Abby
I looked at the college with a dramatic sigh. Standing in the shade of a nearby tree, I was waiting for Seth, the guy who my friend back home knew. We'd agreed to meet here around the start of orientation, which began about five minutes ago.
Sticking my thumbs in my back pockets, I lent against the tree, glancing around.
Kate had been around for a few days now, and I'm assuming she's a tiny bit more relaxed than she had been previously. I could tell she wasn't completely at ease, I don't think anyone could be in her situation, but at least Sawyer liked her.
The cat Sawyer, anyway. If it had been human Sawyer I was talking about, I'm sure I wouldn't be wasting my time at an orientation that I don't even need to go to. Or want to, for that matter.
Speaking of which, I noticed someone waving at me.
"Seth, I assume?" I asked the guy.
He laughed. "That depends. Are you Abby?"
"Yepp, you're Seth." I said more to myself then anyone. He gave off a smile and we headed towards the front doors.
We heard the usual talk you'd expect to hear from the college people: where they lived, what they plan on majoring in, whether or not they were excited to get away from their parents…kinda like high school.
"Soo, you're from Illinois, huh?"
"What?" I turned to look at Seth. "Oh, yeah. How bout you?"
"I've lived here since about tenth grade. Used to live back in Illinois, though," he clarified. "That's how I know Kyle."
Kyle, meaning my friend who knew Seth and was the reason I now knew Seth, he means.
We walked in silence for awhile, which wasn't all too weird seeing as I barely knew the guy anyways. But I turned to him suddenly.
"Hey, did we go to the same school? At any time?"
Seth grinned. "No, we didn't. We met once, though."
My eyes widened, and I turned to face him. "What? When?"
Seth shrugged. "I dunno, maybe it was ninth grade? One of your friends had a party, invited Kyle, who brought me. We only talked for maybe five minutes."
I let out a sigh of relief. I didn't want to be rude, if we'd met and became those short-term friends and then having him completely remember me and I totally forgot him. "Okay, good. No offense, but I don't really remember those five minutes."
Laughter followed my comment, and we continued walking, because we'd apparently stopped at my questioning.
"So, you're here to do…?" He trailed off.
"Well," I shrugged. "I love writing. It's probably gonna be a big part of my life. So something with that, I guess."
He nodded. "And your minor?"
"I dunno. I need something realistic for me, y'know? Like I love to learn about medical things, but, realistically speaking, I'm not even gonna try to be a nurse. Much as I like to learn about it, and I'm not squeamish in the least, it's not the place for me to be. What are you planning?"
I was talking too much.
Seth looked thoughtful for a moment, and then he scratched the back of his head in thought.
"My goal is to be a firefighter. Every kids dream at the age of ten, but here I am still hoping to be a fireman," he added, looking kind of sheepish.
"That, is pretty awesome." I looked at him with respect. "We are so staying in touch through out life, mmk? Firemen are awesome."
Seth laughed and nodded.
A little while later, after we'd exchanged numbers and walked around our new school for a bit, Seth and I made our way back outside. We ended up back by the tree I'd been at earlier, but there was a big crowd with some security here and there, talking to what looked like parents.
"By the way," I started, sitting down with my back against the tree. "Are you living on campus or what?"
"Nah, I'm off campus, like a block up the road. I live with my older brother, so."
I nodded. "Yeah, I live with my cousin."
After a few more minutes, mainly of me just watching all the cops roam around, I heard Seth take a breath as if to speak.
"Sooo…I'm assuming you like to read?"
"Of course! I love to read."
"Favorite book?"
I pondered for a minute. "Too many to say, though I'm in love with Harry Potter."
"Favorite TV show?"
"What is this? Twenty questions?" I demanded with a laugh.
He shrugged. "Sorta."
"Well. I absolutely love Lost, and always will. But since that ended, and really badly I must say, my new favorite is NCIS: Los Angeles. You watch it?"
He shook his head. "Not into those cop shows. Okay, favorite food?"
"Besides cookies? Chicken alfredo."
"Animal."
"Panda. And if they were real, dragons."
"Color?"
"Purple!"
This went on for a while. Sometimes I asked the questions, but a lot of the times, Seth asked them. It didn't matter, he liked a lot of the things I liked. He watched USA - the channel - all the time, same as me. Could quote any movie he'd ever watched, also like I could.
"Did you ever have an imaginary friend?"
"Psch. I still do. His name's Zack." I laughed. "My friend Emily had - or, has - one too. Her name is Wanda. and in seventh grade we decided that Zack and Wanda got married and ran off to Hawaii."
Seth gave me a look, one that I commonly got that says 'okay, you're weird'. But I just laughed some more.
"So," I asked this time. "My favorite movie is a tie between Resident Evil: Extinction, My Girl. Or quite possibly Pandorum. I dunno, I have a ton of favorite movies. But! What's yours?"
"I'd have to say-"
He stopped talking, but I barely registered that. My mouth had dropped open in utter disbelief, and I was inches away from jumping up.
"What? Hey, Abby. What's up?" Seth poked me.
"Um…I think…hey did you ever watch Lost? Ever?"
"Maybe once. I couldn't figure it out so I stopped."
Yeah, cause you probably tried to start watching in the middle of season two, like everyone else who doesn't like it tried, I thought to myself.
Which was sad, because when you compared it to the later seasons, season two was one of the good ones. But if he hadn't started at the beginning and hadn't watched every episode, it would be hard to follow.
"Well, did you ever…" I took a deep breath, partly for air and partly to give myself a chance to think so I would seem at least somewhat coherent. "I mean, do you know the people in it? Like would you know one of them if you saw one? In a magazine, I mean."
Seth scratched his head again, giving me a weird look.
"Well…there was that bald guy. Had like a historical name, I remember that much. Then there was the chick with the baby. I could probably pick her out in a crowd."
"Anyone else?"
"The black kid? Maybe."
I nodded to myself. "Mmmk…just wondering. Hey, I have to make a phone call, so I'll be right back."
I walked away a good distance, squinting at the crowd of people while pulling out my cell.
I waited, and listened to the ring.
"Abby? Why are you calling? You didn't get arrested, did you!" Sarah's voice cut through my phone and into my ear.
"Don't I wish I got arrested…Sarah, you're never gonna believe this."
"What? Tell me you didn't get in trouble, you haven't even started college yet! You're parents are gonna freak, Abby-"
"No! No, I'm not in trouble, though thanks for thinking I was. But…okay, so here I am, at orientation, right? And I'm just sittin' here talking, whatever. And then it's like BAM! I look up, and there's some cops or whatever walkin around, y'know, just being there but! Believe it or not, I just saw the hottest cop in the universe."
Long silence. Then, "Abby, you called me…to tell me you saw a hot cop? Is that what you're saying?"
I slapped a palm to my forehead. "Sarah, you being you, I'm surprised you don't get it."
"What? Did he threaten to give you a ticket?"
Sarah's kind of anti cops. Or at least afraid of them. She got pulled over a few times, but it was always for something minor like driving too slowly or stopping too long at a stop sign. Never got a ticket in her life, though. She probably looks so scared when they see her that they think it's a sixteen year old who's been driving on their own for the first time.
Anyway.
"Someone you know! Someone we both know, both love, and someone we both want to be with Kate!"
There was silence on the other end of the conversation. I heard a bang and wondered if she had dropped something. Before I could ask, though, she began to speak in this freaky high pitched voice she uses when she's super excited about something. Not like hey I got an A on a hard test, but when she found out she got her job here and the salary was more than twice what she had been making back in Pennsylvania. She used that voice when I told her I got into my choice of schools in California, and then when I told her that my parents agreed that I could live with her.
"Are you sure? You're not just over-anxious to be at college that you're freaking out and seeing things? You're positive?"
I held the phone a few inches away from my ear. "Sarah, I'm sure! I would know this anywhere, anytime of my life!"
"Just to be sure…you're telling me that you saw, or you're looking at, because no doubt you can't take your eyes off—and I will kill you if you are wrong or playing some kind of a prank—"
"Sarah!" I practically yelled.
She shut up.
"It was him. I swear on my life, on your life, on your cat's life, on my dog's life. I just saw Sawyer!"
Sarah
I was washing the dishes when Abby called with the news about Sawyer being one of the cops to visit her school and discuss Red Zone with the students during orientation.
Or, to be more accurate, scare the students about Red Zone so that they'd never leave campus without at least a few girl friends and guy friends to escort you.
See, Red Zone is the most dangerous time of the year for freshmen because their chances of being sexually assaulted are the largest then. They go to fraternity parties, drink a few glasses of alcohol (or what they think is alcohol—it could be laced with drugs), and then rely on a guy they just met to take them home. Next day, they find that they have no memory of the previous night, and later find out they were raped and drugged.
By that cute guy they met at the party.
I honestly don't know how effective the Red Zone training is. I guess awareness is better than lack of awareness, and it could stop some people from being raped and drugged, but honestly, some people just won't listen no matter how many times you tell them to be careful.
Not that I'm speaking from experience. I was the quiet girl who never went to frat parties, never drank alcohol, and lived in the all female dorm throughout her four years of college. The girl who's never experienced a hangover or pulled an all-nighter because she's too cautious.
Some people would say I missed a lot of the college experience, but I'd say that I ended up with a 3.9 GPA and a part time job with benefits—only a few months after to become full time thanks to hard work, people quitting for family reasons, and a good business relationship with my boss—exactly a month after graduation.
Truthfully, though, I definitely missed out on a lot of the social experiences, so while I wasn't going to encourage Abby to attend frat parties and hook up with random guys, I hoped that she wouldn't let classes completely take over her life.
Which is the same message she got from her parents and is the same perspective that I think she has on things. Even though we're protecting a wanted criminal, even though I know she's innocent, she still has parents to please on the grades frontier.
I was actually lucky to be home when Abby called. Usually, I work until around 5:30 and get home around 6. Recently, however, the cataloging has been pretty minimal because even though we're ordering new books (my main focus), they haven't arrived yet and probably won't for the next two weeks. A lot of the stuff the acquisitions librarians ordered was on backorder, which means it will arrive eventually, but right now it's either out of print or too many people want it.
That day, I was finished all my work before 2PM, and after checking with other departments to see if they could use an extra hand (they couldn't—all of the catalogers were in the same boat and for the first time in the three years I had been there, there was not enough work for our staff to do), the head of my department basically told me to go home for the day.
So, I was finishing up the dishes around 3:30, when Abby called with the Sawyer news.
Of course, even I reacted the way a screaming fan girl typically reacts to such important news, in retrospect it seemed kind of obvious. We were clearly living in some variation of the alt timeline in Lost. Not that everyone was dead, this time, but the plane must have landed okay, so everyone got off in LA. Seeing Kate at the airport meant that Sawyer had been there too. Which meant that he was either visiting LA or lived there. And since he was at Abby's school for the Red Zone program, he must be a cop.
Hadn't we wondered if he had helped Kate escape shortly before we found her? Granted, our finding her may have prevented Sawyer from helping her, but hey, they still could have met on the plane. Or even earlier. We were living in an alt timeline, which basically means that anything goes.
I knew how Lost had ended and, like the rest of the Skaters, had felt a mixture of hate, betrayal, a desire to get rid of all of my Lost DVDs, and a tiny bit of acceptance because at least Sawyer and Kate made it off the island alive, even if they weren't "destined" to be together.
I rarely swear, but to that I say, "Bull."
The writers became idiots, or succumbed to the jate and suliet (I wouldn't even capitalize those ships) temptation, or maybe were possessed by the smoke monster as they were writing the finale.
Skate is fate, period. Anyone who thought otherwise was misguided at best, and a blithering idiot at worse.
I tended to get worked up about this.
Anyway, now Sawyer and Kate were in the same town. Abby had some kind of access to Sawyer. She needed money for school, so maybe she could work in the campus safety department. If Sawyer worked directly with the school. I'd have to pick her brain later to find out what she knew. If Sawyer remembered anything. If Kate remembered anything.
How to get Jack and Juliet together. Because judging from Sawyer's reaction to Juliet's death at the end of season five, and Kate's reaction to Jack's death at the season finale, killing them was not only wrong, it would be counter productive.
I had a lot to discuss with Abby when she came home that night. We'd have to go out to eat so that Kate wouldn't hear us.
Well, I had promised to take Abby to IHOP…
