My first year in college stays in my memory like a beautiful dream. I drift and flow between each moment in my memory, forgetting how I got there. Faces pass through me like past pages of a book. Each with their own story, but ultimately romanticized with the distorted bits of nostalgia. A graceful echo.

I always think of my first day at my dorm as my first day as an adult. There’s a picture in my memory. I stand in the doorway and look down through my dorm room to see a kid with glasses by the lower bunk. His arms are skinny to the point where you could see the bumps and dents in his bones. And his face is dry and frozen like he’s just gotten out of the morgue.

And later at night, he cried.

          “What the hell can I do?!”

I remember pretending to be asleep. Too scared to act upon it. Yet I felt a feeling of hope deep in my gut. Maybe I hoped he would wake me up and we would stay up together watching TV and drinking diet coke. But I didn’t unfold. I laid in my bed, listening to the helpless groans and frustrations below me. And I laid completely still.

In the morning, I woke him up from his deep slumber. And just from his shocked waking eyes, I could tell he was a lonely, frightened-whipped kid.

But what about me? I was too scared to lend any comfort. And the more I thought about him, all I could do was hope he would become something bigger. Rich and clever after college to where everyone would want to be around him. So that he could no longer be somber in his sleep.

But that was merely wishful thinking.

A month later, I’d awaken to find my room more spacious than ever. There was no computer on the table. The stack of textbooks next to the window wasn’t there. The fragrance of peppermint shampoo that I would wake up to every morning was missing. And my roommate’s bed was empty. 

He was gone.

The question of where he went could not leave my mind that day. Even in my debate class, the thought still lingered. And it wasn’t until my debate club session came that the question finally left my mind.

My debate partner had approached me. His haircut is what first comes to my mind at the mention of him. He had a strange hairdo, with long curly hair going down the right side of his head, while his left side was cut short. 

“There’s a party this Saturday. Wanna come?” 

Those were his first words said to me that were not related to debate.

“Sure,” I answered.

“Go to the lounge nearest to your room. And from there, you’ll go to the spot. The spot of the party.”

“And where’s that?”

“That’s the fun of it. You’ll see.”

And so, I arrived at the lounge precisely at 1 a.m. to find it almost empty. 

           There was only a girl laid over on one of the couches with a book in her hand. She had a violet earring only on one ear and luscious brown hair that stopped at her shoulders.

When she finally noticed me, she didn’t say a word. All she did was stare at me. And I stared at her. She had an examining look in her glance that she failed to hide. But also, a look that seemed like she was about to break into a smile.

“Are you here for the party?” she politely asked me.

“Yeah.”

“You must be wondering where everyone is.”

“I was hoping that you would know.”

“Not the slightest.”

That wasn’t comforting. And this all being a prank was the most likely reason for me. But I didn’t know about the girl.

“Who told you about the party?” I asked.

“My friend.” She answered.

“Your friend doesn’t happen to have funny-looking hair, does he?”

The girl thought about it for a moment.

“No. I don’t suppose so,” she said, “I guess that leaves us in some mystery.” 

I’d had enough mysteries...

“If it’s okay with you, I’d like to figure this out instead of asking my friend next class. It’s more fun that way. In one night,” she continued. “Why don’t you come with me?”

And we walked through the university. Through deep hallways and small parks. We checked classrooms and swept through the cafeterias. But I was distracted by the smell in the girl’s hair. It seemed to waft in front of me as I walked by her, teasing me with its heavy smell.

Lemon and Sandalwood. That’s what it smells like. And not the cheap citric acid perfume you can find at Walgreens. No, it smelled like a fresh batch of lemons grabbed from a blossoming tree on the eve of spring. 

The eve of spring.

It must have been 2:30 a.m. when she finally sat down.

“This is a large campus,” she muttered, “I doubt we’ve even explored halfway through.”

She had rich blue eyes.

“Do you think there are others in our situation?” she asked.

Rich blue eyes. And she rarely blinked, so I found myself falling into her iris and down into her dark pupils.

“We didn’t bump into anyone,” I answered.

I followed her eyes closely. Rich blue is a marveling color. And her eyes were like jewels.

“That’s frustrating. I hope this isn’t just some prank,” she moaned, “That would just be so disappointing...”

No, not jewels. Like water…Her blue eyes were like a rich running river.

“The river,” I blurted, “Why don’t we check by the river?” And so, we headed to the river. 

On the way, I couldn’t help, but finally ask her, “Did you lose an earring?”

“No,” she answered. “It’s more noticeable when it’s out of place. One earring instead of two.” And with that, she hopped in front and picked up her pace to the river.

First, I heard a faint sound in the distance that soon was made clear to be a song. An older pop song that I wasn’t really into, but everyone else seemed to love that went with a repetitive chorus throughout.

As the song got louder, I wasn’t surprised to see a group of excited classmates down by the river. This was the spot. As we made our way down, the girl rushed to her friends. I saw my funny-haired debate partner and had a talk with him. I was disappointed to find my night odyssey with the violet earring girl over. But as I talked with my friend, I caught her smile from across the dock.

“A nice night,” I said to my debate partner.

“What?” he replied. It was hard to hear everything over the loud music.

“It’s a nice night.”

“I beg your pardon?”

I lost my patience and skipped to my question.

“Why are we here?” I yelled at him.

“It’s a party!”

“At a river dock...”

“I didn’t see you at any of the parties. They’re really great and I felt a little bad, so I invited you to this one.”

“You felt bad?!” I abruptly responded.

But he didn’t say anything back. Instead, he called me over to introduce me to some of his dorm friends. Most of them were football players that seemed really interested in me. So interested, that I thought that maybe they were making fun of me.

I still have no idea of their intent.

When I finished talking with them all, I noticed the girl had left. And I too was ready to leave when I suddenly bumped heads with someone. We groaned and apologized to each other until we locked eyes. 

It was my roommate. My disappeared roommate. And that launched my mind into another deep confusion.

It’s nighttime. I’m at university by a river. There’s a party. It’s nighttime. It’s nighttime...

And that’s all I can recall before passing out a few minutes later. 

I remember waking up around 5 a.m. to an empty peer, surrounded by beer bottles and soda cans. I remember the silent walk to my vacant dorm room with a Diet Coke in my hand. And I remember sitting on my bed, staring at my wall for half an hour, questions running through my mind.

Did I even drink anything? Why was I just left there? Where did everybody go?

As the school year went by, I found myself wandering through the school and seeing familiar faces. Faces of those at that party by the river. That seemed to almost glow in the upheaving darkness of the night. 

I would walk through crowds and suddenly catch a glimpse of my old roommate. And then, I would go on with questions. Why did he leave? Did I do something wrong?

The girl with the one earring and my funny-haired debate partner, on the other hand, became good friends of mine throughout that year. But whenever I spoke with anyone about the party, all they would talk about was the subject of mystery and that they were told the same as me.

“Oh yeah,” the one-earring girl would say. “I don’t wanna make sense of it. I’ll forget about it if I do.”

“I, on the other hand, wouldn’t mind forgetting all about it,” my debate partner spoke up. I remember the girl’s eyes always turning to him like a flicker of light when he spoke.

“I don’t like to say this, but it’s hard to move forward when there’s a weighing thought pulling you back,” he gulped down his beer. “That night will never make any sense to you and that’s the most sense you’ll ever make of it. Think of it that way and it’ll do your conscience a favor.” 

And that’s the most we spoke of it.

On the first day of the year’s summer, our class went kayaking in a faraway river and I had to pick between my funny-haired debate partner or the one-earring girl as a kayaking partner. But before I could make a decision, the one-earring girl had picked someone else.

“I kinda feel bad for him,” she whispered closely into my ear. “I don’t think anyone else will go with him unless I do.”

And I watched her walk to a frail-looking boy in the back. A boy, whom I soon realized was my old roommate. 

That day, the tide was against our direction, which made the trip much more challenging. But, with two people in a kayak, the way there was manageable. I remember keeping watch of my one-earring friend and my old roommate, who moved at the same speed right next to us.

As the wind grew heavier, so did the tide. Until suddenly, my kayaking partner gave up and jumped out. And with him, so did the one-earring girl close to us. Leaving my old roommate and me alone in each other’s boat. We both stood there, in the front of the kayaks like mirror images. I looked at him, waiting to get his attention. But then, he jumped into the water too.

I called out to him, and finally, he saw me.

“We were roommates. You remember me, right?” I asked him as he swam to me.

“Yeah. I remember,” he answered.

“You--you left so suddenly,” I soon realized I had no idea how to flow smoothly into my next question and it came out dry. “Why’d you leave?” 

The boy looked at me for a moment. Like he was trying to understand the reason for a sudden question like that.

“I left because I had an opportunity to. Because I wanted to feel like I was living with someone.” And with the blunt answer, he immediately swam off to join in with my friends. 

They were all clearly having a blast.  I could hear the excited squeals let out with the sound of ceaseless splashing. Jumping and pulling each other down into the water.

I watched them, as I was too afraid to jump into the water. And soon I came up with a realization. My dear friends had forgotten about everything. They forgot they were swimming in their regular clothes. They forgot they were in the middle of a river. The night of the party must have already been long gone from their minds. 

Every second, the tide got stronger and stronger, pushing me back farther from my friends. I took out my paddle and tried to go against it, but I was too tired. Too weak. And I sat there helplessly as it pushed me away from everyone. I called out, but no one called back. All I could do was sit there and watch as they had their moment of freedom. 

And I watched as I drifted away...