party.”
“What does that amount to in your family’s language?” he asked.
“It means… I guess we better start planning!”
He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me clear off my feet, right there in the middle of the crowded sidewalk!
Ten minutes later we were back at the coffee shop.
“Okay, when is inspection?” he asked.
“The day after tomorrow.”
“Are you packed up?”
“No!”
“You better start packing.”
“I need boxes. It’s amazing how much stuff one person can accumulate in one semester!”
“What are you going to do with it after you pack it up? You’re not going home.”
“Oh shoot! I forgot!”
“My stuff fits in my car. If it doesn’t, I send a box on ahead and catch up with it later.”
“I think my mom would freak if my belongings landed on the doorstep via UPS.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know!”
“How much money do you have?”
“Maybe a couple hundred.”
“We could rent a storage space for the summer. If your stuff fits in your car and my stuff fits in my car then one storage unit ought to hold all of it.”
“What about the car?”
He frowned. Maybe we hadn’t quite thought this out enough.
“Well, we have to crawl before we can walk. So let’s crawl down to the store and get some boxes. We’ll pack up and research storage units.”
“What’s going on?” asked my roommate, Sarah Culverson.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Something’s different about you. You’re trying not to smile. You’re humming as you pack!”
“I’m just glad to have finals over,” I said.
“You’ve never been happy enough to suppress grins and hum before.”
“Then maybe I need to get out more.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Is your family going on a vacation together?”
“No, but my mom has a big party planned for Meredith’s birthday.”
“That’s so cool that your parents celebrate your Sweet Sixteen.”
“I guess.”
She huffed, frustrated that she was being left out of something that meant more to me than school ending or my sister’s birthday.
“Hey!” I said. “How did you get through the semester without getting a nick name from Twiggy?”
“I refused,” she said. “He tried to nick name me Pluto and I said, ‘no way!’ Then I just didn’t respond unless he called me Sarah.”
“You could have chosen what you want him to call you,” I suggested.
“I wanted to be called Sarah.”
Maybe Sarah was my parent’s kid and not me.
“Why did he choose Pluto?” I asked.
“Because I used to wear my hair in a French braid around the side of my head and he thought it stuck out like Pluto’s ears.”
I tried to remember, but I couldn’t recall how Sarah wore her hair at the beginning of the semester. I did agree that Pluto was a lousy nick name.
She got up and walked over to me. “So spit it out,” she said. “What are you so happy about?”
“You really want to know?”
“Naaaahhh, I keep asking you because I don’t want to know.”
“I’m going on a geocaching road trip with Twiggy!” I said. I couldn’t help but smile. I was going on a road trip!
“With a guy??” Sarah said.
“He’s not a guy. He’s my best friend!”
“Just in case you didn’t notice,” she said a bit sarcastically. “Twiggy… Ooo I hate nicknames. Tony is very much male. He walks like a guy. He talks like a guy. He drinks beer like a guy. He reacts to you like a guy.”
“He does?”
“Yes, he does, and do you know what males think about when they go on a road trip with a female?”
“Geocaching?”
“Sex!”
“Twiggy respects me enough to know we are just friends.”
“You… are… blind. Or ignorant.”
“Okay! I think it’ll be fun. He’ll teach me all about geocaching. I will double my find count! Wow, can you imagine? Twenty finds!”
“How many does Tony have?”
“Last time I looked he had over two thousand.”
“And you think twenty is a lot?”
“He’s been geocaching for years. I’ve only been doing it for one busy semester.”
“Wow,” Sarah said. “I thought you were going to get married at forty and never have kids and travel the world with your rich husband and now it looks like you’re here for your MRS degree!”
“I’m going geocaching! With a friend! I am not getting married. I am not having sex. I admit I don’t really want to wait until I’m forty to get married but I am not interested in Twiggy. We’re just friends who enjoy the same hobby.”
“And developing new ones all the time,” she muttered.
The next morning my cell phone blipped and I looked at the caller ID. Twiggy!
“Hey! I did it. I found a storage unit where the first month is free! We have to sign up for three months but if we split the cost I think we can do it.”
“Cool! I’m almost packed!”
“Remember you need hiking shoes. Remember your jacket.”
“It’s
