The Harvard Homewrecker

Sometimes, two people stay together simply because they don't remember what it feels like to be alone.

Sometimes, two people stay together for a more meaningful reason.

Other times, one of them meets Tony.

Part I

The day he attended his first meeting, Tedmund decided to run for office. I can't remember what club this was, so I'm just going to say it was Key Club.

He was already a second year in high school. He worried that his youth was slipping away, and it was time he involved himself in school activities. The president greeted him at the door and said they were electing new officers.

"The president is probably going to be me again," said the president, and he wasn't lying. He was a pretty competent president. "The other positions are pretty competitive, but no one is running for secretary."

"Oh," said Tedmund. All of the names in this story are from a random generator, in case anyone was wondering.

"You should run."

"This...this is literally my first day."

"Okay." The president shrugged. "I mean, if you don't have the balls for it..."

10 minutes later

"My name is Tedmund," he announced from the podium, "and I am proud to be running for secretary." Only a few people recognized him from class, but everyone applauded on account of his carefree speaking.

"I have been observing this club," he said, pausing to look at the president's logo, "which is Key Club, and it can definitely be improved." He saw a few people frown, but now everyone was listening intently. "I will bring," he glanced at the president, who mouthed the words community service, "I will bring more community service projects. And I'm going to take notes really well. And it's going to be great." Everyone cheered.

He won, of course. No one was running against him.

The VP was named Candy, and the two really hit it off. They didn't mind staying late after school to make posters together, or to email coordinators together. For Tedmund, Candy was a great friend with whom he could get through the tedium of officer duties. For Candy, Tedmund was something more.

Their AP Psych teacher noticed the chemistry and paired them up during the Relationships unit, as well as the Human Development unit. Their chemistry teacher noticed it as well, but didn't give AF.

Several months went by like this, but this was Tedmund. He knew so many girls who were in love with him that he dismissed flirting as normal behavior.

She called him eventually, late in the night, when the only light came from his TV screen and the only sounds were the gunshots from Halo.

"Tedmund," she said, "I have something to tell you."

"Yeah?" He couldn't hit pause; it was multiplayer.

"Yes, I...I forgot."

"Okay."

She didn't say much to him again for an agonizing month, when she could no longer resist the urge to call him again.

"Hi Tedmund," she said, "how are you?"

"Good," he said. "I just had dinner."

"How was it?"

He spent the next ten minutes describing to her, in detail, what he had eaten and how delicious it was.

"Tedmund," she said, "I love you."

"So do I," said Tedmund. The news was even better than his dinner.

They became a couple. They spent as much time as they could together. Everyone who knew them thought of them together, and the blissful weeks passed effortlessly as they filled their time in love and with the ridiculous number of AP classes Washington High people took.

And then, out of nowhere, she saw Tony at a track meet. He didn't notice her, but she noticed him. He finished first, and she noticed that he didn't sweat. He glistened.

He wasn't just hot. He seemed to radiate hotness.

******

Part II

One of the events in this story never actually happened, but I'm not going to say which.

There were many dorms at UC Davis, but it was universally known that Miller was the best. This is undisputed. Miller had the fastest wi-fi connection, a kitchen on every floor, and a $10,000 grand piano that made the one at Thompson look like a garage sale giveaway. ATM was the best part of Segundo, but Segundo was known for having Miller. Tercero couldn't compete, even with upgrades, and Cuarto looked like a glorified three-and-a-half star motel next to Miller.

Of course, these two were at Miller after 2012, so I don't know much about the other people who were there.

His name was Rick, your typical run-of-the-mill attractive intelligent charismatic Regents Scholar video game champion in his first year of college. Jessica was all of these things, minus the video games.

Like most of the people in Miller, Rick and Jessica lived together and took a class together. The class had 23 people, and only one guy. Guess who the guy was?

If you don't know how UHP worked, here's a 25-second tutorial: Everyone signed up for small classes; some were easy, and some were not-so-easy. The ones who took the easy classes were happy (I guess), and the ones who took the not-so-easy classes complained about it on the ISHP Facebook page. By the laws of karma, the people who took the easy ones their first quarter just so happened to choose the not-so-easy ones in their second quarter.

The two clicked really well, especially since both of them joined a college club together. I'm just going to call it CKI because I've dropped so many meaningless abbreviations that I kind of stopped caring.

Is there really any more to it than that? If there is, I don't know the details. They were up until sunrise together, just the two of them...talking. One night, she asked if they could play Hot Seat.

He calmly said yes, but fireworks were going off in his head.

She was up first. "If we knew each other a year ago," he said, trying to be as subtle and indirect as possible, "do you think we would have dated?"

She nodded.

Shortly after, they started dating.

And that wraps it up. They were a perfect couple.

That's it. End of story.

Oh wait...

Jessica found herself alone in San Francisco one weekend, because that's what people in Davis do when they're bored. They spend an hour driving to a city that everyone hates driving in. But her car was still in the shop this time, and Jessica took the shuttle.

Jessica sprinted for the bus, and the driver saw her, but it was Muni. Obviously, he didn't stop.

"No..." she said. It was Muni, so the next bus wasn't going to come for an hour. By the time she made it to Berkeley her shuttle would be gone, and she'd have to spend the night there.

"What's wrong?" asked Tony. He had just flown in from the East Coast, and he had just finished visiting his peasant friends from high school. How he became rich is explained in parts III and IV.

"I missed my bus," she said.

"Would you like a ride?" he asked. She looked at him closely. He was in a designer jacket, wore designer pants, and next to him was a red 488 GTB Ferrari.

"In that?" she asked, making eye contact with his beautiful car.

"No, I was just taking that to my lift." He pointed to a building nearby, a gorgeous piece of massive glass with a helicopter to top it off.

"Do you own that helicopter?" she asked.

"Of course," he said, and smiled. "Why else would I have paid to put a helipad on my building?"

*****

In a relationship, whoever is more in love will always be at a disadvantage.

Unless you're not competing, or you don't try to measure it, or...I don't know...you're in a relationship with pizza.

I just wrote that first sentence to get your attention.

Part III

This story begins with a guy making someone a sandwich.

Jake was an athletic, heavily involved high school student whom everyone was cool with, except Mr. B. He also put a lot of effort into his sandwiches. This sandwich was an hour-long project: The bread was lightly toasted, there was just the right amount of peanut butter and jelly, and the way he presented it was like something you would see on the Food Network.

I had to learn piano to get a high school girlfriend. Stanley had to master multivariable Calculus. David had to win a track medal, star in a summer performance, become the #7 Tetris player in North America and maintain a non-weighted 4.0. For Jake, the deal-maker was a sandwich.

Jake and Crystal joined dragon boat around the same time. For anyone wondering, dragon boat is a form of competitive water racing that dates back to ancient times, when warring Chinese factions jostled for control of the seven kingdoms. After many generations, a general known as the Mother of Dragons made a surprise attack from the sea and finally ended the war.

The sandwich came shortly after.

We all took a trip to Long Beach--a beautiful, ridiculously over-the-top party town where people drank, danced, and paddled like there was no tomorrow. We were in high school, so the only thing we participated in was the paddling.

After our first round of races, I ate dinner with the team, crawled into my hotel room, and knocked TF out. When I woke up, Jake and Crystal were out.

"I'm not good enough for you," Jake had said the previous night, as they sat at the nearby beach and pretended to look at the water. They had been dating for over half a page now.

"Why do you say that?" she asked, in a voice that was always calm and mellow because that's what Crystal's voice is like.

"You're smart, and you're beautiful, and if you weren't with me then you could find someone else."

They talked until the light came back. In the afternoon, when one of us finally asked, they were still together. Maybe it was conversations like those that made their relationship stronger.

We all stayed in the team and paddled a lot.

JUST KIDDING. Most people didn't stay in the team. Those of us who did, paddled a lot.

We talked between laps.

"I can't get pho with you guys," said Tony one day.

"Traitor," I said.

"Well, I'm applying for the Gates Millennium Scholarship. I don't think I have a chance...the probability of winning that is lower than the probability of getting into Harvard."

"You know what would be awesome? If you got into Harvard AND got the Gates Millennium Scholarship."

With that, Tony burst out laughing.

20,000 strokes later:

"I think I'm going to go to Davis now," I said.

"Just like that?" asked Stanley. "You've changed your mind this easily?"

"The froyo was really good."

A few months and many, many strokes later:

"I think I'm going to stay in the city," said Jake.

"I'm not," said Crystal.

.....

....

.

It's been years.

A few weeks ago, living alone at my apartment in an unheard-of town, I got really bored and wrote this. Not bored like...not enough time. It's a different kind of boredom.

As I wrote, Jake was at his own apartment. He never left the city. On his desk, he looked at a picture of Crystal, had a brief flashback, and then tucked it away in a drawer. On full display was a picture of his current girlfriend.

Crystal wistfully looked out her window. Her current boyfriend was sleeping next to her, and southern California was shining out in the distance.

Unable to sleep, she tiptoed out of bed, made her way to the kitchen, and spent an hour preparing herself a fancy PBJ sandwich. The sandwich made her happy again, and she gingerly went back to bed.

She quickly fell asleep.

*****

For our high school graduation, the valedictorian reminded us that everyone would eventually be dead. He talked a lot about human hatred, and disease, and nuclear war. The rest of the speech was optimistic, but all anyone remembered were those first few sentences.

Then our high school salutatorian spoke. "I'm going to talk about love," he said, "and cures for diseases, and...the opposite of everything else Jon spoke about. By the way, my name is Jon. Both of us are named Jon." The second Jon's speech was met with rounds of applause that continually increased in both volume and duration.

After his salutatorian speech, Jon (again, the second one) was required to present the CSF trophy to the member with the highest GPA. Tony won it. I can't remember the explanation.

There were graduations everywhere that day. I don't even remember all the things that happened. Aaron presented a senior video, and Katherine won one of the highest honors, and then Emma and Alonzo and Colin won numerous scholarships. And somewhere, just a few miles out of San Francisco, Zach almost met his future wife.

Part IV

"Do you feel like time is moving really quickly?" I asked Tony one day, a little after our college graduation.

"What do you mean?" asked Tony. "Time has always been moving at a constant speed."

"That's not what I mean."
"Oh, that's right. According to Einstein-"

"What I mean is that life events are happening really quickly. My coworker just bought a house. Someone brought up marriage the other day when talking about her boyfriend."

"Well, we are at that age."

"Are we, though?"

Rena, David and I went right into the workforce. Most of the people I knew from Davis either stayed for grad school, or applied to various medical school programs. In my first month of work, they asked me to help hire the next round of people. That they asked me to play any part in this was beyond crazy.

"So after my senior design project helped cure Type 2 Diabetes," said Zach, "I decided to direct my talents into another side-project. It was like Google, for porn."

"That second thing is the most brilliant idea I've ever heard," I said. "I have never visited a porn site, but I can only imagine the potential. Now, on an unrelated note...how do you feel about loyalty?"

"I don't believe in it, period. You do your job, and if you don't do a good one then you step aside. The lack of loyalty cuts both ways - if a job doesn't satisfy you, you quit."

"That's the realest thing I've ever heard anyone say," I said. "The other responses people gave me were so full of shit. I'm going to recommend that they hire you immediately."

A few months passed. If it sounds like I'm rushing, it's because that's what it really felt like. Tony joined a start-up, and the boss was such a dick that Tony started his own company and bought out his boss'. All of this was just to fire him. That's how much of a dick he was.

Zach's talents were quickly recognized by everyone except his manager. He also bought a house. He was also accepted into grad school. Then, out of nowhere, his girlfriend called him.

"Remember that time we had unprotected sex?" she asked.

"Which time?"

"I don't know, but I'm pregnant."

"Shit."

And just like that, a year passed.

I still had the same coffee mug, and I still drank the same flavor of beer at the same bar, and I still lived exactly where I was before. Also, I still didn't get pointers at all. Seg faults were my life.

"How was your wedding?" I asked Zach once, out of the blue. Last I checked, he had proposed.

"What wedding?" he asked.

"Um...how's the baby?" I asked, as if that were a logical transition from my last question.

"I told you," he said. "She lost it."

"Is that why you didn't marry her?" I asked.

"I mean, that's not the reason we're not together anymore. A lot of things have happened."

"You don't say."

Zach quit later, but not...immediately after. I don't know how to make time go slower. I don't even know at this point how much time had passed.

He wrote me a letter. All it said was You can stay there if you want, Evan, but I don't recommend it. You're in the kind of city that people leave.

I don't know what happens to everyone in the story after that, because now we're all caught up with the present.