Fall, 1982, part 2

One night, not a week after sending word through the grapevine that I liked this boy named Sam who I actually didn’t know the first thing about, I had gone to the library during study hall, hoping maybe to find him there. And he was there, I was delighted but anxious to note, sitting with his friend John, an almost frighteningly vivid redhead plastered in freckles, who dressed identically to Sam, in corduroys and flannel shirts. Also at the table was Merry, one of the very most intimidating of the scary hippie girls. They were sitting near the entrance, and Sam had his head buried in a Calculus 2 textbook. Merry was drawing on her arm with a Sharpie. John looked bored.

I wasn’t sure if Sam had seen me come in, but I was suddenly too nervous to say hello, especially with the ironically-named Merry present. So I found a place to sit in a corner near the back. I could just see a sliver of the back of Sam’s head from where I sat, trying and failing to understand the Ralph Waldo Emerson poem in front of me. After attempting to decipher a particularly challenging passage, I looked up from my book and could no longer see any of Sam’s head. He must have headed back to his dorm. My heart sank. Then, just as I was about to load up my backpack and leave too, I heard a voice behind me.

“Hi.”

I whipped my head around indelicately. It was Sam. “Hi,” I replied, trying somehow to recover some modicum of cool. My was heart beating so fast I was sure he could tell.

“Wanna get high?”