Pilot
1X01
Jeff flopped down in front of his computer, clicking open his email. There were six new messages. Two were junk mail, one was from Libby, his new girlfriend, one was from a professor, and the final two were from his friends. Jeff scanned through the email addresses, looking for one in particular, but knowing he wouldn't find it. He hadn't heard from Sam in almost a year.
At first, Jeff thought it was a good idea for Sam to leave college. Jess was the love of his life, the woman he planned on marrying, and now she was dead. It made sense for him to get out of town and take some time to deal. Jeff had found it a little strange that he had chosen to go on this road trip with his brother, a guy who Sam had mentioned only once since Jeff had known him. But still, the guy was there when Sam needed him and he was family.
That first year, he talked to Sam over email and instant messenger all the time. He sounded like he was having a good time with his brother, though he clearly missed college. Every email was full of questions about how everyone at Stanford was doing, what kind of classes we were taking, which of his favorite professors were going on sabbatical, etc. Jeff expected Sam to head back to Stanford any day, but he never did.
Then, during his second year away, the emails started to slow down. Instead of getting an email every few days, he got one or two a month. The letters also stopped asking so many questions about school. He still wanted to know what was going on with his friends, but that was it. This was when Jeff started to wonder whether he would be coming back. He had heard some statistic once about the odds of a student quitting school for more than a year and then coming back. He couldn't remember the exact numbers, but he remembered that the odds weren't good.
The next year, he got even fewer emails. About once a month, one of Sam's emails would pop into Jeff's inbox. They were short. No more stories about the crazy truck stop waitresses. No more stories about the amazing scenery, or even the lack there of. No more questions about anybody else. The emails felt more routine, like Sam was preoccupied and only writing because it was something he had always done.
Then the emails stopped. Jeff had sent dozens of emails to Sam, trying to figure out what was going on. Did he just forget to mention that he had changed his email address? Did he find some other college to go to, make a lot of friends, and decide he didn't need to keep in touch with his old friends anymore? Did he die in some horrible car crash? Whatever was going on, Jeff was sure it wasn't intentional. He knew Sam, and he wasn't the kind of guy to just ignore or abandon his friends. Of course, sometimes Jeff wished that Sam was capable of doing that. He wished he could make himself believe that this was intentional, because the fact that this was unintentional opened up a wide range of tragic possibilities.
Jeff sighed, running his hands over his short, curly hair. He had already lost one of his best friends in that fire four years ago. Now it looked like he had lost the other.
(Disclaimer: Supernatural belongs to Kripke and crew, not me.)
