Survival -Guardians of Vesturon [1] (3 page)

On a completely different tangent, we decided to go through sorority rush. Boy, what an odd experience that turned out to be.

We had to dress up for parties and make constant conversation with a bunch of strangers. I was incessantly worried about tripping over my own feet, my dreaded problem I was saddled with, and doing a face plant in front of the sorority girls. Talk about a migraine. It was also a major pain in the you-know-what to endure the mindless chatting that went on. I would make things up just to move the conversation along, but Cat was the best. The stories that girl could contrive would have you on the floor, bursting at the seams with laughter. Oh my gosh…she told one girl she had a pet goat that was blind and she told another girl she had spent the summer living in a Tibetan monastery! Where ever did she come up with that stuff? Worse than that, she had people believing those crazy tales!

Considering four of us were living in fairly close quarters, we all got along amazingly well, but I was worried about January. As I said, we were both from Spartanburg, South Carolina and had attended high school together. We weren’t close friends; January was actually two years younger than I. She was extremely bright and had skipped a couple of grades in elementary school. So we knew each other well enough as we had shared many classes, but she didn’t really hang out with anyone in our class. January was unbelievably kind and was always thinking about everyone but herself. But sometimes she seemed to withdraw into herself, like she had some deep, dark pain of which she dared not speak. She, like me, had no one there to help her move. She never spoke of her parents, and avoided any attempt at conversing about them. She would, however, talk lovingly about her younger siblings; she positively adored them. There was quite a gap in their ages. Her little brother was eight, and her sister was six. She loved them fiercely and would write them letters all the time.

January was super busy going to school full time as well as working two jobs. She was burning the candle at both ends, and though she never complained about anything, I could sense there was something not right with her. I tried once to open up a discussion, and she cut me off and said she didn’t want to discuss it—end of story. So I respected her wishes, and we never discussed it again.

Carlson, Cat, and I intended to pledge a sorority. January declined, saying she was too busy with work and school and wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway. In the end, Carlson was the only one of us that decided to pledge. Cat and I realized we were not cut out for it. Neither of us wanted to deal with the obligations that came with Greek life. Even though we didn’t pledge a sorority, there were always parties and mixers going on and we met tons of people, male and female. The guys were pretty cool for the most part, but I was mostly interested in friendship versus dating. I wanted to focus on my classes, and with all the other things I had on my plate, dating just didn’t seem to fit into the schedule.

One disappointment Cat and I shared was that we didn’t have much time to get to the park to hike or backpack. Cat and I laughed about it because initially we swore we would try to go every other weekend. In early November, we both realized that we had only gone one time, and we had completely missed the colorful leaf season. We promised each other we wouldn’t let that happen in the spring.

It was hard to believe I was nearing the end of my first semester in college. Thanksgiving was in a couple of weeks, and then two weeks later we would be heading home for the Holidays. Finals were just around the corner, and I was expecting to be studying around the clock.

“Hey, Cat! How about hitting the park this weekend? I would love to get away before all the Holidays craziness starts.” I had just come in from the library, and I dumped my books on my desk.

“Hello! Are you crazy? We have that semiformal dance on Saturday,” she reminded me. Cat was stretched out her bed studying.

I checked the calendar. “Oh, no, I forgot about that!” I threw myself across my bed.

“What are you gonna wear? And who are you going with?” Cat wanted to know.

“Jonathan. Oh my gosh, I need to go shopping! I don’t have a thing to wear. I hope Jonathan doesn’t mind dancing with Gimpy over here. Gah, I just hate dancing; it’s so humiliating! Not to mention I look like a complete moron,” I rambled. I must have been making a ridiculous face because Catherine started laughing.

“Oh, come on now! Fess up already! You know you love it. I know you do. You have become quite the show girl.” She was referring to my dancing antics. I was such a horrible dancer that I had taken to exaggerating my movements for the fun of it.

“I can’t figure you out, though.”

I rolled my eyes at her.

She continued, “You’re so athletic. I mean you’re a natural at any sport you attempt, graceful, in fact. One would think you’d be pretty decent at dancing. You know, you
have
to have some kind of rhythm if you can waltz across a soccer field the way you do. I don’t get it.” She let loose a big sigh.

“Humph! You sound exactly like my mother used to. She always was so worried about how terrible I was at dancing. I swear it’s something weird with my body. I would tell her the same thing. It’s like one half of me wants to go one way and the other half wants to go in the opposite direction. The only time it doesn’t do that is when I’m playing sports. Go figure that one out.”

“In any case, dancing or no dancing, you will definitely have a blast with Jonathan. He’s so sweet and easy on the eyes too. Since he’s seriously in love with you, he won’t care a bit when you squash his feet,” she teased.

“Would you please stop it with the ‘he’s in love with you’ stuff already?” I barely knew the boy. “Besides, like I always say, I’m just not interested in going out with anyone.”

“Whatever. You know I’m right about Jonathan though, even if you won’t admit it. What about all those texts you get from him?” Cat hopped off her bed and grabbed a bag of chips. “Want some?”

“Naw. He does send me a ton of texts though. Never thought much about that. But, hey, do you want to go to town tomorrow? I’d like to get this over with. You know how I can’t stand shopping.”

“Sure thing. What time?” she asked, as she continued to crunch on the chips.

* * * * *

We headed to the local town of Sylva the next afternoon to look for dresses. Believe it or not, the town had a boutique for college girls. They had unusual things that you couldn’t find in the bigger department stores.

I found a dress, shoes, and accessories in record time. It was a good thing too since shopping bordered somewhere between having my hair yanked out by the roots and listening to someone run their fingernails across a blackboard. My dress was a basic black, off-the-shoulder, cocktail number that was versatile enough to wear to a variety of functions. Cat told me it emphasized my upper half, so that was the clincher for me. What girl doesn’t want her upper half emphasized, especially when there wasn’t much to emphasize in the first place? Since we had an hour to spare before we needed to head back, we wandered down the street to the local coffee shop to grab a latte.

On the way there, Cat noticed a strange man following us.

“Have you noticed that man following us down the street? I saw him before we hit the dress shop, but didn’t think much of it. He’s behind us again. It’s kind of making me nervous.”

“Don’t worry. It’s broad daylight, and there’re two of us. Just think about it. This area attracts some weird dudes anyway—you know how the mountains always do.” I acted a bit more sure of myself than I truly was as we continued walking.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right, and I’m just being paranoid.”

We sat at the coffee shop for around forty-five minutes and then headed back to our car. Cat looked around to make certain that man was gone, but she was not pleased with what she saw.

“Maddie,” she gasped, “there he is again.” She put a death grip on my arm. “This is definitely starting to creep me out. What should we do?” she asked anxiously.

“Yeah, this is definitely creepy. I read somewhere once that if you were afraid of being followed, you should go directly to the police station. Do you know where it is?” I now shared Cat’s apprehension, but I didn’t want to alarm her.

“I think it’s on the next block. I don’t think it would be a good idea to go to our car. I don’t want him to know what we’re driving or what our tag number is.”

“Good idea! Let’s head to the police station.”

When he saw our intended destination, he turned the corner and went the other way. We told the police about what happened, and they took down a description of him and escorted us back to our car. After that day, we never gave him another thought.

That was a huge mistake…a very huge mistake.

* * * * *

The dance was a complete success, and it was much different from the few high school dances I had attended. Jonathan was the perfect date: sweet, gentlemanly, he had a great sense of humor and he was an excellent sport about getting his toes constantly trampled and saving me from nearly falling several times. He escorted me home, but I think he wished we had spent more time together that night.

When Cat came home, we recounted our evening.

“Jonathan is definitely after you Maddie. The word was out everywhere. All his friends kept asking me if I thought you were interested in him, as you know, someone to go out with. I told all of them that they would have to ask you and that I wasn’t your keeper. So Maddie, what do you think about him?” she was yanking her dress off as fast as she could.

“Oh, no!” I groaned. “I mean he’s really charming, sweet and all, a good sport, and pretty cute, but I don’t want to go out with anyone yet. I don’t mind a date here and there, but I’m not interested in limiting myself to one guy.”

“Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Maybe you’re jumping the gun. Maybe he wants to hang out a bit and be friends.”

“Seriously? What are you, an ostrich? A blind person would notice how he feels about you. Damn Maddie, he practically drools whenever you’re around. What in the world are you running from anyway?” Cat demanded from me, as she pulled off her jewelry and threw it in her drawer.

“Nothing. I’m not running,” I insisted. “I just have my priorities. I think that school is more important, and I don’t want to have to dedicate time to having a boyfriend or anything. I have enough on my plate right now, and that would complicate things even more,” I explained as she raised her brow and gave me that ‘I don’t believe you’ look.

“Why don’t you just admit it, Maddie? Own up to the fact that you’ve built The Great Wall of China around yourself. It may not be thousands of miles long, but it’s at least twenty feet high and three feet thick. You won’t let anyone through no matter how great they are.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You know what exactly what I mean. Quit trying to pretend you don’t. You can fool yourself if you want to, but you can’t fool me,” Cat retorted.

“I’m not trying to fool anyone!” I exclaimed with exasperation.

“Oh, yeah? Then why won’t you even consider hanging out with anyone? Jonathan, by your own words, is a perfect gentleman. And he obviously thinks very highly of you, yet you barely give him the time of day.”

“I told you why!” I exclaimed again. By this point, our voices had risen to the point of yelling at each other. “I don’t want to get involved with anyone!”

“Maddie, stop! If you won’t admit it, I’ll admit it for you. You’re afraid. You’re afraid you may actually like him and that he may like you.” Cat continued to badger me.

“No, that’s not it. You don’t understand. You can’t possibly understand,” I insisted.

“What? That you’re afraid of losing someone again? Is that it?” Cat was very perceptive. When I didn’t respond, she continued, “Maddie, if you don’t ever put yourself out there, you’ll always be alone.”

“Well, maybe it’s not so bad that way. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?” I asked.

“Yeah, and look at everything you have. You know, you’re gonna to have to break down those walls sooner or later or you’ll be a lonely old woman someday,” she blasted back at me.

“And what could you possibly know about that?” I snidely asked.

“Not nearly what you know, I’m sure, but that’s not the worst, Maddie. The worst thing of all is that you have lost all faith and hope—faith in everyone around you and hope that your life can be everything you want it to be. You won’t let yourself feel either of them and when you’ve lost faith and hope, you’ve got nothing left. I feel sorry for you, Maddie, and not because of what you’ve already lived through. I pity you because you won’t have much of anything in the future without faith and hope.”

“I wish it were that easy, Cat; I really do.”

“And I wish you would change yourself so that you can really live again and not just go through the motions. You should be having the time of your life right now, living the dream and all, but you won’t let yourself. Don’t wait too long, Maddie; you’ll regret it, because you’ll wake up one and realize it’s too late.”

“How did you get to be so wise, Cat?” I asked. She said things to me that needed to be said, even though I didn’t want to listen to her.

“I’m not wise. I’m just observant. And I care about you like a sister. I want you to embrace life again and not just pretend you are. Can you at least promise me you’ll try?” Cat asked.

“Yes, I’ll try. But I can’t promise you any more than that. Okay?” Cat nodded, and I continued, “Besides, I just don’t feel any chemistry with Jonathan, if you know what I mean. I think that’s my issue if you want the truth. Every guy that shows an interest in me leaves me with nothing but a blah feeling. Can you unzip this thing? I’m stuck.” I glanced up to see Cat standing there with her mouth hanging open.

“Sweet baby bunnies, if he doesn’t blow your skirt up, I doubt anyone ever will! That boy is smoking hot, but I still think you’re making excuses,” she chided as she grabbed the zipper and released me from my prison. “So, on a different note, what do you want me to tell Jonathan’s friends? I know my cell is going to be buzzing like crazy tomorrow.”