The Last Girl on Campus

Epilogue

"Bridget, what the hell did I just read?" Rachel said, barging into my room.

I took out my earbuds and closed my laptop. "Oh, you finally finished it?"

"Yeah. Everyone is waiting in the common room."

I got up and walked out to the living room, then sat in the king's chair. Two weeks went by since break ended. My roommates sat around in the living room, holding the stacks of paper that I gave to them two weeks ago.

"So, what did you guys think?" I said.

"Well, it was definitely...a book," Kayla said, trying to sound nice.

All of my excitement and hopefulness turned into despair at that moment. "You guys didn't like it, did you?"

"Now hold up. We didn't specifically say that," Cheyanne said. "I can go for the title. It's catchy."

"I don't know. It doesn't really make sense," Rachel said.

"But she was actually the last girl on campus at that time," Cheyanne said. I sighed. "Hang on, I'm not done talking. It was pretty good, especially the part about Hunter."

"What?" Rachel said, leaning forward on the couch. "But that's not even true! You didn't meet some hot guy and fall in love with him. You gave up on doing fun stuff and sat around binge watching shows for three weeks!"

"Hey, I did go make the lasagna though," I said.

"I can confirm that," Kayla said, then hugged the stack of crinkled pages to her chest. "I don't know, I think the part about Hunter was really romantic. And you've got to admit that she got creative with the Christmas scene."

"I'll agree with that. She gets an A plus for creativity for that part," Rachel said. "But the rest of the things she did with Hunter were really lackluster. You only had one chapter."

"Because I was running out of time before you guys got back," I said, laughing. "I wanted it to be done as soon as you guys got here."

"The grammar needs a lot of work too," Rachel said.

"Ah, cut the girl some slack. She likes stingrays, not grammar!" Cheyanne said.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, but overall, what did you guys think of it?"

They sat there for a minute or two, just looking at each other and exchanging glances, most likely trying to mentally figure out who was going to speak first.

"Personally, I enjoyed it. I just wish there was more to it," Kayla said.

"It had a lot of issues, but there were a lot of funny parts," Rachel said.

"Well, you wrote a book," Cheyanne said. "I'm sure that was something on your bucket list."

"It actually wasn't." I glanced at the pizza clock, then back at my friends. "It was just a spur of the moment type thing. I figured that I had the time and a cool experience. Why not write a book about it?"

"And that's exactly what you did," Rachel said, standing up. "I'm gonna go get a hot chocolate. Anyone else want in?"

"I'm down," Kayla said.

"I need to head to the library," Cheyanne said.

I sighed. "I've got a paper to start on."

We all went our separate was then. I sat in my room, hearing Cheyanne's door shut, then the door to the common room. My bedroom was still and silent. I opened up the saved files on my computer, which led to my little book being opened. In my bottom drawer, there was a to-do list with all the long term goals I had in life. Every so often I updated it because the papers would get crinkled or my mind would change. The list was thirty-seven goals long. I added the number thirty-eight and wrote, "Publish a book," then spell-checked my document, searched "how to publish a book" online, and got to work.