We got an 'A' on that, just to let you know. It was my best grade all semester. And no, Tate didn't do all the work. I contributed here and there. We made a pretty good team. Now all I had left to do was my show. It's on cable access, and I guess a recipe for insta-celeb… not that my friends and I cared about that kind of stuff. It just comes along with having a TV show, no matter how small the production. I was running low on material, and decided to broadcast my trip to Homecoming across town. Humiliating, yes. I still cringe at the thought of it, but it wasn't a total fiasco. I took Bridget Phillips. I know, 'What happened to Tate?' So I chickened out, big deal! I still managed to get a date, and my first at that. And Bridget was a friend of mine, someone I knew better. And it wasn't like I was worried about a sleezeball taking Tate instead of me… nope, my friend Ryan was the only one man enough to ask her, so the two went together. Cheers. Fast-forward a couple of months and you'd probably find Tate hanging around the Leonard household more often. You see, being a closer friend with Ryan (nothing went much farther after Homecoming) caused her to actually be a shoo-in with us boys. Heck, she was the girliest one next to Carney (which may or may not explain his Dakota alter-ego in the later years), but somehow, she fit in quite nicely. Let's skip ahead to our senior year, shall we? It was Graduation, and I knew there was a very slim chance I'd see Tate again. After all, I was to be shipped off to Providence, Rhode Island while she went to NYU. (She always talked like a New Yorker, or 'New Yoker' as we always say, in the sense that she could spit words out at ninety miles per hour. I hardly think I'm exaggerating.) I remember sitting amongst the L's and M's and reminiscing in my seat. And, as I reminisce now, I realize that my feelings towards Tate back then were on and off. I liked her as a friend for a couple of weeks, then suddenly found myself wanting more the next. I confided this to my long-time friend Pat near the end of my term as a sophomore, as he, too, was currently in pursuit of 'the girl of his dreams.' "That's so weird," he told me after my confession. "You should definitely go tell her." Which wasn't so comforting on my part. Well, like I said, it was Commencement Day and surprise, surprise... I still hadn't told her. I didn't think I'd need to... I mean, I'd made it this far without uttering so much as one word of it to her, right? And once I got into Providence University, I wouldn't need to worry about it so much anymore. "We did it," I remember telling her after the grand ceremony. "We did it!" And do you know what Tate did? She hugged me. I settled for awkwardly patting her on the back, but just as I was about to actually 'return' the hug, she pulled away. "Well, uh, good luck in college!" she said happily. "Yeah, you too." "I'll miss you!" "Really?" Stupid, stupid me. I could see that she was in a hurry to go and bid farewell to her other friends, and that was all I could get out. I tried again to form literate sentences, but already she was waving and saying goodbye to my parents. "I'll miss you, too," I finally said, and only about three minutes too late. Ah, well... there you have it. And it's on tape, too! I had made a note-to-self that same night to burn the wretched video, but somehow got sidetracked along the way. As I lay in bed with my tassle hanging only feet above from me, dangling from my ceiling fan, I thought to myself to sleep. About the high school life, and how now I was to live with a roommate I had never met and live away from home, only to visit on some weekends and holidays. Then I thought about her, and how she always 'got' my sense of humor and how she was always interested in whatever was blaring from my stereo speakers. I thought about how she would make pretzel-stick log cabins on our kitchen table (oh come on, like you haven't tried that either) and pretend to have a fit every time I pulled at a pretzel rod to eat and caused the whole thing to fall apart. I think I actually fell asleep smiling that night. |
| Love, Brendan |