The start of Us.

Hey you. Two simple words, and yet they were anything but that. They meant memories. They meant pain. Hope. Excitement. And, upon hearing them, it also meant a sort of happiness to her. To me, these two words also meant the beginning.

October 2004. First leadership camp of four.

It was my junior year in high school. I was preparing to attend the leadership camp that I had been waiting the whole summer for. The leadership camp was meant to help us find ourselves and develop leadership skills for life in college and beyond. For most of us, though, it was just a chance to spend a weekend away from the mundane city life. For a few of my friends and I, it was also a chance to maybe impress a girl here and there at camp.

About a week before the camp, I was horsing around with a group of friends during an after-school activity and suffered an injury to my mouth. It resulted in me losing 3 of my front teeth. This effectively meant I would not be attending this first leadership encampment. I was super disappointed that I would not be able to attend. And perhaps even more importantly, it was a major blow to my confidence. I just rolled with the punches, and settled on the fact that this would be my new reality and that I would just have to wait for the second encampment.

The first camp came and passed. My friends showed me the many pictures taken during the camp and mostly everyone exclaimed how fun and motivating it actually was. I was shown a picture of all the camp participants, and suddenly my eyes locked on to her. She was hidden behind a few others, but I could see her face popping out from behind. Her dark black hair flowed around her face, contouring it. I didn't bother to ask anyone who she was though. However, I did secretly hope that she would go to the second camp.

December 2004. Second leadership camp.

The second camp came speeding around the corner. I was dropped off by my parents at the bus pick-up site. As I walked up to the building we were to wait inside, affectionately called the HOP House, I saw a few of my friends standing outside laughing and talking amongst themselves. I quickly ran to greet them. After a few high-fives and fist bumps, we went inside the building to wait for the bus. As we went inside, I noticed all the duffle bags and backpacks were neatly lined and stacked inside to the left of the building. I walked over and set my bags down. After setting my bags down, I looked up to the scan the group of kids standing all around me and those further back in the building. They all seemed to be around my age, probably all high schoolers. This should be interesting, I thought to myself.

As I was scanning the crowd, I noticed a friend I had not greeted yet. He was talking to a girl who had her back turned to me. I walked up to him, and fist bumped him, being as careful as I could as to no interrupt their conversation. That failed, however, and the girl he was talking to quickly turned around and glanced at me, surprised by my presence behind her. As I was about to apologize, she and I locked eyes for a second. And then time seemed to have frozen for me. My mind was telling me to say something. Sorry. Hi. Hey. Anything. But I just froze. She was the girl I saw in the picture. Her black hair ran down the sides of her face contouring it, just like in that picture. My friend must've seen my freezing up and quickly introduced me to her.

"Uhh…this is my friend, Beever, that I told you about – the one who missed the first camp," he said.

"Oh – hey!" she exclaimed.

"Hey you," I replied.