One Night in New York

—

It was another Friday night in Joe’s basement. The five of us had spent so many similar nights here that the hours had blurred together until whole nights were distilled into anecdotes and stupid stories that were passed between us the way close friends do. They were stories we told over and over again, sort of a way for us to stay connected to the people we had been.

The past was even more important to us now, I guess, because it was the Friday after Thanksgiving freshman year, and it was the first night we were all back together. From elementary school, we had grown up together, gone through high school together, and graduated together, all in the same small town on the eastern side of the Connecticut coastline. For the first time since middle school, we were apart. None of us were even at the same college.

We didn’t have a name for our little group, but I always thought of us as a sort of real-life Breakfast Club. On the outside, none of us should have been friends with the other; we were all so different. But when you grow up as kids together, the ties that bind you together end up being stronger than social groups.

Joe was the brain of the group. Straight As through high school, 4.0 GPA, National Honor Society, valedictorian, yadda yadda yadda. Not that any of us were really slouches, but Joe blew us all out of the water. He had been given a full ride to Cornell, and was double-majoring in astronomy and engineering. He literally wanted to be a rocket scientist.

The hell of it was, Joe didn’t fit the stereotypical image of a nerd. He was tall and skinny, sure, but he was also a handsome guy, with sharp, angular features. Despite his looks, though, he had had a hard time dating in high school. He would go out with girls for a short time, but they would eventually get scared off by his overly analytical thought process and incessant talk about the most obscure topics. At the moment, he was sitting on the couch on my left as we watched a movie. Joe had been one of my best friends since the first day of homeroom in 6th grade.

On the opposite side of me was Amanda. She was the cool kid in the group. Even tonight, a casual Friday night with her four closest friends in the world, she was fashionably dressed in black leggings underneath a knee-length skirt and a tight t-shirt. The outfit did nothing but accent her ample rack and her long, toned legs. Her bright red hair was always impeccably done; I don’t think I had ever seen Amanda look disheveled. Even the morning after prom, when we had all woken up exhausted and hung-over in Joe’s basement, her hair was perfect and her makeup had somehow stayed in place without running or smudging.

Even though she was a princess and she knew it, she was also one of the kindest, sweetest people on the planet. She would go out of her way to help anybody who needed it, whether it was through a church group or the Key Club or just someone she had come across while she was out. I also couldn’t remember a time she had just walked by a homeless person without putting money in their cup. She was studying Management and minoring in Spanish at UConn. She wanted to work for an urban non-profit after college, which was perfect for her.

Tony and Callie were playing ping-pong at the table behind the couch, and they had been going at it for a while. Tony was Amanda’s boyfriend, although they had been members of our group before they had started dating. Tony was probably the second-smartest person in our group, but he had spent most of his time trying to excel on the football field instead of in the classroom, and he had barely graduated in the top third of our class – a failure considering his obviously high level of intelligence. His academics had probably hurt his recruiting chances a little bit, although he had been courted heavily by Big East and ACC schools before deciding to play for Syracuse. Tony had already started three games at fullback for the team, and had played in four more, rushing for four touchdowns. He and Amanda had a flirtatious rivalry due to the relationship between their schools, but it was all in good fun and they were very much in love. When people asked him what he was majoring in, he always told them “football.” He didn’t have much of a life plan yet, but I think like most jocks, he was planning on working in athletics – probably as a trainer or a coach. He was a small running back, just over six feet tall, but he as was wide across as a school bus. His hair flowed past his shoulders, and combined with his bulk, he looked like he could be a bouncer at a grunge club.

Callie was the biggest prankster I had ever met. She was always thinking of ever more creative ways to screw with us. I couldn’t tell you how many times she had scared the shit out of me by popping out of the most unlikely places. She had also spent most of high school thinking of ways to disrupt classes and annoy teachers – but always in a benevolent manner, like if we were taking a test or one of us had under-prepared for a presentation. She was notorious, and I don’t think a student in the building didn’t know her for the stink bombs or false fire alarms by the time we graduated – no small feat considering the senior class alone had over 500 people in it.

Despite her somewhat…criminal nature, she was also very creative and had a knack for writing poems and telling stories. This talent had led her to the creative writing program at UNC in Chapel Hill. I had spent so many nights listening for hours, spellbound, as she read her latest creation to me over the phone. She would call me at all hours of the night, as soon as she finished a story just to read it to me. Even though she woke me up most of the time, I would always listen. Callie and I had been friends since she had moved into the house around the corner from mine in 2nd grade. She was also my best friend in the world, and we knew everything about each other. Over time, I had watched her go through the usual phases of childhood: from the tomboy in overalls who refused to wear skirts or anything pink to the gangly teenager who shot up about six inches in a year.

What would she think about me? How would the rest of the group describe me? I guess I was the artsy one of the group. I had been involved in every play from the fall of freshman year to the spring of senior year the school had put on, and a number of productions outside of the school. I had acted, directed, created lighting, sound, props, sets…you name it, I did it. Along the way, I had developed a reputation as being something of a basket case. I think it’s common for creative people to be very emotional, and in my case, my emotions were displayed through my temper. I wasn’t angry all the time, but when I did, I blew my top. I had broken a few doors and walls in my time; too many, but it was something I was always trying to work on. This usually led me to being typecast as the antagonist in most of the plays I did.

Callie was the only person who was able to calm me down, and she was usually the only one who would come to me and talk me down from the precipice I had been perched on. Usually, she pulled me away to a quiet place and let me vent, no matter where we were or what it was that had set me off. Most of our teachers had tolerated it in high school because they knew there were few other options other than to let me progress from frustrated to angry to depressed to utterly despondent. With Callie, I usually stopped at depressed, and it passed quickly. With her encouragement, I had auditioned for, and was accepted to, the Carnegie Mellon University drama program, where I was focusing on acting.

So there were the five of us, hanging out in Joe’s basement like we always had. Things felt different, with high school memories far enough away to be nostalgic, but close enough for us to still be attached to them. We had already started to branch out to other groups of friends at our respective schools, but we had somehow kept our roots in the right place.

“So what do you guys want to do tonight?” Tony asked as he sent back Callie’s serve. “It’s our first weekend back together! We have to do something special.”

“Yeah, but there’s nothing special to do in the middle of nowhere,” huffed Amanda. “Not unless you want to go to another one of Scott Palmer’s parties.” The four of us groaned. The last party that Scott had thrown was the weekend before most of us left for school. It ended with one of us passed out in a neighbor’s hot tub, two of us in the waiting room of the free clinic, and all of us in deep shit with our parents.

“I don’t think any of us want to repeat that experience,” I said. “Besides, it’s going to be the same people doing the same stupid shit they did last year.”

“And it’s not like they’re the only ones,” Callie teased. I flipped her off, and she stuck her tongue out at me, grinning. I didn’t mention that I was in the hot tub, or that I was in it naked with Miranda Roberts, who had a face permanently fixed into a scowl, and a personality to match. We had all done stupid stuff, so most of the others didn’t tease me too much about it, but Callie brought it up whenever she had the chance.

“So what should we do?” asked Joe. “There’s not much worth doing around here in the winter.” This was true. Most of the under-21 entertainment in the area was geared towards warmer months, like the mini-golf course or the swim club in the middle of the woods that we’d hop the fence of and swim in after hours.

We all sat around, silent except for the tapping of the ping-pong ball off of the table and the paddles. All of a sudden, Tony grabbed the ping-pong ball in mid-flight.