Death As We Know It

SIX: L'AMITÉ

Ever the gracious loser, Liam Miller had organised for all of the competitors (including us, the winners) to meet up for coffee at a local place the next afternoon.

I really liked Liam. He was friendly, gracious and intelligent (naturally, he went to Yale) and all around a good person. Unlike most people his age (Eighteen? Nineteen?) He was cautious and responsible, which led most people to believe he was older than he was.

The cafe was small, smaller than Leonidas, but had an air of simplicity that was welcomed gratefully, in comparison to everything we had seen over the past few days. Blue plastic chairs scraped back, and people began to sit down, chatting about the previous night, or other people from their college, ones I didn't know. Liam sat down beside me.

"Hey!"

I smiled as a greeting.

"I wasn't able to find you last night, but you were incredible!" A grin threatened to rip his face in two. He punched my arm gently.

"You guys deserved the win."

"Yours was pretty awesome too. You're gonna help a lot of people, someday."

His grin got even wider, baring a gap in his teeth, almost boyish looking. I realised that Liam was still basically a stranger, and that I only just met him yesterday.

"You go to Yale?"

He nodded.

"What do you study?"

"Robotics and Environmental Science," He said, without missing a beat. "I wanna make the world a better place, but I can't do that if there's no world left to make better, you know?"

We talked for around an hour, discussing everything and anything at all. Journ joined the conversation for a few moments, and the two of them discussed robotics (yet another one of Journ's many talents), but he soon relapsed back into conversation with Ahmet, who sat to his right.

Eventually, the time came when it was time to leave, to pack up the bags and fly back to where we had come from. (For me, London, although Journ joked multiple times about catching a flight to Austin to visit his father.)

The hotel room was quiet, somber even, when we arrived after coffee. It seemed as if the realisation that the moment that we had been hoping for for ten months had finally passed by. It was over. We packed our bags, and said our goodbyes. Liam had come to wave us off, his flight not for another few hours. We exchanged numbers, promised to stay in touch, although I didn't really think we would.

The flight went by peacefully, no turbulence or disruptions, and the college was quiet when we arrived at nine PM. Since it was a Sunday, most students were studying or visiting family, since classes were never held on Sundays. Around this period in time, my memories get a little fuzzy again, though I think that it was more blissful ignorance than lack of acknowledgement. At this moment, I have nothing more to add to this part of the story. It was one of the few peacefully empty moments in this tale. Although I found it boring at the time, and longed for something interesting to happen, now I wish that I had relished the lack of activities. The days in between this memory and the next consisted of listening to Yevan play the cello in his dorm, or studying for the rapidly-approaching finals. The thought of leaving college daunted me. I had spent the last three and a half years here, and I was far from eager to return to my father, who, without a doubt, would have me working within his business in a matter of days. It was a future that I hated for myself, something that I would've died to escape, but if I had known what was going to happen, I would've accepted, happy to live out my days in a boring monotony of numbers and charm.