The shuttle van’s door slams shut, and I rest my head against the window. The dream is quickly fading.
I used to think that God was against me when it came to dating—that he wanted me to be single forever. Three and a half years of college had passed me by with no luck whatsoever. Opportunity after opportunity passed me by. There had been Becky, who got a boyfriend the weekend after we had that moonlight picnic on the lawn of the Wisconsin Capitol Building. There had been Caitlyn, who had dance and university orchestra and Phi Kappa Phi, but no time for me. Then there had been Jenna, which, to this day, I still have no idea what had transpired in her head. Three girls who I had sifted out of the backdrop of partiers. I had found three girls that had seemed to have the gravity that I sought after, and all three of them had escaped me.
I used to think that God had it out for me to stay single my entire college career, but as I sit here in Stevens Point, my already fastened seat belt holding me down, I realize that it has not been God, but me. I’ve been the one to blame. Becky, Caitlyn and Jenna had all been opportunities, and I had screwed them all up. The realization, spurred on by yet another opportunity in the past 24 hours, hits me like a December blizzard, careening off the plains and stunning everything in its path into a frozen inertness.
Slowly, I turn my head to face the outside world, now soundless behind the pane of glass. The green grass, trees, bushes, and bustling students now seem no more than a slideshow scrolling before my eyes. The brief, twenty-four stay that had become so real to me distances itself already, and we have not even begun to drive away yet. What would I do if I saw her right now? I think to myself. Would I let her pass, watch her slip through my fingers yet one more time? Or would I shake up this grumbling driver even more and demand he open the door?
The opportunity to find out never presents itself, though, and within minutes, we are off, driving through the streets of Stevens Point and out toward the interstate. Orange construction signs and barrels order us off course and the driver curses his luck. He jerks the shuttle in obedience while I roll my eyes. Why so angry at the detour, I think to myself, but I don’t voice it to him, mostly because, despite the intriguing nature of the one that pulled me away this weekend, I am kicking myself at the way it turned out, and at the way it could have turned out had not my impotent nature prevented it.
It had come at the invitation of my best friend from high school, Rashad Ahmed, who I had not seen in about a year and a half.
“Come up here,” he had told me. “Take a load off.”
I had agreed. The semester had been stressing me out, and Rashad, although he, too, attended college, was just the remedy. While extremely responsible and devout in his religion, the one thing that Rashad never liked to discuss was school.
“Dude, I am going to hook you up with a friend of mine,” he had told me when I had first arrived.
“Yeah?” Caution tape had arisen in my mind. “I’m only going to be here for a day.”
Rashad had waved his hand off at it. “Yeah, but she’s thinking of transferring down to Madison after the semester. She’s totally awesome, man; her name’s Amanda.”
“What’s wrong with her?” I had asked, still leery.
“Psssh, man, nothing’s wrong with her. I’d date her myself, but . . . well . . . you know how my parents would feel about that.”
“She’s a Christian.”
He had nodded. “A pretty strong one at that, too. She’s right up your alley.”
“Alright,” I had said, rolling my eyes. “So how’s this going to work?”
Rashad had smiled. “I’ve already planned a little get-together. It’ll be held at the frat house later tonight.”
The shuttle driver swerves and swears and my head rises, then bangs back against the window, throwing me back into the present. He curses the vehicle and apologizes to the passengers for the inconvenience of a van that cannot seem to sustain sixty-five. What’s the rush? Why try to get away from this town so quickly?
Especially when a golden opportunity continues living on back there. There had been no barriers with that one. She had not been like Becky or Caitlyn or Jenna. She had been a ripe apple, waiting for me to pluck her from the tree, and I wouldn’t have had to climb or even stretch to reach her.
The memory of the past twenty-four hours with her lingers in my head just as the hint of her perfume lingers on my clothes, but the scenery is changing fast. Both will fade as the congestion of Madison again bombards me. I almost wish to stay behind. I almost wish to transfer out of Madison to Stevens Point, out of the hub to the satellite school, compromising my education for a pair of striking eyes. Yet here I sit, separating myself from that golden opportunity at 59 mph.
I had not attended the event with as devout a faith as Rashad. Memories of my luck in my own sphere, where I am comfortable, where I have the time to cultivate these types of things, had coursed through my head and challenged the potency of one night. So I had gone with the attitude that I’d at least meet the girl, but nothing more. My faith, however, had plunged even farther when I saw the nature of this get-together. The room had filled to capacity with numerous chicks and dudes loud and rank with the smell of perfume and cologne. The alcohol had already come out, and so I had retreated to a corner, sheltering myself from the melee pulsing about before me.
It was about then that a sober face sitting on the couch about ten feet away caught sight of me. It was cute, but did not catch my attention until it directed a few comments my way. A “What’s your name?” had been followed by “Cool, I’m Amanda. Where’re you visiting from?” So this is the girl, I had thought. I found it interesting that she chose to talk to me, even from across the room. I wondered if Rashad had filled her in like he had me. In any case, she had singled me out from the crowd, most of whom I assumed she knew. The face had suddenly become a bit more striking.
In the course of the next several minutes, after several attempts to speak over the noise from across the room, she had come over to my corner and sat next to me. “For someone from Madison, you sure don’t seem to be a partier.”
I laughed. “I went to UW Madison to get an education, unlike many of the people there.”
“So you don’t drink.”
“Not much. I tried it a little my freshman year. It wasn’t worth all the trash that came along with it.”
She casually bit her lip and smiled. It was a cute little habit that caught my attention. “I don’t really drink either. That’s how I came to know Rashad. People like us seem to find each other.”
I remember thinking at that moment, “Maybe for you,” but I didn’t voice it. Past luck or not, this level-headed girl was talking to me. We continued on, occasionally yelling to hear each other over the din of the background.
“I don’t know what I’m going to go into anymore,” she had told me. “I was going to go into elementary ed, but there way too many politics involved in it.”
“Like what?”
She had laughed. “You don’t want me to go into it.”
“Sure. Go into it.”
She smiled, shook her head, and went in with a deep breath. “I think the No Child Left Behind Act is messing things up. It hasn’t done any good for the students and is eating up funds. The Feds want the teachers to cater to these students while the support of the parents is the real problem. The teachers are being held accountable for things they cannot completely control. Also, the students come in with no grasp of discipline, but the teachers aren’t allowed to do anything about it but send ‘em to the principal’s office. Then they get a verbal slap on the wrist and come back no better off than before.”
I don’t remember quite all the details she said, but I do remember looking her in the eyes as she went off on her tirade, and hearing of her unspoken identity through them. The eyes spoke of passion with gravity, of liveliness with conscientiousness, of humor with good taste. It was what I had been looking for, and it was sitting right before me.
“Sorry you had to hear that,” she told me.
“No, that’s okay. I don’t know much of that type of stuff, but I think it’s important.”
“Well, how about you. What are you studying?”
“Environmental biology,” I told her. “My dad owned a greenhouse when I was growing up and so I always loved plants and horticulture. I want to go into Land Use and Management in order to fix all the politics involved there.”
“That’s so cool. I respect you.”
Rashad had come over at one point and was glad to see we had already found each other. “Hey, sorry about the booze; you can’t seem to keep it away from these things.” He had joined in our conversation, but other acquaintances soon drew him elsewhere. “I’ll leave you two to yourselves,” he told us with a smirk. I wondered again if Amanda knew of Rashad’s intentions. If so, she never revealed any of the typical shy or awkward baggage that would accompany such situations. We had simply continued on as if nothing were strange, and yet the electricity between us was so incredibly distinct.
The party had since seemed to rise in volume, and soon we found ourselves practically yelling to sustain conversation. “You want to go outside?” she asked me. I agreed. “The reserve is just across the street. They’ve got some beautiful trails that you’d probably really enjoy, even though it’ll be dark.”
“Yeah, that sounds great.”
“I just need to go grab my jacket.”
While I had waited for her, Rashad had found me again.
“Where’d she go?”
“She went to go grab her jacket. It’s too loud in here so we’re going to go take a walk.”
“To the reserve?”
“That’s what she told me.”
“Dude.” He had given me a high five. “That’s where everybody goes to make out.”
I had simply smiled and shrugged, elated at the way the night was turning out.
I try to fall asleep but cannot. The van’s cabin is hot, my seat is hard, and the sun is shining in my face, mocking my mood with its brightness. It seems adamant about keeping me awake, conscious of the idea that my life is again returning to its original thoroughfare, that homework, roommate problems, loan issues, and the biggest one: the loneliness of singleness have not disappeared.
I wish for the sun to become obscured by clouds. There are enough of them in the sky, yet they always seem to remain just too distant to shade the light of the day.
I smell my clothes again, slowly, trying to make the most of her scent, for it is the one last bit of her that I still have with me. I wonder how long it will last before the air of Madison drowns it out. Surely it won’t be able to compete with the exhaust, the coffee shops, and the incessant stench of scum from the lakes. Another hour and they will surround me, and I will be back where I started.
The night had been cool, though the town had huddled under a blanket of overcast. We had walked outside, and the comparative silence had been wonderful. Occasional couples could be seen scattered up and down the street, but they had seemed only simple shadows, especially after walking out of the party. “The reserve is just over here,” she had said, pointing across the street to a dark wall of trees.
We had strolled over, then along the line of trees until we came upon a lighted pathway. She had talked to me readily. We had wandered the gardened pathway, her mind bursting with so many different things that she could not stay on one subject for any substantial amount of time. High school sports jumped to family, which jumped to religion. She told me she talked too much and wanted to know what I thought about everything, but I shrugged and told her that she was fine talking. She shook her head at herself.
“I love hiking,” she said with a deep breath after a time of silence.
“Yeah, me too.”
“You’ll probably get to do it a lot for your job, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“So do you know all of these plants then?”
I laughed. “Most of them. They’re hard to tell in the dark."
“What’s that tree right there?”
“Some sort of walnut.”
“What about that one?”
“Silver Maple.”
“How about that bush?”
“Honeysuckle.”
“Sorry, I’m probably annoying you.”
“No, no. You’re fine. How do you think I know all this stuff?”
We continued walking, but in silence now. I noted that she had a very distinct smile on her face.
“Isn’t it interesting how some things work out the way they do?” she asked me. I looked over at her. She was biting her lip and smiling again. Again, I found it striking.
“What do you mean?”
She chuckled. “Nothing. But you ever feel like that? That things just come together when you’ve done nothing? That they never work out when you try so hard but they do when you aren’t even trying anymore?”
“I guess so. I’m not sure I understand quite what you’re saying though.”
She laughed. “Nevermind. I’m just babbling again.”
I don’t know quite how long we had walked in there, but it had to have been awhile. The streets were considerably emptier when we had again emerged from the trees. We had started heading back, both knowing what was coming. Her apartment complex and Rashad’s apartment complex had seemed to grow farther and farther apart as we walked, and the point for departure glared down on us. Our pace had slackened. She had remained close to me. I could tell that I could have reached out and grabbed hold of her hand. Instead, my hand remained in my pocket. Finally, we reached that point and came to a dead stop. I turned to face her, only to see that something was on her mind.
“You know, you could spend a little more time over at my place if you want.”
Her expression had revealed it as more of a plea than an offer. I had watched her, feeling, more than ever, that electricity that had been resonating between us the entire night. I paused. Her eyes stared back at me, reiterating what her lips had just mouthed. It was suddenly very hard to hear the words, though. The traffic and frat parties of Madison had suddenly begun screaming at me, drowning out her words. I stared back at her, but she was becoming hard to see. I could not comprehend her anymore.
“It’s getting pretty late,” I found myself saying. “I’d better get back cuz I gotta get up early to catch my ride.”
She had nodded and looked down. “Right.”
I had then pulled her in and given her a hug. I did not let go for a moment, and neither did she. Her touch had brought me back to the moment, as well as to its delicacy. I remember struggling for a way to recover what I had already let slip.
“Hey, if you’re ever down in Madison . . .”
She had laughed shortly. “It’s always hard to get down there, as much as I love it.”
I had nodded, disappointed that there was no promise made, despite what Rashad had said concerning her future plans. We had remained close. She had smelled so good then. For the next few moments, we stood there in silence, trying to figure out what all of this had led to. A million different possibilities were running through my head, and the one that finally came out made my stomach wrench even as my lips mouthed it.
“Facebook?” I said at last.
“Yeah, Facebook.”
I had then offered a pitiful smile and a quick good-bye before turning and walking away.
Facebook. Even now, as I begin to see the neighborhoods of the suburbs beginning to appear, I think back on those last moments. Their sounds resonate louder than the din of the party earlier that night, or the jovial proddings of Rashad later that night, or even the recurrent cursing of the van driver at the present. All those sounds are hollow to me; all such moments have entered, dwelt, and exited my personal, mental stage. The ones with Amanda linger, chiding me for silencing them when I did. All the possibilities of what alternate conclusions may have developed, had I not interrupted the course of the dream, churn within my head, mocking me with their fabricated nature.
Facebook. I bang my head one more time on the window, this time of my own volition, hoping the jar will help me figure myself out. At the time, logic had overtaken me. The ticks of my watch had deafened me, screaming out that my time in Stevens Point was not mine but on short term loan to me. I had felt that I couldn’t give her anything that would have been of any consequence, and only now, as she fades away behind me, have I proven my feelings correct.
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