The screen is blank.
Ali and Dan are in my room. I'm on Alex's computer because mine has a virus and ITC hasn't responded to my e-mails.
Our apartment smells like a dead squirrel.
Ali is playing Matchbox 20's "Push" on his guitar -- a song from the days when one could listen to Rob Thomas and not be a de facto weenie. Mark is trying to sleep in the next room. He's got crew in the morning. I'll probably still be awake when he stumbles out of bed. Three and a half hours from now.
"You're not even looking at the keyboard," Ali says as I type.
I think of something to write:
It's been 11 days since I surprised my girlfriend in the shampoo aisle of Fresh Grocer on 40th Street. She was wearing a pink collared shirt and jeans, a shopping basket in her left hand. Her brown hair down around her shoulders. From 15 feet away, I knew what she'd smell like (Pantene Pro-V 2-in-1), what she'd feel like when I threw my arms around her.
What she'd look like when she turned around.
Thankfully, she looked exactly like a girl who didn't expect someone to throw his arms around her.
Which was a very good thing for my purposes.
(Man, am I adorable or what?)
That morning I had ridden up to Philly in my friend Stephanie's 1998 Cherokee. We had skipped class. We drove 85 mph on Route 29. The Jeep shook back and forth. The fan belt made grinding noises.
We were rebels.
Our other companion was our friend Galen. He sat in the back seat and tried to make us play his Mozart CD.
We told him to shut up and rocked out to John Mayer instead.
Rebels.
The night before had been the Clemson game, and I had stayed out late with friends. Friends I painted my chest with. Friends I sang the Good Ol' Song with and split a large pie at Frank's Pizza with. Friends I played Anchorman with. Friends I stumbled back to my apartment with.
Friends who would probably tell me that prepositions are not the right words to end sentences with.
I cut myself shaving that night. I packed. I crawled into bed.
I woke up the next morning to country music and threw my alarm clock against the wall.
Stupid South.
"Mark's snoring so badly I can't sleep," says Dan as he comes back into the room to read what I've written so far. He reads for about a minute, and I can't type while he watches. I remember I still have to read Faulkner when I'm done writing this column.
I kissed Meghan and trudged to 30th Street Station, lugging my two bags. As part of the most complicated plan ever, I was taking a train home to surprise my family that night (yes, that adorable) and drive back down to Philly the next night to spend the rest of Fall Break at Penn with Meghan.
You have no idea how hard it was to construct that last sentence. Feel free to throw this aside at any point.
It's silent in the room right now.
A meaningful silence, of course. Silent -- so that I can construct the kind of emotional suspense that will make these words echo, resonate, thunder. It's a silence that will make my story into some fable, myth, tall tale that you could take home and hang on the fridge and say, "Golly, he might have something there."
Hold on, I have to take off my shoes. I'm kind of getting into this.
My family pulled up right behind the cab that took me home from the train station. I got out of the car and stood in the driveway, squinting into their car's headlights.
A primal scream rocked my neighborhood as my mom bolted from the car.
"What are you doing home you idiot?" she yelled as she tackled me.
My sister just squeezed me tightly, and my dad slapped me on the back.
My dog peed.
But I didn't care about their reactions as much as I thought I would. I was just glad to be home. To sleep in my bed and smell bacon and eggs in the morning. To nod at my dad's stories about his valiant tennis victories. To talk boys with my sister. To go through the care package my mom had put together for me while she explained her reasoning behind the inclusion of every last item.
To recharge my batteries. To plug into the oldest set of memories I have -- those of home -- and remember why they remain always the most important.
And to tell new stories of new memories: of the Thursday night ESPN game against Clemson (before that fluke loss to FSU). Of the first chilly October night when we scrunched together on the way home and told high school stories. Of stopping at Bob's Big Boy at the Maryland Welcome Center on I-95.
I don't know how to finish this. Sometimes, toward the end, the words just pour out. Five minutes later I've got a thousand of them, and I can go to bed and wake up to mountains of fan mail.
Sometimes I sit and stare at the screen and whimper.
Maybe if I spin around in this chair a few times, something will come to me.
Nope.
To finish my story at least ...
I drove down to Philadelphia that Saturday. It was a smooth sailing all the way. I blasted my music and kept the windows down and the sunroof open and felt like the coolest guy in the universe.
I was also freezing cold.
It was as if I had just put down my old favorite book -- underlined, worn, coffee stains on some of the pages -- and found myself in the middle of another. The form is experimental, the plot fragmented, the characters young, in love and hurtling through space together.
A-J Aronstein can be reached ataronstein@cavalierdaily.com
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