she said in a small voice.

I felt I just got hit in the stomach with a baseball bat, because I knew it wasn't mine.

"Whose is it?" That's not what I wanted to say, but that's all I could manage out.

"Jason's," she said even smaller. Jason was my best friend, I had convinced Jason to go to college a year after Natalie and I did. Jason had gone to Tanglewood to get his BA in Music Theory and Education. I swelled with anger. I'm pretty sure my roommate Kole walked in, but then walked out seeing he was interrupting something.

"What is wrong with you?" I part asked and part screamed. And I screamed other things I would never say even in front of my friends. I'm pretty sure the whole campus heard me, but I didn't care. That was the last time we ever spoke for five months. But what I didn't know was that after that, Natalie's grades nosedived. She dropped out 2 months before she got her BA, but yet there I was waiting at that same place, why?

It was 2:15 when I decided to leave the station, I drove to Jade Beach. I didn't even bring anything for the beach; I just sat in the sand in jeans and a T-shirt. No one was there, mostly because it was raining. Then I spotted someone, Natalie! She spotted me and ran towards me, luckily she had an umbrella, it was colorful, just like her personality.

"Hey," I said.

"Hey," she responded.

"Look, I'm sorry," I apologized

"It's OK, you had every right to be mad," she admitted. I had just noticed her jaw was dripping with makeup; she seemed to be trying to hide it from me. As we kept talking, the makeup kept on dripping to reveal a blackish blue bruise.

"What's that?" I confronted as I pointed at the bruise.

"It's nothing," she lied. Natalie was always a bad liar; I could always tell when she was lying.

"Does he hit you?" I exclaimed as I jumped up. She was still with Jason, she felt like she needed to commit since she was pregnant.

'I-It wasn't his fault, he was drunk, I shouldn't have said what I said, she stammered.

"I don't care!' I stood up, "It's not right!" I roared. She looked frightened, as if I was going to hit her too. "I'm sorry," I calmed down, "You don't have to do this," "You don't have to do this," I repeated softer. Something came over me I didn't know why I did what I did, but I did. I leaned in to kiss her, and she whipped around and slapped me, hard. My mouth hung open, she leaped to her feet.