It would have been a lot faster to drive to Middletown, but my parents didn’t think I had enough highway experience, so I had to take a train to Penn Station, a cab to Grand Central, and then another train to New Haven. Clem borrowed a car from a friend and met me at the station.
We hadn’t seen each other in person for six months, and I was a little scared when I entered the terminal, like maybe the magic would be gone, and we wouldn’t know what to say to each other, or how to act. But then I spotted them—they were standing by the benches, holding a bouquet of flowers, with the sweetest crooked smile on their face—and we didn’t even say hello. We just started making out right there, in front of all those people, and that kind of set the tone for the whole weekend.
Nate Cleary
I haven’t seen a lot of famous people in real life. I was with my dad once in New York City—I was maybe ten years old—and he stopped in his tracks, spun around, and said, Holy shit, that’s Annette Bening! I could tell it was a big deal, though I’d never even heard the name before. A few years after that, I spotted Vince Vaughn in an airport; he was just standing there, talking on the phone. He was hard to miss, because he’s really tall. On a school trip to DC my junior year, I had to step aside to make way for Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who was exiting the men’s room at a rest area on the New Jersey Turnpike. That was the weirdest, because I couldn’t help thinking that if I’d gotten there a minute earlier, I might’ve found myself standing next to Dr. Gupta at a urinal, though I guess it’s possible that he uses a stall for privacy, even when he pees. That’s what I would do if I ever became famous.
My point is this: it takes a second or two before you realize you’re looking at a celebrity. At first, it just feels normal, like, Hey, I know you, but then you’re like, Wait, do I? And then it hits you, this delayed jolt of adrenaline that tells you something special just occurred, something you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
That’s what happened to me in Starbucks. It was a Tuesday night, and there were maybe like ten people in there, including a blond girl working on a laptop. I gave her a quick glance as I headed towards the counter, and then I stopped in my tracks and looked again.
Holy shit, I thought. That’s Kelly Harbaugh!
Lily Chu
I liked what I saw of Wesleyan, though I didn’t see as much of it as I probably should have. Mostly we stayed in Clem’s room, tangled together on that skinny little bed, though we did go to the dining hall for Saturday brunch, and to an off-campus party that night. They introduced me to some of their friends—This is my girlfriend, Lily—and we danced for a little while, but we decided to skip out early, because the weekend was flying by so fast and we wanted to make the most of every single minute.
We stayed up talking the whole night, filling in the details of our life stories, every little thing we could think of. It was so amazing to be reunited—to be able to kiss them again, to feel their arms around me, to run my hand over their stubbly hair—but it was sad too, because our time was almost up, and we were just getting started.
“This is too good,” Clem told me. “I don’t want to go back to FaceTime.”
“Me neither.”
“When can you visit again?”
“Probably not for a while. My mom’s already suspicious.”
Clem knew I needed to keep our relationship a secret. They’d been in the exact same position when they were my age.
“Maybe I could visit you,” they said. “Over my spring break. I could come for a whole week if you want.”
“Oh God,” I said. “That would be so weird.”
“We don’t have to sleep in the same bed or anything. We can just say we’re friends.”
I wanted them to visit, to show them around Green Meadow, to hold hands and make out in Monroe Park. But I couldn’t quite imagine Clem and my parents under the same roof.
“They think you’re a girl named Amelia,” I said.
“That’s okay,” they told me. “My parents think the exact same thing.”
Nate Cleary
I had to walk right past Kelly to get to my table.
“Nate?” she said. “Is that you?”
I did that little dance where you stop short and blink a couple of times, and pretend you didn’t recognize the person.
“Oh, wow. Kelly. Hey. How’s it going?”
“Not bad.” She bobbed her head from side to side. “I’m taking some time off from school. Just moved back home with my parents. What are you, a senior now?”
“Yeah. It’s my last semester.”
“Fun times.”
“I wish. I don’t know where I’m going to college, and I’m way behind on my thesis. It’s pretty stressful.”
She was dressed super casual—Uggs, plaid pajama pants, a big Rutgers hoodie—but she had a full coat of makeup on her face, and pink polish on her fingernails.
“You need to chill,” she said. “You were always kind of a worrier. Even back in summer camp.”
“You remember that?”
“How could I forget? We were the chicken fight champs.” She nodded at the empty chair across from her. “Wanna sit down?”
It felt a little unreal, as if Vince Vaughn had invited me to hang out with him in the first-class lounge.
“You sure?”
She gave me a look, like, Don’t be a weirdo, dude.
So I sat and we started talking about people we knew, the colleges I applied to, stuff like that. I’d always thought of her as so much older than me, so much more together, but it didn’t feel that way anymore. It felt like we were pretty much in the same place in our lives—stuck in Green Meadow, waiting for the next thing to happen—except I also knew that we weren’t, and finally I couldn’t help myself.
“Just so you know,” I said. “I’m a big fan of your videos.”
She was surprised that I even knew about them—I didn’t look like someone who watched a lot of makeup tutorials—so I had to explain the whole Hall of Fame thing: Kyle, the Committee, Vito Falcone, Front Desk Diane. It was all news to her. She didn’t even know she’d been nominated, and was deeply relieved to hear that she hadn’t been chosen. When I asked why, she looked at me like I was a fool.
“Do you ever read the comments?”
“Some of them,” I said. “People really like you.”
“There are so many creeps out there.” She hunched her shoulders and gave a little shudder of disgust. “Soooo many creeps. I don’t want them to know my real name. I don’t want them coming to my house.”
For a second or two, I thought about mentioning that I’d voted against her, like maybe she’d be grateful for that, or think it was funny, but then I reconsidered. There was no point in dredging up the past, confessing to a stupid grudge I’d been holding since freshman year. That was a long time ago. We were both different people now.
“I don’t care about the makeup,” I said. “I just like the way you whisper. And that thing you do with your fingernails. That’s pretty cool too.”
“This?” She did a little TapTapTap for me on the tabletop. “That’s my signature.”