Sure, Why Not?

I woke up a little after 8am on Tuesday, May 21, 2002. It was the only day during final exam week I didn’t have an exam, but what I was up for was way more important. It was the day I dreaded for two years. It was the day I was never entirely sure how it would go.

I got to campus around 8:30am. Damn. I was hoping to have gotten there earlier. His exam would have been at 8. I better not have missed him. Please, God, tell me I’m not too late. So I raced across campus and into the one building, to room 132, and gazed through the little window.

OH, NO! Seeing that he was not in there allowed me to experience what it must be like for your heart to sag and tear open like a very full garbage bag.

I ran back out of the building and all the way across campus, through the student center building, and out the other side to the dorm area on the south end of campus. I couldn’t tell one way or another from looking at his window if he had gone or not. It was still early. There was hope.

I turned, went back through the student center building, heart still pounding with the unspeakable dread that I was too late. I went into the science building and up to the second floor where the geography department was. It was his major. He might be there!

Not in the hallway anywhere. Upon cursory glance, not in the computer lab or the classrooms. In one classroom, one of the geography instructors took rocks and stuff off the shelves, preparing for the whole school of science’s move out of that building and into the new one starting the next semester. I peeked in and looked to the left. He wasn’t there. Looked to the right…

THERE HE IS!!!!

He was waiting in line outside a back room where students in some class were doing a project or something. He hadn’t notice me there since he was looking down at a paper. As soon as I spotted him, I darted back out of the room. Pacing in the hallway a bit, waiting for him to finish, I sighed with great relief. Thank you, God! I didn’t miss him.

Don’t recall how long I waited. Twenty minutes or so, probably. He came out of the classroom, made a glance at me, and wandered up and down the hallway a bit looking for the teacher he needed to give his assignment to. And what did I do? When he went one way, I followed him! When he went the other way, I followed him! He noticed and made a smirk. Seriously! Look what I was doing! Nothing out of the ordinary from what I’d been doing the previous two years, so he was quite used to it. Hehehe.

Finally, the teacher showed up and he turned in his paper. Then he went out the stairwell at the end of the hallway and went down, with me following close behind. I caught up with him just outside of the building and walked beside him.

“All done?” I asked.

“Yup,” he said.

“Got your stuff all packed up?”

“I’ve got about two thirds of it to go. My brother volunteered to help.”

“Cool. I haven’t even started on mine yet!”

We walked through the parking lot to the Commons building, as I made my usual grasp for anything to talk about to try to make the walk less awkward. We came to the Commons building and started down to the lower floor entry. At that point, I reached into my fleece jacket and pulled out my disposable camera.

“Hey, look over here!” I said suddenly, and as he glanced over at me, I snapped the picture. I stuffed the camera back into my pocket while he blinked some.

Into the building and down the hallway, past the bookstore.

“I’m really going to miss this place,” he said.

“Yeah,” I agreed.

“The commencement speaker begged us not to leave!”

“Ha. Cool.” I think at that point I began quoting something from the movie “Back to School”.

Soon we were out the other end of the building and heading towards his dorm.

“Well,” I spoke. “I don’t know when I’ll see you again. If I do, great. If not, that’s fine too, I suppose.”

He didn’t respond. Finally, as we were to the steps of his dorm house, I pulled him in and gave him a hug. Kind of awkward, but so what?

He went on into his dorm house, so I went off to take care of some other stuff. Went out to see my cell biology teacher to find out how I’d done on yesterday’s final exam. Good. Made the C. Then I went back to the Commons building to wander the bookstore a bit.

Oh, there he was again! He was in line to sell back a book. Having forgotten to before, I told him to have a great summer, and he said the same to me. While he was in line, I just kind of hung around. He left to go back to his dorm room, so I wandered away again.

It was lunch time finally, so I went up to the cafeteria. Don’t remember what I ate, but who cares? I found a table beside the window that looked out on those dorm houses in the back. After a while, a guy in a Phillies cap came running up to the dorm house. His brother. He knocked on his window and was let in. I sat where I was and watched. After a little while, they began moving stuff out of the dorm house and into their cars.

I finished my lunch and ran out beside that parking lot. And, from there, I watched.

Little by little, they carried stuff out to their cars. Computer. Boxes. Bags. A weird looking big object that I eventually figured out was a mini-fridge. Little by little, I watched as he emptied his dorm room, growing ever closer to the dreaded departure.

His brother left eventually. Then he was moving stuff out by himself. I did not occur to me until several days later that it would have been polite to at least have offered to help, although I don’t think he would have taken me up on it, nor did I really want to speed up the process.

It was past noon at this point. Back and forth he went, stuffing his belongings into his Pontiac Sunfire. Eventually, a piece of a rolled up rug poked out of the door of his dorm house, followed by him holding it at the middle, and the other end of it. Hehehe! Now watching him stuff that rug into his car was an amusing spectacle! I snickered at him from where I was, and I could tell he found it funny as well. He glanced over at me a couple of times with an amused smirk. He finally did get it in there, but it sure was funny. Meh, you had to have been there.

Past one o’clock, the items he brought out were getting smaller and smaller. The final moment was in sight. Inside, I felt like my insides were being slowly stripped away, but on the outside I kept myself strong and normal looking. I don’t want you to go, I thought to myself. You’re the greatest thing that has ever entered my life. Although now was no time to be regretting how things went the past two years, how this was all doomed to failure from the beginning anyway, but I refused to acknowledge that. No regrets there, though. Things could have been way worse.

Past one thirty. Smaller and smaller items went into his car. And then, he went to knock on the RA office door. The RA came out and followed him, obviously to inspect what was now an empty dorm room. A few minutes later, they were back out. He gave his keys to the RA, and, last bag in his hand, went to his car.

“Bye,” he called to me while heading out. He set the last bag into his trunk, and I ran on over there with him, behind his car. It was about 1:55pm. This was it. The last time.

“Yeah, I know, I’ve been such a leech today,” I admitted with a nervous chuckled when I got over there.

He gave a short smile, probably to avoid saying “Yes, you were.” Heh.

“Nice car,” I said.

“Thanks,” he replied, shutting the trunk. “It’s a little dirty, but not for long.”

“My favorite part was when you were trying to stuff that rug in there. I was just over there laughing at you.”

He laughed. “Yeah. That rug was obviously brought here in a different car.”

There might have been some more small talk after that. Don’t remember.

He went to his driver’s side car door and opened it, and got in.

“Bye!” I called to him.

“Bye!” he called back while shutting his door.

I walked down a couple of parking spaces and turned to the road. I watched the front end of his car. The engine came on. It moved forward. It veered to the right, away from where I was. His rolled-down window was in view now, so I started waving. He stopped in the turn, looked back over his shoulder at me, sunglasses on, and he waved at me, smiling. And on he went, out of the parking space, through the lot, made a left out of the row, a right out of the lot, and another left onto the road.

And just like that, he was gone.