Karissa

THE END (it's in block letters because I'm serious; there is no turning back)

Strolling around the campus of Harvard, I couldn't believe it was our second year of college already...and then I realized exactly how funny it was that I was still referring to it like this, "our". I had lost touch with my friends from high school...even Karissa. She was going to Liberty University in Virginia, and the sheer distance and hard work that college involved kept us apart. Besides, we'd never been as close after I confessed my fling (that's all it was - a one-night fling). Despite all that, though, I still thought about her, and I hoped she still thought about me. Although I could easily track down everyone else, I knew they were busy. It worried me that I'd heard nothing about either Jesse or Dominic (both of whom I'd assumed would be famous by now), but, then, school had been my entire life for the past year and ecetera. I was determined to get everything,  - academically speaking - out of college that I could, and I had decided that the less I socialized, the less trouble I was able to get into. My roommate made fun of me; more specifically, he said I was living under a rock and someone should commit me to McLean (only the psychiatric hospital that Sylvia Plath had been committed to after her first suicide attempt, and the one from Girl, Interrupted), which, he helpfully reminded me, really wasn't that far away. "Self-Enforced Hermitude," he called it, and wouldn't stop the discussion until I threw a textbook in his general direction.

"Oh, AJ," he sighed, "but aren't you miserable? Don't you miss...girls? Fun? Someone needs to perform an intervention. And I can't believe we're even sitting around talking about this."

"Yes," I agreed, "because we should be studying -"

"Or socializing!"

My temper had reached the combustion point.

"I don't party anymore, all right? I messed things up with my girlfriend, and she never took me back, but I'm still in love with her, and I may look like the golden boy, but inside I'm just a lovesick, pathetic, loser!"

Blake was silent. It's hard to retaliate when someone erupts, spewing uncomfortable truth in your general direction.

"All right," he said, picking up his copy of Candide (he was being tutored by his French girlfriend, but I suspected they were doing other things on the side) and walking out. I was surprised by how surprisingly good I felt...and decided to see if Karissa's old email still worked. This reconnect was too fragile for the public menace that was Facebook (and besides. I'd deleted mine. Ok, maybe I was taking this thing too seriously. Maybe I really was crazy.) A message popped up in my inbox the next morning.

Hi, AJ, Karissa had written. I've been praying for you. How's things? Maybe we should get together. You know everyone else is so busy.... It was nice hearing about her life (even the off-again, on-again boyfriend she had) I'd considered going to Liberty, but Harvard had been what would make my dad happy, and it was a phenomenal school. However, now I wished I had, and I hoped that we really would get together.

That's great to hear, I wrote back. Thanks so much. School's going great, and I'd love to see you. Actually, I've kind of blockaded myself from the outside world - in a futile attempt to stay out of trouble; I'd take it back if I could - so I really don't know how  "busy" everybody else is, or even what they're up to at all. Terrible, right?

I could hear her laughing when I read her next message later on.

Oh, AJ....I admire your integrity. Well, then, I have the perfect thing for us to do together. How soon can you be in New York? This weekend?

"Blake, you'll be so proud when I tell you that I'm actually leaving campus this weekend. Karissa - she's the famous ex - and I are doing...something in New York. It's all very mysterious."