It all started with a need to just get away. It didn't really matter where I was going to go or what I would do, but my roommate and I decided that our little dormitory wasn't doing such a great job at handling the great quantity of girls and energy that had been forced upon it.



Millie* and I left the house and walked. We discussed with some amazement that we had been living in this neighborhood for almost half a year and we barely knew it. So we decided we were on a mission to discover, we were going to be Marco Polos and see what our area had in store.


After wandering for a few minutes, we found it. We advanced upon it with a silent awe which matched the the quiet peace that the place held. It was a small pond off of a dead end street we had been walking on. We didn't realize that it was also off of a fairly busy road, but I don't think even that would have marred our joy and excitement at discovering it. We named it Location X and it became a symbol of what we had set out to do that afternoon. It was a place to get away and let our inner-artists overwhelm us. It was a place to study, paint, write, or even just think.



The two of us decided to share Location X with the other dorm girls, we felt that they also needed an 'escape-zone', but under no circumstances did we share it with our dorm counselors. We all hated them, well most of us did anyway, and if there were any people that we didn't want in our happy place, they were it.


Millie and I walked to Location X everyday. Millie is a writer like me, and writing demands a vivid imagination. On the way we imagined things that nobody else could, rocks turned into dogs and branches took on the form of a mini giraffe. The route to Location X became filled with the homes of murderers, thieves, and counterfeiters. We had an explanation for everything, anything that was out of place, or any person that we saw was somehow loaded into our already overstuffed storyline.


There was an unassuming green minivan that was parked in the parking-lot next to the pond almost every day that we came. It was always around the same time too, and very often there was a person seated in it. Rather than look for a simple explanation, which I'm quite sure there was, Millie and I settled for something much more dramatic. It was obvious, was it not? He was a drug dealer and he came here to meet his customers. The mailbox that we saw on our way that had been bent and smashed was not that way for natural reasons. The man who lived next door to the other man who made counterfeit money had anger management issues. He was possibly a customer of the man with the green minivan as well and he got angry because a deal didn't go through. How simple! I guess that's what people with no lives do, make up exciting stories about other people who do.


Now it's the summer time and I can't wait to go back to high school. Yes, you may gasp. I'm sure that throughout this whole story you must have thought I was in college. Nope, I'm going to be a junior next year. Most people dread high school and hate it, they are the years of your life that you very well may want to erase from your memory. I'm not so sure about the school part, but I sure can't wait to see what Location X has to share with me.