*
After we eat sushi, we wander around on Franklin Street, stopping in stores. I consider buying a UNC Tar Heels basketball hat for Peter, but he probably wouldn’t wear it, since he’ll be a Wahoo.
We pass a pole with signs on it, and Chris stops short. She points to a sign for a music hall called Cat’s Cradle. A band called Meow Mixx is playing tonight. “Let’s go!” Chris says.
“Have you ever heard of Meow Mixx before?” I ask. “What kind of music do they play?”
“Who cares. Let’s just go!” She grabs my hand. Laughing, we run down the street together.
There’s a line to get inside, and the band has already started to play; snatches of dancey music float through the open door. A couple of girls are waiting in line in front of us, and Chris throws her arms around me and tells them, “My best friend just got into UNC.”
I feel warm inside hearing Chris call me her best friend—to know that we still matter to each other, even though she has her work friends and I have Peter. It makes me feel sure that when she’s in Costa Rica, or Spain, or wherever she ends up, we’ll still be close.
One of the girls hugs me and says, “Congratulations! You’re going to love it here.” Her hair is in milkmaid braids, and she’s wearing a T-shirt that says HILLARY IS MY PRESIDENT.
Adjusting the lollipop enamel pin in her hair, her friend says, “Put down Ehaus or Craige for your dorm. They’re the most fun.”
I feel sheepish as I say, “Actually, I’m not coming here; we just came to visit. For fun.”
“Oh, where are you going?” she asks me, a slight frown on her freckled face.
“William and Mary,” I tell her.
“It’s not definite though,” Chris butts in.
“It’s pretty definite,” I say.
“I came here over Princeton,” the braided girl tells me. “That’s how much I loved it when I visited. You’ll see. I’m Hollis, by the way.”
We all introduce ourselves and the girls tell me about the English department, and going to basketball games at the Dean Dome, and the places on Franklin Street that don’t card. Chris, who zoned out during the English department part of the conversation, is suddenly all ears. Before we go inside, Hollis gives me her number. “Just in case you come here,” she says.
When we get inside, the venue is pretty full, lots of people standing near the stage, drinking beers and dancing to the music. The band is actually just two guys with guitars and a laptop, and their sound is sort of electronica pop. It fills the whole room. It’s a mixed crowd in the audience: some older guys in rock band T-shirts and beards, closer to my dad’s age, but also a lot of students. Chris tries to wipe off the stamp on her hand to get us beers, but is unsuccessful. I don’t mind, because I don’t really like beer, and also, she still has to drive us back tonight. I start asking around to see if anyone has a phone charger, which Chris slaps my arm for. “We’re on an adventure!” she yells. “We don’t need cell phones for an adventure!”
Then she grabs my hand and pulls me along with her to the edge of the stage. We dance our way to the middle, and we jump along to the music, even though we don’t know any of the songs. One of the guys went to UNC, and midway through the show, he leads the crowd in the Tar Heels fight song. “I’m a Tar Heel born, I’m a Tar Heel bred, and when I die I’m a Tar Heel dead!” The crowd goes nuts, the whole room is shaking. Chris and I don’t know the words, but we shout, “Go to hell, Duke!” along with everyone else. Our hair swings wildly in our faces; I’m sweaty, and suddenly I’m having the best time. “This is so much fun,” I scream in Chris’s face.
“Same!” she screams back.
After the second set Chris declares that she is hungry, so we are off into the night.
We walk up the street for what feels like ages when we find a place called Cosmic Cantina. It’s a tiny Mexican place with a long line, which Chris says must mean they either have good food or really cheap food. Chris and I inhale our burritos; they are stuffed full with rice and beans and melting cheese and homemade pico de gallo. It tastes pretty plain, except for the hot sauce. So hot my lips burn. If my phone weren’t dead and Chris’s phone weren’t nearly dead, I’d have searched online for the best burrito in Chapel Hill. But then we might not have found this place. For some reason it’s the best burrito of my life.
After we eat our burritos, I say, “What time is it? We should head back soon if we want to get back before one.”
“But you’ve barely seen any of campus,” Chris says. “Isn’t there anything you want to see in particular? Like, I don’t know, a boring library or something?”
“Nobody knows me like you do, Chris,” I say, and she bats her eyelashes. “There is one place I want to see . . . it’s in all the brochures. The Old Well.”
“Then let’s go,” she says.
As we walk, I ask her, “Does Chapel Hill seem like Charlottesville to you?”
“No, it seems better.”
“You’re just like Kitty. You think everything new is better,” I say.
“And you think everything old is better,” she counters.
She has a point there. We walk the rest of the way in companionable silence. I’m thinking about the ways UNC does and doesn’t remind me of UVA. The campus is quiet, I guess because most kids have gone home for summer break. There are still people walking around, though: girls in sundresses and sandals and boys in khaki shorts and UNC baseball caps.
We cross the green lawn, and there it is: the Old Well. It sits between two brick residence halls. It’s a small rotunda, like a mini version of the one at UVA, and there is a drinking fountain in the center. There’s a big white oak tree right behind it, and there are azalea bushes all around, hot pink like a lipstick color Stormy used to wear. It’s enchanting.
“Are you supposed to make a wish or something?” Chris asks, stepping up to the fountain.
“I think I heard that on the first day of classes, students take a sip of water from the fountain for good luck,” I say. “Either good luck or straight As.”
“I won’t need straight As where I’m going, but I’ll take the luck.”
Chris bends down to take a sip, and a couple of girls walking by caution, “Frat guys pee in that fountain all the time—don’t do it.”
Her head snaps back up and she jumps away from the fountain. “Ew!” Hopping down, she says, “Let’s take a selfie.”
“We can’t; our phones are dead, remember? We’ll just have to have the memory in our hearts like the old days.”
“Good point,” Chris says. “Should we hit the road?”