The Restoration of All Things (Part 27)

The next day was Friday. I didn't lie to Azalea, I really was going to visit Grey, but she canceled plans with me because she had some pressing things to attend to.

This meant that my Friday guitar lesson was going to go forth as planned. There was no need to cancel with Joseph.

I met him under the tree with my guitar and we went to his room. Hadn't been there in a while.

I had a few new chords thoroughly memorized, and he was proud of me.

Honestly, though, with our powers of A.D.D. combined, it wasn't 45 minutes before we were distracted from the lesson. First it was with an episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Next, he had a puzzle game that he just had to show me. Usually I hate board games, but this one was so different and fun! We played through it three or four times and then he asked me if I wanted to go outside. Joseph was the sort that started feeling claustrophobic if he stayed in for too long.

We went for a walk. I asked him where we were going and he said he didn't know. He asked if there was anywhere I'd like to go?

I thought for a moment.

I knew! Across the street from the campus there was a fancy building called the Center for the Advancement of Teaching or something to that effect. It sat on a piece of land with manicured lawns, a pond with a dock, and elaborate gardens. One of the gardens had a tree-house in it!  Okay, technically it wasn't really a tree-house. It was more like a really cool gazebo on stilts that sat in a grove of trees in the middle of a flower garden.

Behind the gardens there was a forest that I had heard a little personal airplane had crashed in years and years ago. I suggested we try to go find it.

We crossed the long walking bridge over the highway and stepped in to purchase snacks and chocolate milk at a gas station. Joseph was telling me how much he appreciated me for introducing him to contra and to my church. He said that he could already tell they were both becoming life changing things for him.

Half an hour or so of searching through the woods and we found the plane crash. It was a place shrouded in mystery to us. Surely somebody knew why the crash happened, if the pilot had made it out alive or, I shuddered, or not, if there had been a passenger, who they were and where they came from. Somebody knew all the facts, but we sure didn't.

As much as we felt as though we were standing on some version of hallowed ground, it was still clear that this crash site would be cooler if it included the presence of some sort of letter of long lost love.

We knew what we had to do.

I got into my purse and tore a page from my journal, thankful that I always carried a pen. Joseph and I sat in the leaves and concocted the sort of love letter that legends are made of. Satisfied with our eloquence and genius, we found a wine bottle (the site was littered with empty alcohol containers, making it evident that we were not the first college kids to find this wreckage), rolled the letter up, and gently pushed it into the neck of the bottle.

Joseph wanted to visit the tree-house next. Tree-houses are conducive to heart to heart talks, so we had several of those before migrating down to the dock to see if we could see any snapping turtles.

As it turns out, docks are also conducive to heart to heart conversations.

We stayed until we noticed flashlight beams mixed in with the other twinkling lights reflecting from the pond's water. COPS!

I had never actually run from the cops before, but it had become suddenly and abundantly clear that the Center for Education whatever whatever's gardens were not open for students to hang around in at night.

That is how Joseph and I found ourselves fleeing from the fuzz.

We were equally astonished when we made it back to campus that we had lost them.

Joseph walked me back to my dorm and said goodbye.

When I climbed up onto my top bunk that night, I realized what time it was. Joseph and I had hung out for 11 hours.

11 hours?!

That's a bit excessive if he has a girlfriend, I thought to myself as I dozed off.

(Continued here)