I'm guessing that moving is no one's favorite thing to do. I probably hate it as much as the next person, except I've done it about ten times so far. Every time, it's packing up boxes, throwing out things you didn't even know you had, and starting everything over again. People think that means starting relationships or getting used to a new house, and it does; but it also means re-acclimating to little things. Things like what your neighborhood looks like on a dark night, memorizing when shops are open in town, where the heck you put your front door key when you tossed it into your room...
Try doing that twice in one year. The moment you start feeling comfortable, you have to leave everything behind, again.
I don't care about today, which is what seems like my billionth first day of classes. I don't care about the a capella auditions poster on my door, or the kid running for house council president down the hall, or the weird look my RA gave me when I exited my room in pajamas. I just want to get through today.
I slam my door and shuffle down the stairs toward mob of college students trying to get to their first class. It's an agonizing process to get anywhere, but eventually the amoeba of people spits me out in front of my classroom. I walk in and sit in the back left corner. The professor starts to drone about the class syllabus moments later, and I stare blankly at the open expanse of finished wood in front of me, not thinking. I pull out a pencil and touch it to the surface of the desk, writing:
"Hi. I'm Zachary."
The class ends. A bustle of students head down the hall in a frenzy to go elsewhere. It seems an endless cycle at this point. Get up, go to class, leave, go home, and sleep. Get up, go to class, sit. The desk has another line of writing on it, in the same pencil as mine. But the handwriting has curvy t's and connected letters. It's elegant.
"Hi. I'm Emily," it reads. I smile and pull my pencil out of my bag, entirely disregarding the lesson.
"How are you?"
The next days, weeks, and a couple of months pass. The desk is covered in scribbles and arrows, drawings and smudges, where we erased bits of the conversation so we could write new ones.
"What's your favorite color, Emily?" A snippet of a message trails toward the top left corner of the beaten wood.
"It's turquoise," was spelled out next to my question the following day. "Yours?"
"Red."
"Semester ends next week, you know," she had written it over my last answer.
I erased a small patch in the corner of the desk and attached an arrow from the last message;
"Outside this classroom, eight A.M. sharp, tomorrow. I'll see you before class." It had a sense of finality. My stomach turned at the thought that after a total of 13 weeks, I would be meeting a person who had only ever been handwriting.
I got up and walked out of the class, not caring what other people were doing or saying until a person I hadn't noticed accidentally knocked my papers to the floor. I shook my head in exasperation and started to kneel to pick them up, when a girl with dark brown hair, a small smile, and blue eyes knelt next to me, helping me.
"Thanks."
"No problem," She holds out her hand for a handshake, "I'm Emily."
