I'll Be Here

be.”
    ***
    Once I’ve decided, I expect the rest of the week to drag, but it doesn’t. 
                I’m really busy with school.  We’ve only got a week and half left until graduation and all the teachers are laying it on thick in what I think may be an attempt to flaunt their authority in our faces one last time. 
                I hadn’t intended to, but I actually end up creating a calculus study group to get ready for the final.  We meet at my favorite coffee place after I’m off work on Thursday.  Nate and Colleen come, Katie Evans and Daniel Patel, and I have to wipe my eyebrows off the ceiling when Dustin and Roland walk in.  They’re really completely civil to me and the whole thing ends up being sort of fun and un weird.  Bizarre.
                On Friday night I think about sleeping outside under the stars and the lazing moon, using their light like a soft lace coverlet.  I think about the shadowy leaves and the dewy fog wrapping its arms around me while I dream, but that just seems crazy, right? 
    In the end I decide that I have a big day ahead of me and not to be a cliché or anything—I need my beauty rest.  I fall asleep just after dinner watching a movie with Aaron. 
                The distance is forty miles. 
    According to Jake, the drive should take no more than forty-five minutes even if there’s traffic, but I have a steadfast rule that if you’re going to be trapped in a vehicle for more than thirty miles, you should get a consolation prize in the form of treats.  This rule results in one stop on my way out of town for those mini peanut butter cookies and a fountain drink so large that I have to place the cup in between my thighs since it won’t fit in the Honda’s drink holder.  This necessitates a second stop halfway through the drive to use a bathroom and defrost the insides of my thighs. 
    The drive ends up taking me just over an hour.
                Once I’m off the exit ramp, I focus on following road signs directing me toward campus.  At one point I’m twisting through a residential neighborhood and I think I’ve made a wrong turn, but then the curtain of wooden houses pulls away and in front of me is a mosaic of hulking brick and cement buildings.
                Parking is far more complicated than anticipated and I have to circle the block four times before I find a space in a visitor lot.  Now, I’m all turned around and I hate doing it, but I have to call Jake and have him look up directions to the dorm because I can’t figure it out on my phone. 
                “Okay, turn right when you see a sign for Morgan Hall,” he’s saying, and the whole time he’s been talking me through the navigation Mom’s been chirping in the background.  I can picture her grabbing at Jake’s arm.
                “Done,” I say.
                “Now look for a tall brick building.”
                “Oh my God Jake!  They’re all tall brick buildings.”
                “Well, this one should be taller than the rest and you should see a spire or something jutting from the top.”
                I scan the space, my eyes sifting in and out of shadows and sky. 
    “Okay.  I think I see it…  Am I looking for a name or something?”
                “It should be called Wyman.”
                I walk closer, side-stepping to let a girl on a bike pass me. 
    “Yeah.  I see the sign.  This is definitely Wyman.”
                “Okay,” he says brightly.
                “Okay what?”
                “ Okay , as in… You’re there.  You made it kiddo.  Wyman is the name of the dorm.”  When I’m quiet, Jake sighs into the phone.  “Honestly, Willow, did you even read the directions that I wrote for you this morning?”
                I click my left heel against a large landscaping rock that’s braced at the edge of the path.  “Of course.  And I completely appreciated it.”
                “Sure you did.  Now your mom is begging me to tell you that she asked her friend Alana to do a reading this morning and all the signs look good.”
                “Well, isn’t that a relief.”       
                Jake chuckles.  “Good luck.  And don’t forget to call us before you get back on the road.”
                “I