My name is Dylan Cross, but my friends back in Idaho call me "Dill." The nickname started in third grade, when my classmates discovered my strange affinity for pickles. Every day, my lunch consisted of a peanut butter sandwich, a juice box and three massive pickles in a Ziploc bag. Mama never knew that I always traded my sandwich for an extra pickle or two from anyone willing to make a deal. Sam usually had an extra one or two for me, and she was more than happy to eat my sandwiches and snacks. It was a perfect arrangement.
But life moves on. Right after high school, I landed a scholarship to Queen's College in mechanical engineering. Now I'm a nineteen-year-old sophomore in my first month here, just doing my best to settle in. Everything's new--new city, new people, new rhythm--but I still keep a jar of pickles in my dorm fridge. Some things don't change. What does change is how much I miss my family and Sam. I also miss Dad, Jeb and little Gracie with those cute blonde pigtails. I even miss that old cow Daisy and that cute baby llama pops just bought for out travelling petting zoo. Maybe I don't miss waking up at five am to shovel cow shit or spending every weekend tending to the animals.
Queens College feels big and stale, and here I'm just a number in a sea of faces. I still haven't made any friends, and it seems like nobody wants to hang out with the scrawny boy from a small farm town. Back home, I was popular and funny--people knew me there and they loved me. Back in elementary and high school, the girls would giggle and blush whenever I joked around with them. They used to fuss over my straight blonde hair, my deep blue eyes, and the two dimples above my lips every time I laughed. I wish Sam was here and still trading pickles for peanut butter sandwiches while she listened to all my stupid jokes. I miss her big brown freckles, her curly red hair and that perfect smile of hers.
When Sam asked me to prom, I was ecstatic. Sam had been my crush she started third grade, and we'd grown up together since then. Our families lived just three farm lots apart and shared so many beautiful memories together. Sam was always at my house fussing over Gracie's pigtails and hanging out with Jeb up in the tree house I built with papa. Most of the time I would just hang back and try to be cool, not wanting to make it obvious how much I was into her. I would usually sit on the front porch swing, rocking back and forth until Sam finally came to talk me. It was all worth it, because Sam was one of the prettiest girls in school. She may have even been the prettiest girl in town. She knew it but she didn't act it at all. She wasn't like those upper-class city bimbos from town who hung around the sports jocks during our high school years. Those bimbos smoked like crazy, and they wore so much makeup you could barely see their faces. Sam was naturally beautiful. She didn't need to cake her face with layers and layers of makeup to make her look good.
On prom night, we were slow dancing and I decided to finally make a move. It was the last song of the night and I was nervous. We had both just turned eighteen, and she was prettier than ever. I had been staring into her pretty green eyes, and couldn't take my eyes of her sexy red lips all night. It was going to be a truly magical moment, and my heart was beating fast. It was a moment straight out of one of the romance films mama like to watch on TV. But instead of our lips meeting, something else happened. I leaned in closer but instead of the soft sensation of Sam's pretty soft pink lips, my lips smacked right into a huge and very wet and slimy. She'd had pulled it out of her purse, and discreetly tucked the pickle in between our lips at the very last second. We both laughed so hard that we fell right to the floor, and when we got up we smacked our heads together. I still have the scar on my forehead. Sadly, I never got to kiss her perfect lips. I was too embarrassed to try and make another move that night, and Sam was too shy.
That night was the last time I ever saw her.
It's a complete mystery what happened to Sam. I rang her doorbell the next morning, and there was no answer. After ringing it and least twenty times, I went around back and let myself in. The house was completely empty, and all their furniture was gone. Her dads F150 still sat in the driveway, and all the farm equipment was parked out back. Rufus wasn't barking and Sam's dad wasn't yelling at him to shut up. It looked like her whole family had just picked up and vanished in the middle of the night.
My parents had no answers. No one in town did. Rumors spread like wildfire. The Davis family at the end of road swore they saw a spaceship over their barn that night, but no one believed them. That's because they're a bunch of inbred whackos that drank so much moonshine they practically went blind. Who's going to believe a bunch of jibber-jabber from a family whose eyeballs move the wrong way? I almost believed them myself, but it was just too weird of a story.
That day, my pickle addiction disappeared. So did my confidence and my ability to talk to women. It was all lost when I lost Sam. Now, I spend most of my time studying science and running track to stay in shape. I guess I'm still searching for something--maybe for answers, maybe for that pretty curly-haired redheaded crush of mine.
My roommate Toby is very much the opposite of me. He's what they call the big man on campus, and he goes to every party. If there's a party, he's there and he's the life of that party. He dances until all hours of the night; he's often the DJ, the bartender and the promoter. Even his voice is contagious and seems to work to get the crowd going. He can also out drink anyone in the college, and he's quite proud of it. I've never been to any of the parties, but I always overhear the popular students talking about how messed up they got 'last night' or how much fun they had. He's tried inviting me, but I always lie and say I have to study for my exams. The truth is, I'm way ahead of my courses-I'm just a shy skinny farm boy who's afraid of what a party is. I don't how he manages to complete a single course the way he stumbles into the room at three-am almost every night. But he somehow has some of the best grades in his program.
He's as handsome as he is charismatic. Back home in Idaho, most us farm boys are strong but skinny. Up until know I had never seen a black man, never mind a as big as Toby. I guess that's what happens when you're from a tiny farm community. Toby is truly a monster of a man, and probably the biggest guy I've ever seen in my entire life. My guess is that he's probably around three hundred pounds of solid muscle.