Hurry up and wait. I knew there would be other vans from CU shuttling kids to the train station throughout the day, but I took the first one, and that’s left me sitting here in Gastonia, North Carolina in the depressing Amtrak station for the last four hours.
I did fall asleep for a while, and was rather disoriented when I finally came to, but since then I’ve been catching up on Facebook. Finally free of the CU Internet police and nosy busybodies, I’ve spent well over an hour pouring over the college photo albums of my fellow high school graduates.
What I see doesn’t excite me as much as I thought it would. Quite the opposite is happening, actually. Pictures of girls having their hair held back as they empty the contents of their stomachs into bar toilets, and guys with drunken postures pressing their faces into the breasts of girls with less clothes on than I wear to bed leaves me feeling a little sick myself.
And, oddly enough, that makes me angry. I’m trying really hard not to judge the coeds in those pictures, because I know that a single decision separated me from them. Sending the check to Carter University is the only thing preventing my face in those pictures.
Or is it?
I’ve only had a few drinks in my whole life; would admission to any secular university have guaranteed my participation in such lewd acts? And, since when do I use the word lewd?
I exit out of Facebook and shake my head, trying to clear the sights of the last hour from my brain. No, perhaps I wouldn’t have engaged in that kind of behavior, but I didn’t think our Salutatorian would have either, but there she was in all of her glory letting another girl suck liquored Jell-O out of her navel. I wonder, briefly, what would have become of my CU friends, had they gone to secular universities?
Silas and Bridgette would have packed up and left by the end of week one. Eden and Jonah may have struggled it out, and I think done fine, but what about Matt? Matt is the most “like me” in attitude I’ve come across so far on campus. And, though we’ve never had a conversation regarding our sexual experiences—or lack thereof—I’ve wandered around campus with the assumption that he’s done just as much as I have, and maybe more. He has the build and sarcastic grin of many of the guys in my friends’ pictures, but would he do that? Would he press his freshly-shaven, just-come-from-church face into the breasts of a bartender pouring his underage self a shot?
My breath catches as I look around the train station. Looks like I’ll be able to ask him myself, since he appears to be walking right toward me.
“You lost?” I grin, standing to stretch my legs and shake the numbness from my feet.
He shakes his head, smiling. “I thought you left already. Don’t you answer your texts anymore?”
Confused, I pull up my home screen and see, in fact, I’ve missed a few texts while on my Internet search in Sodom.
“Sorry, I’ve been … busy.”
Matt tilts his head in question, and I pick up my bag, directing us to a bench that’s freed itself of what I hope to be the last group of CU students passing through here today.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, bending forward to stretch once more before sitting gain.
“I, Ms. Valedictorian, am taking the train home.”
“Jerk.” I stick out my tongue and playfully smack his shoulder.
Matt sits next to me, but the strange thing is, when our legs brush against each other, he slides over a few inches.
Staring at the new, weird space between our bodies, I stare at him blankly. “I don’t have cooties, promise. I was just tested.”
He chuckles somewhat nervously, not changing his position before changing the subject. “Busy doing what?” He redirects our conversation.
“Oh! Right. Well, I don’t know if this is CU-legal, or whatever, or if it’ll make you uncomfortable, but … look at these.” I thumb my way back to my most recent Facebook stalking session, open the album “Fall Semester” from Dawn Davis—in our class’s top ten—and hand my phone to Matt.
His eyes take a moment to focus on the screen, and when they finally do, he immediately looks at me. “What? What is this?”
He’s now holding my phone like it’s a bomb, making strong eye contact with me as he awaits his answer.
“It’s someone from my high school. Who goes to UMass Amherst.”
“That is at college? That looks like something you’d see in a movie about college.” He sets the phone on my lap and runs his palms on the front of his jeans.
“Hey,” I place a hand on his shoulder, “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, I’m just … kind of freaking out.”
Matt exhales and runs a hand over his face, then slowly picks my phone back up. “What’s wrong, K. Sawyer?”
Internally, I sigh a bit of relief. For a moment there, I thought Matt would run for the hills, thinking I was showing him porn. But, his use of my nickname—one he created, no less—calms me.