Searching for Purpose (Twenty One Pilots)

5. French Fries

Tyler immediately regretted his choice in chips when he woke up. Sour cream and onion had seemed great at the moment, but now his mouth tasted like he had eaten and entire bag of trash. Once his teeth were brushed and his clothes were changed, Tyler headed down do the main floor to checkout.

Mark wasn’t standing at the desk. This time it was an older lady with greying brown hair and crinkles next to her eyes. Tyler smiled at her as he checked out, replying to her comment about the weather. It was hot, he agreed, and they could do with some rain.

The drive to campus wasn’t that long. He didn’t really need to put his music on really, but he was nervous. Tyler needed any distraction he could get. He didn’t even know where to go or what to do or who to talk to. He hadn’t looked anything up. As soon as it said he had been accepted, he had packed his bags and waited for the moment he could leave. Tyler hadn’t worried about the technicalities in going to college, but now he wished he had.

“You lost?” a voice said from somewhere to his right.

Tyler was standing in the middle of some kind of crossroads of walkways with a fountain in the middle. The map he was holding made absolutely no sense and he couldn’t tell if he was holding it upside down or not.

“Yeah, kinda,” Tyler replied sheepishly. The person that had spoken was a guy around Tyler’s age and height, with a brown Mohawk that could do with a trim and bright shining eyes with a smile to match.

“Sweet,” the guy said. “I am, too. We can be lost together.”

Tyler laughed at the guy’s remark.

“Joshua Dun,” he said, holding out his hand for Tyler to shake. “But people normally just call me Josh.”

“Tyler Joseph,” Tyler introduced himself. He shook Josh’s hand, but it turned into to some kind of weird handshake halfway through.

“Well if we’re going to be friends, we’ll have to work out a secret handshake later. That was weak,” Josh laughed. Tyler joined in and thought to himself that this Josh guy was pretty cool. “For now we’ve got to figure out where we’re supposed to go and hopefully not be more lost than we are now.”

Tyler looked around. “How about we go where those guys are going,” he suggested.

“Ah!” Josh exclaimed, an even bigger smile filling his face. “I knew I’d figure out something.”

“Hey, no, you can’t take credit for that. That was all me,” Tyler said.

“There’s no one around here to prove that, now is there?” Josh questioned over his shoulder in a joking tone, already making his way over to the other group of students.

Tyler shook his head and followed Josh down the sidewalk. If he got to hang around this guy throughout the year, Tyler knew it was going to be good.

Eventually they found out where they were supposed to go. It was some big fancy building where all they did was state their name and pick up their ID along with their room key. They were given a new map, and Tyler was extremely excited about that fact that this one was actually labeled.

Josh’s room ended up being a few doors down from Tyler’s. Since they happened to be among the few students that were undecided in what they wanted to do, they had single rooms. Neither were complaining, but for completely different reasons. Josh because he played the drums and was happy that he wouldn’t have a roommate around to tell him to stop making noise, and Tyler because he had nightmares and really didn’t want anyone to know.

When they had finished unpacking and setting up their rooms, which only took about half as long as the others since neither had brought much with them, Josh and Tyler decided to walk around the city and see what there was to see. They wandered around campus for a while before walking down the main street to look for a place to eat.

Both of them, as it turned out, were from Ohio, as they found out while sharing a plate of fries. The same town in fact. It was weird that they never ran into each other before. But Tyler had explained that he was homeschooled and then gone to one of the larger public high schools, while Josh had been at the slightly smaller one across the city.

“I did almost every sport back in school. Baseball, track, you name it, I tried it,” Josh said. “What did you do?”

“Basketball. It was basically my life. Academics weren’t going to get me anywhere, so I gave sports a try.”

“Did you like basketball?” Josh questioned.

Tyler thought back to what he had thought about in the shower the other night. “Yeah. I think so,” he eventually said.

Josh nodded his head in understanding. Tyler was more than happy when Josh changed the subject.

They started talking about their childhood and telling stories of what they were like when they were little. At one point Josh told Tyler about how he had seen some kid trying to slam a revolving door at the mall and then get in trouble for doing so.

“I felt so bad for him. Like, I wanted to see if he could do it, but he couldn’t. And then everyone started yelling at him. The poor kid,” Josh said.

“Dude,” Tyler replied. “That was me.”

“No way!” Josh’s eyes were wide. “No, that wasn’t you. You’re lying.”

“No, I’m not lying!” Tyler said. “I was the kid who broke the revolving door! My brother told me I couldn’t slam it and I wanted to prove him wrong.”

“No.”

“Yes! I even got banned from there,” Tyler blushed.

“Dude, that’s sick,” Josh replied, his smile wide. Tyler smiled back.

An hour later they found themselves back at their dorm hall.

“See you later, Tyler,” Josh said as he unlocked his door.

“Yeah,” Tyler replied. “See you.”

Once Tyler had unlocked his own door and closed it behind him, he collapsed on his only half-made bed. He could finish it later. For now, all he was capable of doing was laying on his bed and staring up at the ceiling, trying to figure out what thing he was feeling was called. He had made a friend. His first real, actual friend in a new strange place, and it was awesome. He’d even said more than five words to the guy. 

Maybe, Tyler thought, this is what happiness felt like.