It was the first weekend after Christmas break. We were back in the dorms; finally away from our nagging parents, short term jobs, and boring hometowns. My roommate Kate was back at our room before I was, waiting on me as I drove the longest three hours of my life. I texted her when I parked and she came right out to meet me as I stumbled along with my entire luggage.
“Abby!” Kate screamed, running towards me. She hugged me, almost knocking me over. She was wearing her favorite jacket and cap with blue jeans and tennis shoes. Same old Kate.
I remembered when I first met Kate. It was move in day of freshman year when she first graced me with her presence. The first thing she said to me was: “Do you want some beef jerky?” After tossing her duffle bag on the floor, hopping on the bed, and kicking her shoes off, she told me how she liked college already. As I chewed on my beef jerky, I knew right then we would be best of friends.
That evening that we arrived back from break, we had a movie night. We bought sour gummy worms, Peanut MM’s and Sunny D; the perfect combination for a girl’s night. Although Kate ate half the bag of gummy worms before we got back to the dorm room, we still had plenty to munch on. We made a fort with sheets and hid underneath it while watching Beauty and the Beast. At the end of the movie while the credits were going, we listened to the music. “Celine Dion is a credits song whore,” Kate announced. “Her songs always play at the end of movies.” After that we watched the first three star wars movies before we went to bed and we gushed about how we wanted to looked like Natalie Portman during almost every scene. Afterwards we were in bed; Kate lay on the top bunk and I lay on the bottom.
“If I was Natalie Portman I could do whatever I want,” Kate said, as I was just about enter the dream world. “She’s so pretty and badass.”
I laughed. “How’s that?” I asked.
“If I was Natalie Portman I would know how to use a light saber,” she said.
A few days later when we were walking to the dining hall to eat lunch. Kate kept complaining of being hungry even though we were minutes away from the hall. “There’s a drought in my tummy!” She would say. Kate was always hungry. Our guy friends always accused her of being one of them. But I knew the truth. Kate was just blatantly honest. Some days, I wish I could be like her.
When Kate was hungry, she would mix up words. I used to think she could speak in different languages. But then I realized that she was just hungry. One time, when we were driving back from the recreation center she told me that she would, “take food over eating any day”. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant by that, but all I heard was food and when Kate said food, she was going to start speeding, and when Kate started speeding, that is when I started praying she wouldn’t see something shiny on the side of the road.
Another thing I love about Kate is studying with her. We would mark study dates on the calendar and just enjoy each other’s company while I wrote my papers, studied for tests, or answered discussion questions. Kate would sit in her chair telling me what she would do if she was Natalie Portman while drinking her Dr. Pepper. “If I was Natalie Portman, I would pee in urinals,” she said. Talking about urinals would remind Kate that Dr. Pepper runs right through you and then she would scurry to the bathroom. While she was gone I would wonder if she was pretending to be Natalie Portman. After all, there were urinals in the girl’s bathrooms in the dorms. It was then that I would usually receive a text from Kate; a lyric to whatever song was playing on the bathroom radio at that time.
One time, Kate, our friend Derek, and I were talking about our favorite beverages. “My favorite is lemonade,” I said. “I could drink it forever.”
“What about pink lemonade?” Kate asked.
“Any kind of lemonade,” I replied.
Kate nodded, understanding, and then paused. “You know, I always wondered how they made pink lemonade.”
“With pink lemons of course,” I said, jokingly.
“I’ve never seen a pink lemon.” Kate looked perplexed as she thought.
Derek and I laughed. “They grow on pink lemon farms silly,” I told her.
“Oh!” Kate looked as if she had an epiphany. “That’s why!” She never realized why Derek and I were laughing so hard.
“My favorite is definitely root beer,” said Derek. “You can drink it by itself or you can put ice cream in it and make a root beer float. What could be better than that?”
“Dr. Pepper is better,” Kate said. “Dr. Pepper is God’s gift to us. He put the twenty three flavors on a table and said ‘put them together and you’ll get the godliest soda ever made’. When Moses finally listened to what God said, about three billion years ago, the children of God no longer suffered and here we are today with Dr. Pepper.”
“That’s pretty good logic,” Derek admitted. “But what happened after the flood and everyone died? No one could hand down the recipe.”
“You know what,” Kate said. “I used to think about that too. But then my grandpa told me that of course Noah knew it. He was Moses’ brother. Brothers tell each other everything.”
“I guess you’re right, I tell my brother everything too,” Derek said. “Or I beat it out of him.”
I didn’t have much to add to their conversation. My grandpa never told me Bible stories like Kate’s grandpa did.
The next weekend while Kate was visiting her grandparents, I started planning a campus wide hide and seek game with some friends for later that week. It was going to be legit. I couldn’t wait for Kate to come back so I could tell her the plan. But Derek must have gotten to her first.
Kate returned late Sunday night so Monday morning when she awoke she confronted me. “So when are we going on this manhunt?” she asked me excitedly.
“Do you mean hide and seek? Or do you want me to help you search for a man.” I winked at her jokingly.
“I thought I would call it a manhunt so it would sound more epic.”
“I know. I know.” I laughed. “I was just kidding with you. I knew what you meant. And, you don’t need a man.”
“No I don’t need one,” Kate said. “I just want someone to buy me food.” Before I could reply she went to the bathroom to take a shower. Ten minutes later I could hear her down the hall singing Shania Twain. “You're still the one I run to/ The one that I belong to/You're the one I want for life.” The looks from the girls coming out of the bathroom were priceless.
Later that day after class we watched our favorite team of college basketball. The game started off well and our man Markieff Morris was having a good game. “Man he is on fire!” Kate gazed at the television, her eyes following the screen.
“I wonder how tall he is,” I said. I took out my laptop and began googling different players. “Markieff is six feet and ten inches.”
“Six foot ten?!” Kate exclaimed. “I want to cuddle with that!”
The game was tight and our team was beginning to fall behind. “Make your flipping free throws Kansas!” Kate screamed at the television. “My grandpa can make that shot!”
“Get those rebounds you lazy bums!” I yelled. “Hustle!”
By the end of the night our voices were shot, our attitudes were down, and our stress levels were up. “I want to punch Bill Self in his uterus,” Kate said.
We lay in bed wide awake that night. We couldn’t sleep. After an hour of the television show Lost and a good many peanut mm’s, we had almost gotten the game off of our minds.
I knew Kate was tired when she started talking about Natalie Portman again. “If a genie asked me what I wanted for my wish, I would say I wanted to switch place with Natalie Portman for a day.” I was scared after that. Sometimes I think that Kate really believes she is Natalie Portman.
The next morning we were getting ready for class. Kate told me it was a new day and that I should be happy and think about what I would do if I was Natalie Portman. It actually helped a little to think about that. While I was eating my cereal that morning, Kate was looking at her outfit in the mirror. “You know when I put this belt on this morning, I felt ten times more badass than usual.”
