Seven Years Of The World

This is another story, because I don't want to study and because someone is a jerk.

one.

In Rurouni Kenshin, Kenshin once said that he was a vagabond. I had not known what that meant at the time, and I merely associated it with his appearance—a man in his early to middle age, carrying a sword that had no clear purpose except to serve a reminder of the past. I would not know what the word signified until well later, but in a way, I already knew its definition before I knew the word itself.

Early one September, right before the leaves turned brown (or at least when you're living in the north), I talked to several of my old friends—most of them had gone on to live their own (and admittedly successful) lives, and many had on that characteristic blank look when I brought up our old dreams. "Remember when we said we would travel around the world?" I asked, more as a tentative measure to see if I could trust them with the rest. "I said we could get summer jobs at the Ex, and then Sheena said we could start by somewhere close, then go on from there?"

Sheena looked at me, then, as if my face had some sort of visual cue, she nodded. "Yes, I remember. That was such a long time ago. We were so naive back then." The others nodded along, some knowing what I was talking about, some completely oblivious but wishing not to be left out of the conversation.

"I said you were crazy back then," Daniel said, not looking my way. "Nuts. Out of your mind."

"I remember that," I said. I heard Nina hold her breath, but I plowed on. "You said we'd never make it, and that if we did, you would walk around painted orange."

"I haven't been orange yet."

I smiled, the only thing I had left of my old self. Somewhere along the way, I had discarded every other piece that had tied me together, even my fears, and I found that it had been much more easier to travel without them. "You haven't," I told Daniel, who had his eyes closed, refusing to open them. "You're right, we never did make it. But I'm going to. I'm still trying."

"You are?" Nina asked me, half incredulous. "Where have you been? Other than Korea, of course."

Daniel stood up. "I'm sorry, I have to go." We all watched as he left, and when he disappeared, Kady said, "What's his problem?"

two.

"You like Daniel."

The statement came so sudden, so unexpectedly swift, that my natural response was to deny it, and I did. Nina turned to me and said, "Don't lie to me."

I could not. Nina was my best friend, or the closest I had to a best friend. I had known her the longest, and the closest to the present, so by definition she was my best friend. I was an open book to anyone who had cared to know me for long enough, unless I cared to hide myself, and it was not hard for Nina to tell that I was lying. I secretly (and often) rejoiced in the fact that few people ever knew me that well.

"What makes you think that?"

"You can't stop talking to him or about him. You stare at him when you think other people aren't looking. And you act weird when you're around him."

I counted the proofs, then stacked up my counterargument. They were pitifully few, but among them was the most critical piece—denial. If I did not admit to anything, then it would soon be a game Nina would grow tired of, and then it would be over.

I had many reasons why I wished to keep my affectations a secret, most of them in line with why I preferred to keep most of what I liked a secret. On the surface, I pretended to be the cheerful, naive girl who was so overly optimistic few people ever saw her upset. My smiles were so cheap, so readily available, that I and everyone else no longer even noticed them for their presence (and later, only for their absence). I forgot why I wanted this façade in the first place, only that it would make me become an integral part of this society, and that had been my ultimate goal.

I had another reason—secrets were weaknesses. I had to keep them to myself to make myself appear invincible. I had to be everything I wanted to be and more. People I occasionally fancied, Daniel included, were weaknesses that were exploitable, and thus must be hidden.

"You're over-thinking things," I told Nina bluntly. "Not everyone is as boy-crazed as you are."

three.

The idea of a trip without a foreseeable end was rooted in my upbringing of no definite home. It could be said that my entire life was a trip of certain proportions, with only a starting time and place, but no destination to return to. Most people went home after a long trip, to relax, or do whatever else it was that normal people did after a "break" from their daily routine of life, and so home was their final destination, no matter what they said to the contrary. I had no home, no place I could call home, because there was no place I had "grown up" in or I had shared any meaningful memories that I had not shared elsewhere. Since I had no home, and so no destination, the trip was my daily routine of life, and the "breaks" came when I stopped to rest my feet.

I first brought up the idea to Nina, because I shared almost (but not) everything with her, but she turned my offer down. She laughed it off as a joke, as I was sure she thought it was, and said that I was always full of these hot-aired ideas that never came to fruition. I knew she did not believe for one moment that I was really going to go anywhere far away, even outside the borders of our city, for more than a month.

Next, I went to find Dena, who nodded with much enthusiasm. "Are you going to France? We should go wine-tasting."

"We're not legal yet," I said, my analytical side for once overpowering my imagination. "We can't drink."

"Oh, sure we can," Dena said. "By the time we go there, we'll be over the legal age anyway. We'll be in our last years of college, if not after that." I had overestimated my logical reasoning abilities against those who were more in touch with the nuances of reality.

Nonetheless, we gathered a few of our friends—Sheena, Kady, Sally, Jennifer, Cynthia, and a few other friends of Dena's whose names I did not remember. We planned this trip, more in broad strokes of color as we talked about what we would do in certain countries and cities, and how certain people would react, and other trivial things.

Sometime amidst our plotting, Daniel and John came by, and Daniel stopped to listen to our discussions. "You're crazy," he finally said. "All of you."

"Oh, take your cynicism somewhere else," Kady said.

"You're still crazy," he said, even as he left. The girls laughed it off after he left, and I joined in, but only half-heartedly. Somewhere in his voice, I found what he said to be true. I was crazy. What I wanted was something so out of proportion that no one who had not experienced my sense of loss and detachment could understand, and no one here took our discussions in the same way I did. Nina and Dena and Sheena and all of the others thought of this as a mere exercise of imagination, whereas I used it as one of the main pillars of the world I was constructing.

four.

A few weeks later, as I had predicted, everyone forgot about the travel plans as exams approached. I was busy searching summer jobs in the library when Daniel took the computer next to mine and sat down. His slightly concerned face told me that he had an assignment he needed to finish last-minute, so I did not bother him. He, however, started up a conversation, perhaps while waiting for his computer to load.

"Hey. What're you doing?"

"Looking for jobs," I said, absentmindedly. I scoured the site I was currently on. Managers and workers with experience only.

"What do you need the money for?"

"Saving up for my plane ticket, or maybe a few weeks' worth of lodging. I don't know. Money goes a long way."

Daniel spun my chair around, rather unexpectedly. I was about to complain when he said, "You're not seriously considering going on that trip of yours?"

"I am. What of it?"

"You know they're not going to go with you? I mean, I know they're all saying that they'd love to come along, but when it really comes down to it, every one of them is going to come up with some excuse or another to not go. You're all alone in this one."

I stared at his face and found nothing but seriousness. "I know I'm alone," I said. I wanted to add, I'm just another lonely person in a world filled with lonely people. I want to find those people, every one of them, and if I must go alone, then I will. But instead, I simply smiled another worthless smile and reminded him, "Your computer's already loaded."

He glared at me, then turned to his work. I picked up my books and said goodbye, but I never heard a response from him.

five.

We were still mad at each other when the spring formal came along. Everyone else was abuzz over the upcoming dance (and the hook-ups and break-ups), but I was excited for another reason. When Nina asked about it, I told her I was anxious for the dance.

"You think Daniel's going to ask you?" Nina said, half musing, half serious.

"Why would he?" I asked, not denying that it would be not entirely unwelcomed. It was a risky decision, but I had something else to protect me now. I had a definite future.

"You two would be the sweetest couple," Nina went on to say. "Not that any couple involving you wouldn't be sweet." It would be the same thing she would said to me when we heard that he had asked Jennifer instead, except without the first half. I nodded along both times, but honestly, I did not care anymore. If Daniel had asked me, I would have gone with him, but my mind was already made up by then. I probably would have, in a last-ditch attempt to make him angry, told him about my plans. As it turned out, I did not even need to go with him.

I was at Nikki's, admiring the pretty dresses, when Daniel walked in, his discomfort obvious. One of the staff told him to wait a minute—she'll be right out with him, and he sat down on one of those uncomfortable wooden chairs in the waiting area. I, in a moment of irrational judgment, walked over to him and asked, "Looking for a tux?"

"Yeah," he more or less grunted.

"I heard you're going with Jennifer. Are you going to find a tie that matches her dress?"

He looked as if he had never heard the concept of matching ensembles before, and, after the initial panic-stricken moment, asked me if it was customary for couples to be matching.

"Hey, I wouldn't know. I've never been to an event like this before. Not that I will be, anyway."

The last part was a bait, and he bit it just as I had thought he would. "You're not going? Why not?"

"I'm leaving on that night," I said, as nonchalantly as I could manage. "Going on that so-called 'crazy' trip of mine."

Daniel stared at me for a while, unable to comprehend what I had just said. I felt a sudden loneliness, more than any I had ever experienced before, and I realized (much too late, and with an aftertaste in my mouth) that my loneliness had driven me to become even more lonely, if that was even possible.

Finally, he said, "There's nothing I can do to change your mind, is there?"

I had already come this far. I could not turn back now. No. "No."

He ran his hand through his hair, then, in a burst of controlled anger, said to me, "You won't last long by yourself. You're going to be back here within a week. Mark my words, you're going to be back here and nobody's going to even realize you were gone."

six.

Seven years later, I was cleaning out one of my suitcases to pack all of the new clothes I had bought when a piece of paper fell out. At first, I thought it was a room service note, or something to that effect. I had not lived in a hotel for three years now, except an occasional stay after the plane rides, since hostels were much cheaper, so I picked it up and examined it.

There was a list of names, and numbers, some of which I recognized. I definitely recognized Nina's name. I had not talked to her in such a long time, and suddenly, I wanted to talk to her again. I thought I had detached myself from my past, but here it was, a piece from my past that urged me to revisit the whole. I picked up the phone, half chiding myself that this would never work, that Nina must have had a new number by now—it has been seven years, after all.

When the person on the other side picked up, I said, with much skepticism in my voice, "Hi, is this Nina?"

"Yes, who is this?"

"It's Ginny."

"Oh my god, Ginny! How have you been? I haven't talked to you in forever! Where have you been?"

We talked a bit about the old times, and times that we did not share together. I conveniently left out my stories of the countries I had been to, and just told her that I was in South Korea at the moment, but that I was thinking of a reunion, just with the old friends. It was more of a spur-of-the-moment thing, but I suddenly just wanted to go back, after all those years of wandering around. It did not matter where, really. Just back somewhere that still remembered me before I shed my naivety, and it so happened that Nina's world was the one I had contact with.

Nina said that she could gather a few people together, and asked me who I wanted to see. I said anyone was fine with me, as long as I knew them. Then I ran my hand down the list and stopped at a particular name that echoed in my heart dully.

"Do you still have Daniel's number?" I asked.

"Daniel—Daniel, the guy on the basketball team?" She asked, even though we only knew one Daniel together. We had been separate long enough that the edges of our memories began to blur when it concerned each other.

"Yes, that's the one."

"I do, wait, let me find it."

When we hung up, I called Daniel next. I was not sure what I was expecting when I asked for his number, or what I wanted to hear from him, but when he picked up the phone, after the fifth ring, his voice was just as I had remembered it.

"Hey, Daniel. It's Ginny."

There was silence, and, just as I thought he had hung up on me out of years of pent-up frustration, he whispered, "You really did it. I never would have thought—I never."

seven.

After our makeshift reunion, I left, but not before telling them about the distilled version of my adventures. They listened as intently as they could manage in a subject that they were foreign to, among uncharted regions of imagination and exhilaration. Even as I left, I could still hear them talking about my stories, as if they had experience it themselves. I even heard small phrases here and there about how nice it would be to travel around the world, and how, perhaps, they should do it themselves.

When I reached the parking lot, Daniel was waiting by my car. I walked up to him and asked, "How did you know this was mine?"

"It's the only one with a foreign license plate," he said, as I realized too late.

"What do you want from me?"

He looked at me for the first time since I had returned. "I want the real story."

So we drove to the hill by our old school, and we raced each other to the hilltop, and once there, we collapsed to the ground, and I started sobbing. I told him everything. I told him everyone I had met, and everyone I had connected to, and everyone I had left behind. I even told him my goal—of finding every lonely person in this world.

"You're still going to go, then," he said, not as a question but as an acceptance of the facts. I thought it over, and I nodded. I still had to go on. My search was not over yet, and I still had many more places I had to visit, and many more people I had to find.

"Well, when you're finished with finding every other lonely person in this world, come back here to find me. I want to be the last person you find."

With that, he left. I sat there on the hill, pondering over what he had said, and I realized that he had just given me a destination. He had given me a place I could return to, at the end of my journey, with such definitiveness that I could find no excuses to find fault with it.



By the way, favorite quote of the not-so-day: "Nick Clegg has reportedly given himself a 24 hour deadline to decide between his two suitors. Will it be dour-but-dutiful Gordon or fresh- (some might say shiny-) faced Dave? Find out tomorrow in another exciting installment of Love Across The Despatch Box: An Interminable Westminster Romance! I'm going to call it a night, I think. See you tomorrow," by Tom Chivers and Matthew Moore over at the Telegraph (I know, I'm too lazy to search up less Tory-based sources, and, besides, they are at least being somewhat objective in this report, more so than others I've heard).