Close Encounters with an Old Friend

Summer days before your first year of teaching can be long and boring, but can also go rather quickly if you're as horrible at time management as I am. Typically, I don't mind doing the same things over and over-- and my chosen line of work is going to have plenty of repetition. However, I do enjoy a good random change to the monotony every now and again.

About a week or two ago I got up one morning to set up the booth for Laugh Out Loud's upcoming improv show. I didn't mind setting up since I certainly had the time and needed a reason to wake up anyways. I didn't stay to pass out fliers that day though since at the time I was feeling pretty gross for having not showered yet and one of my roommates wanted me to meet him to get some lunch before he had class. On the way back, as I was crossing the section between the Library and the JFSB I saw a girl talking on her phone who (at least from that point of view) looked just like my childhood friend who used to live across the street from me.

I was a little bit confused as to why she would be on BYU campus, if memory served me she had grown up Jewish (which wouldn't keep her from going to BYU if she really wanted to) and was most likely as disinterested in attending a religious university as every other kid in my hometown. Not to mention she's a year older than I am and would have surely graduated by now. Regardless of the confusion, I did what any normal person would do in the situation, and walked right past her and tried to see if it was actually my friend while looking back as walking in the opposite direction.

Suddenly I was overcome by the feeling that I was being stupid and so I turned around to go fix this silliness I had gotten myself into. I hid and waited around in the plaza at the JFSB, spying on this girl on her phone, trying to remember if this was actually my friend or not. I soon started feeling pretty gross on the inside for creeping on her for so long (and gross on the outside for not having showered that day yet), so I told myself that I'd talk to her if she got off her phone in the next few minutes.

Sure enough, she got off her phone, so I manned up and walked towards her. Before I could even figure out what to say, she looked straight at me and smiled as if I had made her the happiest girl on earth (and I why wouldn't I? I am pretty awesome).

"Hi Scott!"

I wasn't quite ready for this reaction at all, and so I returned her greeting by freezing right in my tracks, mid step, one arm as obnoxiously in front of my body as the other was behind it, and stared. I am 80% confident that she was laughing at me on the inside and 100% confident that I looked like a tool. At least I was smiling back.

I then started to play the stupid game I always play where I pretend not to know someone as to not look creepy (even though I was convinced that this was my childhood friend).

"Uhh, uhhh.. Elena, right?"

She laughed, and shook her head, saying no as if I was just being silly. By then I had realized that I had no idea who this girl was but had somehow met her and she seemed to know me at least fairly well. This was even more bothersome to me, since I have a pretty good memory with people, especially when these people are cute girls who have long brown curly hair and are adorably shorter that I am.

"Well, I'm going this way," she said, pointing in a weird northeast direction that few students actually live at. It felt like she was implying that I walk with her, and I wanted to figure out how the heck I knew this girl, or at the very least, how she knew me.

She walked quickly, and so keeping up was pretty hard. She got on her phone again, looking quite focused as she walked and waited for the other person to answer. Then it hit me that we were already inside the Wilk and halfway down the stairs in the back towards the parking lot. She stopped and left a message on whoever's answering machine, mentioning her name in the message. It sounded like she said "Jenessa," or something close like that, though I definitely only knew one Jenessa and it definitely was not this girl. At least now I knew it started with a J.

We kept walking, she was fast and a few feet ahead, not paying heed to any of my questions. I had no idea where we were going, but she was cute and knew my name, so I didn't really care. She seemed to know every shortcut in the book. She cut through lawns and bushes, through alleys between campus buildings that I'd never been to, and she even squeezed herself through the bars of one of those fences-- you know, the kind that everyone with a childhood pretends are jail bars. I found myself cutting, stomping, and squeezing too, though that last fence was too small for me to fit through, even with a missing bar, so I stepped over it. I don't know why she didn't just step over it too.

At this point I was getting pretty frustrated with her, as she was always several steps ahead of me and wouldn't answer any of my questions, at least any that I asked when I wasn't focusing on where she was going or getting through her crazy obstacle course of shortcuts. Eventually, we ended up at this playground that looked exactly like the playground at the elementary school that I went to-- though not the awesome wood playground I had, the stupid plastic one they replaced it with. It was weird, it was an exact replica, complete with a soccer field to the left and a mini forest behind it, and an old, worn-out wood fence separating the playground from someone's backyard. This fence however wasn't as decrepit or covered in ivy as the one at home.

It was only after I had gotten this far that it hit me that she could have been trying to lose me this whole time. Fed up and annoyed with our little adventure I called out as she was walking,

"You know, if you just wanted to get rid of me, you could have just asked!"

She was about ten feet in front of me, and turned around that instant. She didn't look at me, but was looking with her eyes and her head at the air above me, as if something was there. At the moment I didn't think about how weird it was, because as she was staring over my head I was fixated on her eyes- they didn't look right. They were a whitish-yellow color instead of their normal brown.

The thought came to me that maybe she was blind and we were just following her memorized course home. That may account for all the weird shortcuts, maybe it felt safer to her and she wouldn't risk running into people or walking into traffic. My theory started to make sense, at least a little, until I remember that she recognized me by looking right at me. Even though unshowered Scott probably smells similar to childhood Scott, it probably wouldn't be enough for a blind person to recognize.

After a few seconds, she snapped out of her little trance and walked up to me. She giggled and looked at me, smiling as if to say thanks for putting up with her shenanigans. Her eyes were back to normal, so I dismissed my silly thoughts and walked with her behind the playground to the fence. I figured she either lived in the house behind the school, or she was just going to hop the fence and use the yard as a shortcut to wherever she was taking me.

She stood with her back to me, concentrating at the fence. I figured as long as she was still for a moment, I could gather at least some minimal information about who she was and how she knew me.

"Sooo, um, your name... is..."

"Jessica."

"Right, Jessica," I said. (And by right, I really meant, "You aren't any Jessica I know, who the heck are you.") "And uh, how do we know each other again? I don't... I don't really recall meeting you."

Jessica looked at me again and smiled, "Oh, that's not really important."

Her statement would have been a lot more confusing to me had I not witnessed something even stranger after she had said it. After talking, she looked right back at the fence and walked right into it. Right through the fence. She stood there on the other side in the yard, with her back still facing me.

"Wait, I said.. not important? WAIT, did you just walk through that fence?"

The fence was definitely solid, it didn't have any holes to squeeze through or under, but it wasn't tall enough to keep an adult from climbing over. She definitely made it past the fence, though I didn't see her climb. Were my eyes just playing tricks on me... was I just tired or something?

Before I could figure out what had just happened, Jessica giggled again. I kept staring at her from over the fence, she did not look back at me as she slowly walked towards the house. As she walked, she slowly levitated up into the air. Shocked, I kept staring. She floated forward and up, until she was nearly at the roof of the house. At that point she stopped moving, and faded like a bad movie effect from the 80's until she disappeared.

Needless to say, it was a very confusing morning. I didn't even get her number.









You're probably wondering what the crap you just read. It's a story I wrote based on a dream that I had this morning. The dream was confusing and weird, but since it had my focus from the moment it started, I figured it would make a good story. It's one of the more involved dreams I've ever had. So uh, hope you had fun :D