Emmy
Life is too short.
It was Rochester. It was the last week of August 2003. I was young. I had just moved from Kalamazoo, Michigan to Indiana, Pennsylvania with my parents over the summer. Left behind friends, teammates, high school crushes, and old personalities for a new life called Freshman Year.
There was this corny event for freshmen... a "First Year Leadership" blah blah blah junk that only over-acheiving losers would even consider attending at an expensive private school full of Ivy League rejects and aspiring folks who never stood a chance to get into a top 25 school.
One year later, we would be called the New Ivy Leaguers. But who cares? We were all young. It was freshman orientation. And here I was, listening to this old pompous dean speak about how lucky we were to be a part of something as great as this university and how much we should contribute to it. But as far as I was concerned, the only thing I wanted to contribute to was a heck of a good time in college.
After the event, we all received a stupid certificate for attending. On my way out, I managed to strike a conversation with a short little asian girl. She's interesting, smart, and lives on the same floor of the same dorm as me.
I don't know what sparked our friendship. After all this time, nothing about my freshman year of college makes any sense. I defiantly wasn't as smart as she was, as aspiring or ambitious, or as good looking. I was just this interesting black guy from Michigan trying to act cool. She was this Vietnamese girl from California, who wasn't "Asian Asian" enough... I guess there's two types of Asians on campus: the American Asians who date white guys and wear normal clothes and the Asian Asians who you don't know anything about unless you're American Asian or Asian Asian.
But that was good enough for us.
She made things seem so easy, but I knew it wasn't because I knew she worked harder than all of us. But she never complained. Haha. That's not true, she complained a lot, but got over it. We used to talk about stupid stuff. She would talk about her one "boyfriend" in high school and I would talk about my one "girlfriend". She'd talk about school and home and family and problems and everything young girls always talk about.
But at the same time, she was so organized. She had a ridiculous work habit. She would organize her homework with color codes and her classes in folders. Nobody does that... well, except for over-acheving girls, I guess.
But you'd never know it behind the high heel shoes that click-clack everywhere she went, the California girl skirts and sweaters and sun glasses and hats and everything. The girl who wanted to drive a pink VW Beetle. Perhaps a real life medical student version of legally blond. Behind the makeup, the shopping sprees, the joyful attitude, the social life, the happiness that was everything about her...
You'd never know she was a geek-to-the-core (I tell you) unless you interrupted her studying hours or met her in class... or if she was your TA!
Then, you'd understand why she achieves so much in life. The girl is intelligent. She was always Ivy League status... somebody just f**ked up and didn't recognize her skills. She was never shy about her intelligence or about the need to be. In fact, she was ultimately candid about it:
You really smart, Emmy. You just gotta work a little harder, you know.
She'd say after I nearly scrapped by with a 3.0 average my first semester. We both cried about our grades. Although she scored much higher than I did, while taking much tougher classes. She gave us all nicknames. There was the famous Marky-Warky. And the list could go on. Emmy was mine.
She was the best of us. The center of our attention. She was the center of a lot of people's attention. A lot of guys wanted a piece of her. She's a pretty girl. But she was way too good for them. I mean, she was too smart, too achieving, too ambitious, and really... too damn real.
Perhaps, somewhere inside us, some reason why we were all good friends is because we were all such real people. All honest and sincere in our goofiness. In our pursuit of better grades. And our absolute stupidity at times.
We all lived on the first floor of Susan B. Anthony. The university has 3 freshman dorms. Two are practically the same building and are located closer to the main center of campus. Together, they house about 1/3 of the freshmen.
Then there was our dorm. The mother of all dorms. It housed 2/3 of all freshmen. Keep in mind, the school was small, around 4000 undergrad, so about 1000 freshmen. Either way, about 650 lived in Sue B. But what else was that the dorm also was home to a dining hall, a cafe, the residential life offices, a recreation room, and a calling center (in the basement... I actually worked there my first semester... it was painful).
All these other services were on the first floor, which left little space for dorm rooms on that floor, but there were some. There was this small all-mens hall where I lived. Only 12 guys lived there. And there was an extra long coed hall with girls on one end and guys on another, with a lounge separating the two sections.
The lounge had a TV and a kitchen, so we took ownership of it. During the day, we'd cook, study, play ping pong, watch TV, and jump on the couches. During the night, we'd avoid the place, as it was home to the infamous "sketchy couches".
These couches were typical cheap-looking, supposedly fire-proof college dorm couches. However, since the lounge was big and somewhat separated from all of campus, horny couples would drag two couches into each other and form a bed to spend the night. Only to be woken up by the cleaning lady in the morning.
You always knew who was using the sketchy couches because you knew who was dating on that floor. You could also catch them running back to their real dorm room in the morning with a pillow and a blanket or comforter.
Some nights, however, we would camp out in the lounge, forcing couples to find another lounge (typically they would hunt for one of the "lockable" study lounges on the higher floors) or practice their religion through abstinence.
On one of these nights, we had this crazy idea. We were going to watch all of the Lord of the Rings Special Edition... Yes! Each movie is like 4 1/2 hours!!! Another night, we watched the first 2 Matrix movies. These movie nights actually happened regardless of schoolwork and sometimes during finals period.
That was what made us friends. What brought us together.
I will never for it. For that one semester, in the midst of all the crazy things we called school, we were close... and in my whole life, I don't think have or will ever meet another person like her. I doubt anyone will. I don't think there is another.
And after graduating, there was only one thing that could bring us back to those days. One person. One couple. One event.
And that one event all started in the second semester of my freshman year...
See apart from being a beautiful, fashionable, sociable, shopping freak and an intelligent, geeky, genius and a hard-working, ambitious, brainiac... she was also a complete goof.
Out of all the guys that tried their best, there was one guy that didn't need to try. In fact, he probably wasn't all that great at trying at that time. But he didn't need to. For that one semester, I may have had a lot of her time, but there was one guy who always had her heart. One guy she would always talk about. She would always say how she could see herself with a guy like him. She would always ask if it was weird. She liked him because he was smart, because he was skinny, because he was goofy, because he was a nerd, like the guy from Flubber.
We all knew it. We all knew she liked him and he liked her. All that was needed was for them to finally admit it.
What's funny is that she jokes about he hooking them up or bringing them together. But, in reality, all I did was nod my head to her talking. These two were meant to be together. And from all the things they did together. All the time they spent. All the memories they built. From it all, there was one event that I was always waiting for.
The wedding.
I was going to sit next to one of my friends who's in law school right now. Someone I hadn't seen in years. At the same table, there would be folks from our first floor.
I was so excited that I planned my trip to Ghana around their wedding. I made it so that I could take the train to Newark on Saturday, check into my hotel, and get to the wedding on Sunday. Then, leave for Ghana on Monday. I had it all planned, but she had to go and make things even better.
Instead of renting a hotel room, she said I should crash at the hotel in Long Island with everyone and that we'd all get to have fun just like the good old days... Except with no sketchy couches...
There was no way I would pass that up!
We chatted about stuff, about her wedding plans, about her man, about her work. And everything seemed nice.
But there was one thing that I had forgot about... my tons of luggage. I had planned to take a load of donations from my church to a church in Ghana. I didn't think I could make the trip back and forth. So, I said that I would go to my hotel first, drop my stuff off and then make it to the party.
But she never got my Facebook message...
Later that day, I pinged my friend in CA about the wedding and found out the news. I didn't believe him. Thought it was just a stupid joke. Sounds crazy. Then, it began to settle in after I searched online.
The next few days were horrible. We all KNEW her... we KNEW she wouldn't run away... the news media were soooo stupid!
I can't bear to imagine how it must have felt for her man. I mean, the story broke my heart. I mean, it really hurt me. I mean, here I was in New York City crying on the subway, on the train, in the taxi, on the plane to Amsterdam... to Accra...
But to go through what he went through. The incredible high and then such a great low... such a devastating loss. And for her family too. For them having to wait and pause right before the greatest moment of their lives. Or for him, driving back and forth constantly.
When I met up with my friends, we had nothing to do but just exist. It was just surreal. It felt like we lost our souls or something. Like all the joy was stripped out of us. Honestly, she was the show we all came to celebrate. Without her, it made things just dull and sad.
To make matters worse, I had a flight the next day. I had no time. I couldn't stay and mourn. I also had visa problems with Ghana that I had to settle. And when I got to Ghana, I couldn't mourn with my friends. Nobody understood. I couldn't go to her memorial. Nothing.
I will never forget her. I can't imagine what it was like... being a few days away from wedding your best friend, a few years away from completing something you've worked your whole life for... days away from meeting up with your old friends... finally moving up and getting all that you deserved in life...
Only to have some dirty son of a bitch bastard rip it all away from you.
In all my life, I never really wanted someone to die. I think that has changed. You know, there's always these random incidents, like shootings and stuff. Then there are situations that people may have purposely or accidentally put themselves in. Those are all tragedies.
But the worse of them all is a rouge unsuspected person brought into your path by an institution. Someone who is not even worth the air you breathe who has nothing worthwhile in his life. Someone who isn't worth the people in his life, let alone worth being around someone like her, of whom he was only crossing paths with.
Someone so vile.
I think he should die.
I think he should rot.
Sure, he should be forgiven, but he should still die.
Unfortunately, he will not... for good reasons, I know.
And we will all move on with our lives.
But for all the good things she would have done in her life. All the good she has done. All the life she has lived...
I just pray that that guy gets his full serving of what he deserves.
I just with it would have been different and been better for her. You deserved so much more from life. And it makes me think of how much I do. If she could do so much, work so hard, then I can do so as well. After all, I probably am really smart, I just gotta work harder.
I love you Annie, you take care of yourself. I know you're in good hands.
- Emmy