I squint in the pitch-black, trying to make out her figure where there is nothing but grass and trees. I strain my ears, trying to hear someone say, "Jordan? Are you there? Is that you?" but all that I hear are the crickets. I don't even know that she knows I'm home yet.

I haven't seen anyone from home in years, save some of my crew when we visited each other's schools. I know that they see each other and hang out when they come, but that's the thing: I don't come home. I've been home maybe three times since I've been up at Alfred, and I've been there since 98, so three years in a few months. It's easy enough to come up with excuses for my parents, my friends, myself. Schoolwork, job, fraternity obligations. I pledged my first year and moved into the house that summer. Man, I earned my letters, too. When I came to classes with my hands wrapped up in bandages, everyone knew what was up. Everyone knows going through Chi Gamma is hard. It's kinda weird being a brother and being on the other side, doing the same stuff I went through to the younger guys. When those guys are brothers on the other side with you doing the same stuff to even younger guys, that's when you start to feel old. So I'm old.

God, I can't believe Tom's getting married. That doesn't help me feel younger. The group of us are 21, some still stuck at 20, and he's settling down for life...how insane is that? Most of us are still in school; Tom is. Granted, he's got a great job setting up computer systems for stores and whatever, and when he's done with his degree, he'll either move up in that company or move on to somewhere better. Jannah has her two-year degree in accounting and she's gonna go back to school to become a CPA when Tom is done with school. It's not crazy for a lack of plans, it's just crazy because, well, forever is a really long time. I don't know, I mean, they've been together forever already, or so it seems; forever or at least since tenth grade. We all knew it would happen, them getting married, but that doesn't mean we knew it would happen! At least not now. Just some indiscriminate time in the future. Maybe we thought at our 20 year reunion they'd still be together and we'd still harass them, saying, "You guys are just like an old married couple! You should just get married! You're going to get married someday." Changes and progressions, even expected ones, can be a little hard to swallow.

But at any rate, here I am, home, on this stupid rock, wanting Ananda to come over. It's amazing to think that I haven't seen her since that summer after we graduated.

Wow, that summer. Can't even imagine that those distant memories which seem now hazy like a hot summer morning were once the present, right now, vivid and real. How do you live something like that? Some things aren't ever meant to be real; they're memories before they happen.

We got back from graduation that day and to my utmost surprose there sat a 65 Mustang convertible. It needed a little work; but nothing that was too huge an undertaking. Turns out that a guy my dad worked with had been restoring it when he lost his job. He needed cash badly, so my dad helped him out, and he cut my dad a wicked deal. Sad story, I know, but there I was with this hot car. I was surprised, I suppose, because even though I know my parents love me, it gets really easy to forget some days when most things we say are screamed at each other.

But the Mustang, oh man, it was spectacular. It was mostly restored to stock with a few modifications. There were four different engines that could be hiding under that hood, starting at just 120 hp. So I kind of held my breath when I lifted it. As the hood slowing lifted and the sun glinted off the gleaming engine, I took in a breath sharply. As if going from shoeleather express to classic Mustang was not enough for one day, most definitely before me was the Challenger V-8 version. Further inspection revealed it to be 271 hp "High Performace" variant of the motor. The exhaust was definitely not stock, so that probably put it even further over 271. I was in absolute heaven. I wanted to curl up in a little ball on the impeccable seats and raise the new top over my head and just never leave. Of course, I had to eventually, but I didn't spend too much time outside of that car that summer. I took my graduation money and did some more work on the exhaust, repainted it, and did some detailing with the interior. By June, it was incredible. Magnificent. Not of this world.

I'd actually convince Ananda not to take extra hours at the Gap, and we'd go cruising with the top down. Sometimes I'd wear a weird fedora type hat that we found rooting around in my attic one day and she'd wrap her head in a silk scarf and we'd both wear dark glasses and pretend to be very exotic and mysterious people. Other days we'd leave my Mustang at home and take her little beater Bronco II out muddin. That had to stop, though, when we went through a puddle just a little too deep. We had to call one of our friends to come pick us up three miles outside of town. It's not easy to explain getting water in the distributor cap on a beautiful sunny day.

Other days we'd get sick of the town and decide to Go Somewhere. Didn't matter where, or how far; sometimes looking at the same houses, trees, rocks and roads just makes you want to go crazy for a different perspective. We'd find any excuse to go. We went a mall over an hour away and came home with a kickball and some candy, of all things. Coming home, Ananda held her candy and got a Look in her eye. You know what I mean, a crazy Look that says I just don't care, or I'm alive. She started keeping watch for cars with their windows down, which wasn't rare on that beautiful August day. As sunny and warm as it was, it had that bittersweer August taste to it, and everyone could feel summer on it's way out, so I think they wanted to wind the windows down and enjoy it while it lasted. When she spotted anyone with their windows down, she leaned her body far out of the car, hands braced upon the door, her hair whipping violently around her head, swirling and encapsulating her. She extended one bare, tanned arm towards the vehicle, holding out the box of candy, and screamed, "DO YOU WANT SOME CANDY?!?!" When she saw the invariably quizzical look on the driver's face, she'd fall backwards with with laughter into the seat, her wind-snarled hair landing with a silent whoosh around her head, her bare legs and feet kicking in the air. It was truly amazing how beautiful she was without that seeminly omnipresent harried look on her face.

Now that we're both away at our respective colleges, we talk mostly through instant messenger or email, or the occasional rare call. I'm not good at phone or writing. I like to let the silences speak fot themselves sometimes, and those aren't good mediums for effective silences. When we do talk, I try to make sure that she's ok. I ask her about her credit load, and what she's doing with her organizations, and what she does for fun; seemingly out of curiosity, but mostly to see if she's relaxing at all. She always sees through me and tries to reassure me that she is ok, but I know that if anything, her life at Columbia must be at leas 10 times as stressful as her overworked high school existence was. Sitting on my stupid rock, I ask myself why I don't just walk over to her house, but I come up with excuses in my head, and I don't go.

The next day I stay home and unpack a little while my parents are out. Tom stops by for a while and we play Grand Theft Auto 3. In that moment it's like so little has changed that it's creepy and unnatural, but the thunderous clash of my single frat boy lifestyle meeting head on with his impending domesticity looms heavily over our heads. I'm wary to broach the topic. What am I going to say? In my head I can't help but think of everything Tom and I used to do: sneaking airline sized mini bottles of alcohol into high school and dumping them in our drinks at lunch and getting drunk in the caf to all but stalking Amy Christopher in junior high. She had to know. We rode our bikes and skateboards and walked the dog and whatever else past her house so much.

So the crazy times are over. What's up with that? Who else is going to play football in Wal*mart with me? I definitely feel abandoned, like the last kid left at a frat party, when everyone else is like, "Come on Jordan, let's go. It's so late," but I just want to stay and have one more.

The only time we brush upon the subject is pretty much a nonmoment. After a few digs from me about being old and boring, Tom tells me to shut it, cuz I'm just jealous that I don't have a girl. We laugh, and Tom's like, "No, really man, I seriously love her. You know that. I don't know what I'd do without her."

"Yeah, Tom, I know. We all know. It's just so weird I guess. But seriously, I am happy for you."

*brief uncomfortable silence*

*cough*

It sort of sounded like a beer commercial. Maybe my next line should have been, "Throw back one last beer as a single man," as I tossed him a Rolling Rock and the logo popped up above our pictures and said "Good friends, good times, good beer."

Then we went back to our game. It was so much easier that way.

When he's gone, I think of Ananda again. I come home for maybe the fifth time in three years because one of my best friends is getting married; I come home, home where people that I once called my best friends but haven't seen in years are going to be, but all I can think about is one person. I'm not sure why. I don't know if it's because I'm worried about her, or maybe because I'm scared of how much she might have changed, or how much she might that that I have changed. It's all of these, I'm sure, but the majority is probably what I've been trying not to think about. Most of it, much of it, is surely what wasn't but almost was.

It happened, or didn't happen, as the case may be, that summer after our graduation. When else? That whole summer was nothing but an extended moment where everything came together, only to fall apart, little by little, ever since.