Homesickness never seemed like an option for me, and you
would’ve thought that the Hannah Graham situation would have
made me want to count my blessings for my health, my education, and
everything in my life so far. Instead, it simply made me realize that I was
not in familiar territory, like the real world pried itself from under the
ground in plain sight. Like a tornado throwing my house into a fantasy
world, I slowly realized (in a figurative sense, since I’m from D.C.) that I
wasn’t in Kansas anymore.
Gray seemed to soak into everything, from the off-white,
cloudless skies to the infamous cobblestones and all the notable, bricktownhouses in between. Katherine, one of my best friends from high
school, hosted me for the night in her dorm and now walked with me
through Georgetown University’s campus to where my mom had neatly
parked outside the large, steely gate.
My cousin would be getting married that day, and my parents set
up transportation for me to come home for the weekend. Since I had the
Friday night of my return to DC open, I immediately dropped everything
to visit Katherine at Georgetown, a twenty-minute drive from my house
and next-door to my old high school.
As we walked early Saturday morning to my mom’s car, Katherine
talked about some of her friends that I met that past night, discussing
which ones she liked and which ones reminded her of our friends. We
walked along the same uneven sidewalks that I would tread with my
high-school-uniform Sperry’s whenever my friends wanted food after
school. Katherine’s eager attitude about all the new friends and classes
radiated from her speech as she continued thinking of things she had
meant to tell me and other excerpts and adventures that reassured me
she was happy in college. A slow pause filled the air while I waited for
Katherine to think of the next thing: “Wait, did you know a girl died here
recently?”
“No… how would I know that?”
“I don’t know! But it was bacterial meningitis. Like, not the kind
that you get a shot for. That’s viral, so she wasn’t protected against this,
and she died, and the whole campus is freaking out.”
“Aw, that’s so sad.” And I did feel sad, but at some age I had
cemented some wall that prevented me from feeling too sympathetic with
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