remember

Seven years ago I was riding my bike across Kirksville, Missouri to my dorm room. It was a Tuesday morning. The air was crisp, the sky was clear, and the town was just waking up.

I was 17. I had been a college student and celebrity waitress for about three weeks. I was settling in to this phase of life, and starting to really like it.

I leashed my chariot to the bike rack outside the dorm building: through the frame, through the front wheel, and through the metal bars of the rack. After a 30-minute ride, my legs were a little shaky as I turned my attention to three flights of stairs.

Just inside the building, at the bottom of the cold, cement stairwell, it was quiet. It's always quiet at the bottom of a stairwell in a college dorm early in the morning. I leaned over and glanced up, through the gap in the handrail. Clear. I shrugged my messenger bag to a more secure place on my shoulder, took a deep breath, and sprinted, two steps at a time, up to the third floor.

I was pretty early that morning. I'd have about 45 minutes to kill before I needed to be at Music Theory, and it was a short walk across campus. I'd found out too late that Music Performance is one of the two most curriculum-intense majors, but what else was I going to do? I had no idea, so I just kept playing piano.

After catching my breath and reviving my thighs, I pulled open the door to the south wing of the third floor of the my dorm, and something wafted out at me. It wasn't loud, but it certainly wasn't quiet. Not like the stairwell had been quiet. It was still, but not like the stillness of the early morning outside.

Doors to almost every room were standing open, which wouldn't have been uncommon except for the early hour. Doors were open, but no one was in the hallway. No one was hanging out of doorways. No one was yelling between rooms. A deafening hush clogged the hallway.

Mine was the fourth door on the right. As I walked, I peered. The first room was empty. In the second room, a half-dozen people were gathered around a television. The third room was empty.

My door was not open, but it wasn't locked either. I pushed it open, hesitant without knowing why. My roommate, Donna, was not there. She and the two girls we shared a bathroom with were sitting in silence in the next room, facing me as I walked through the suite, glued to their television.

I stood for a moment, trying to read their faces. Considering a question, or a greeting. Instead, I took a few steps forward and turned to see what they were watching.


What about you? Where were you?