What Happens When You're Hopeful

In Advanced Expository Writing last spring, I was supposed to write a life-lesson narrative. I showed my professor this, and he was like, "This is a highly entertaining non-life-lesson." "Shit." So I had to write another story, which I got an A on, of course :)

What Happens When You're Hopeful
February 1, 2007

“Turn around!” Emma yelled from the back seat. “Do it, Sam. Do it!”
“No, no, no!” I squealed excitedly. “Sam, don’t you dare!”
“I’m gonna do it,” Sam said, warning us. The two hot guys from the ice cream shop were walking down a sidewalk on the opposite side of the road, strutting like freshmen and not wearing shirts. Sam looked both ways, then abruptly pulled her giant red pick-up in a U-y, checking herself out in the rearview mirror as she did this.
We all stopped yelling (except for Kayla, who had been giggling at us the whole time) and tried to act cool as we drove by the boys (except for Kayla, who was still giggling). The guys had clearly noticed us too, since they both did a little head-nod our way when we passed.
“Ohmygod, they so checked us out,” I said after we were out of their sight.
“I told you guys,” Sam said smugly. “They want us. We need to pull over.” Sam was the most obviously, well, slutty of The Hardcore Four. She was the type that pretended she didn’t want another relationship, and acted like guys didn’t affect her much, but we all knew she desperately wanted something more than a fling with a guy she really cared about.
“No way, Sam. We are not going to meet those guys. That’s crazy,” said Emma. But Sam pulled another U-y and we were once again headed back towards the shirtless guys. This wasn’t like us to pick up random guys. But…it was summer, we were looking for adventure, and we were never going to see them again anyways, so what the hell.
They stopped walking when they saw us, and Sam pulled over the truck. We were parked on the opposite side of the road from them, but it wasn’t a big deal. They waited until a car went by, then walked across the busy street to meet some chicks in this random-ass vacation town they were in. The tall one came to my window, and the stoned-looking one went to Sam’s.
“’Sup? I’m Garrett,” the tall one said to me. He was sooo cute. Tall, dark, and tan. The four of us girls introduced ourselves.
The guy at Sam’s window- I want to call him Jason, but that might be wrong- was like, “Dude, I am never going to remember your names.”
“He’s been drunk since like ten in the morning,” Garrett explained. At this point the sun was going down. “But yeah, what are you girls up to tonight?”
“We don’t have any plans, do you?” I replied. This wasn’t so scary, meeting random guys.
“Nah, you should give us a call. We’ll chill,” Garrett said. I put his phone number into my cell, and the guys left with a “Peace.” After we watched them walk across the street, I was quick to yell “Dibs on Garrett!”
“You can’t call dibs on him, we all want him!” Sam whined.
“Okay, fine. Then none of us can have him,” I established. “Deal?”
“Deal,” they all agreed.
Sam drove us back to my cabin while we all chattered excitedly about actually doing something that brave. Back at Toothacres (all the cabins around us have nicknames; mine was named after my great-grandfather, a famous dentist), we said hi to Grandma and went upstairs to The Kid Room, a huge bedroom with colorful bunkbeds and room for seven.
Exhilerated by our accomplishment and unsure of whether the boys would really
call, we spent the next couple hours doing each other’s make-up and picking out cute clothes to wear. We ignored the obvious problem: there were two of them and four of us. Finally, they called, or maybe we called them, but what matters is we agreed to meet them in town so they could find the way to my cabin. We mumbled an excuse to Grandma about getting some medicine for Sam, then sprinted out to the truck and drove to town.
When we found the boys and brought them back over, I didn’t feel like explaining to Grandma that we’d brought boys over, so we snuck them down to the beach. “Let’s go swimming,” Sam suggested to Garrett and no one else. He agreed and they both stripped down to their underwear and jumped in the lake. Soon they were sitting on the diving platform about a hundred yards away. Surprise, surprise.
Back at the end of the dock, Jason laid on his back while Emma and I rested our heads on his strong arms and Kayla sat close by. We looked at the stars and life was perfect. Jason was a really cool guy to talk to. It turns out he and Garrett were a grade below us and went to a high school in the same district as ours. It was totally random that they lived ten minutes away from us, and yet we had met hours north of home. We learned about his past relationships and we all laughed when none of us knew any constellations, besides the Big Dipper of course. Duh, anyone knows how to find that one.
“God, they’ve been out there a long time,” I said after a while. “You think they’re making-out yet?”
“I don’t know, shh…” Jason said. We listened carefully.
“Whoa, they’re still talking,” Kayla said incredulously.
“She so wants Garrett,” Emma confided to Jason. I felt a pang of sympathy for my vulnerable friend out there on the platform. She was obviously going for the relationship, rather than the one-time make-out session at the lake. Stupid, stupid girl. They weren’t really into us, they just didn’t have any other plans for the night.
After we started getting bored with the stars, Garrett and Sam climbed back up on the dock smiling and shivering violently. We headed up to the hot tub, where we were loud enough to wake Grandma up. She came outside and asked, “Sarah, who’s out here?”
I leaped from the hot tub and ran over to Grandma. “Uh, it’s just us…” I said. “And the boys.” I quickly explained who the boys were and Grandma told me they had to leave now. About an hour and a half later, they left, and only one of us was expecting to see them again.
Maybe two days later, Sam decided she couldn’t handle not hearing from Garrett any longer. She sent him a text message, the universal “I’m too nervous to actually call him” solution. I acted confused and indignant when she later related the story to me, her eyes full of hurt, but inside I wasn’t surprised a bit. Apparently, when he got her text and realized that chick from the lake actually wanted to hang out again, Garrett replied with an “I lied to you girls. We don’t really live in Champlin. We live in Wisconsin.” Now, if they were from Wisconsin, how would they have known that Champlin is right by Andover? It was freakin’ ridiculous. He had pulled the sloppiest move ever to get out of hanging out with Sam again. I hated him for being yet another disappointing guy to my friend, but I had to admit, she asked for it.
Yet revenge is sweet. Half a year after we met the shirtless guys, I still have
Garrett’s number in my phone. I‘ll send him a text, and when he doesn’t know who it is, he’s absolutely tortured by it. “Who is this?” he always asks. I never reply. [1278 words]