part of zanders 27 page (literally) story about brown. this is why i love brown and the people there so much. and even though zander calls me accidentally we have long long talks about nothing and zander I LOVE YOU! but you will, most likely, be bored. Time passed and I didn’t see that Lizzie for quite a while. I met a few Nikkis, one had purple hair (“Other Nikki”), but was disgracefully drunk as she and Sammie took to his room and embarrassed themselves, but the other was far sharper. Russian Niki we called her because when her mom called her on her cell at random moments (even at 2 in the morning), she spoke to her in Russian and everyone would go quiet to listen, which made her blush and sneer at us as if this kind of thing happened every time she spoke to her mother. Sammie pointed out one night as we all sat in his room listening to his vast Byork collection that Russian Niki and I hated each other but this was not so. She was just quiet and I was just loud and we were sometimes spiteful of the other’s attitude. I do remember one adventure we had, though. Sammie’s room was always hot without that air conditioner and reminded me of the old Charleston houses I had toured in its uncomfortableness. Niki had a habit of going outside at random times “just to walk,” which bugged me because how could someone just walk away from all the fun the Diman kids were always having to walk in the grass? I mean, we would watch Jeopardy and cheer on Ken Jennings while we beat him with our combined mind powers. We would go down the street with the floor’s four guitarists and let our sound ring in the heady air for only a dollar every three hours. That’s how the Diman Guitar Horde made its name, and that’s how we ended up making our big-band rock group Wildfire. Karl had quite a voice, but I was louder and couldn’t play the guitar so I sang. He played acoustic, Jamie the tambourines, the RSG her electric, Fenstermacher the trash can in his room, Sammie his box of Lucky Charms (since it was essential to always have cereal in every room…just in case…), and Andrew had no musical talent so we gave him a broken guitar and he clapped his hands. I’m off track again. One night she left and I was getting bored too and wanted to see what she always did on her silly little walks so I set out after her. She begged me to go away but I stuck it out and found out it was just a walk, and like she said I did get bored. Another night, though, I walked out myself after a day at the beach and a failed sleepover with the people I swam in the ocean with and played tackle waffle ball with on the coast of Rhode Island. Feeling sour the night didn’t work out and I wasn’t invincible after all, I mellowed back down to Earth and found Niki walking around in the grass in the dark surrounded by drunks, punks, Frisbee throwers and talking lawnmowers. Now this is after the time I had slept over at Genna’s, and Genna was gone now since her time was a run over ours and she only had a week longer with us. Her roommate left a 50% cotton 50% polyester white blanket the RSG nicknamed Gandalf because sometimes when I was cold in the morning I would wear it like a cloak around the place and to class. As you might guess Genna gave it to me along with the roommate’s pillow, which much obliged me since I only had one and it was flat and made me sleep awkward at night. As I mentioned I was coming from a failed sleepover, which means I had Gandalf and my pillow with me when I found Niki. She was sitting, not walking (my mistake) and I spread the blanket because the grass gets wet after 11PM and her pants looked too nice to be washed over a silly thing as a lack of blanket to sit on in the grass. We sat on it and looked up into the heavens and she said “I’ll get my pillow” because I just looked so comfortable with mine behind my head and above my hands that she just had to get her own. She was really fast. Two minutes and she was up and down her dorm stairs and had her pillow…and her own blanket…and had even dragged some old mattress outside too. It was at this point I noticed Niki had the coolest hair around; dyed a natural looking red but cut so the bangs went down to her chin, but she had parted and cut out a middle section so she could see, but when she looked up or lied down you could only see her nose poking out between the coolest tuffs of hair. She set the mattress down and we stared at the stars then past the stars then through the stars and finally were going to fall asleep when Harry the Englishman (‘arry he said in his oh so sexy accent) and his two mates came onto our grass with a two liter bottle of coke but it sure didn’t look like coke. They smelled bad and even though I was a good friend of Harry when his mates lit up Niki and I ducked under her blanket because we were being poisoned and we knew it. They say down beside us and sang to us and told us bad jokes, but something caught their attention and for a split second they realized why they were on the green in the first place and it was so they could walk through it to get back to Diman (yes, ‘arry was a Diman man). So they left. Now I know what you’re thinking, but Niki and I slept like normal people sleep and she was on her mattress and I on my blanket three feet apart, and we watched the sun rise just like Lizzie and Shaggy-hair did, only it wasn’t romantic it was necessity because it woke us up and we made fun of it for that fact. She claims she didn’t sleep but being the omnipotent sleeper I got a good few hours in before we got up and went our separate ways. From that night on we had an understanding because we slept under the stars and nobody else did and we realized that I wasn’t always loud and she wasn’t always quiet and we were friends after all that.