I’ve been working on a Berkeley story for some time now. This is in quite a different shape from where I first started, and will continue to change as I develop the characters to be more interesting, the plot to be more exciting, and to create a description of Berkeley that is equal parts as I remember it and as how I would like it to be remembered.
Part 1: Freja
“Alright, for the rest of class, meet with your project partners and discuss your final presentations,” the Graduate Student Instructor said with a nod. For all intents and purposes, class was over.
Freja and Greta moved their desks closer together.
“I’m going to be honest, I haven’t done any work on this.” Freja whispered, closing her notebook. “My econometrics midterm is next Tuesday,”
“We have two weeks until this thing is due. We’ll be fine. Like always.” Greta also closed her notebook. “More importantly, today is the day we meet your future brother in law.”
Freja snorted. “Yep, I’m meeting Seth right after class at Raleigh’s”
“The high schoolers are meeting at a bar?”
“It’s a family friendly pub,” Freja shrugged, “Those little nerds are probably just playing cornhole and sharing fries while comparing SAT scores”
“I want to come with you so badly. Too bad I can’t skip chem lab”
“Your one absence per semester is not worth wasting on Seth Cohen. Trust me.”
“It’s not about him, it’s about the story” Greta countered. “And anything is better than being stuck in that room for four hours, smelling ethyl alcohol and sweating through a lab coat”
“Seth Cohen was a moody rich kid who ironically smoked cigarettes and read Ayn Rand at pool parties. I’d rather sweat it out in your chem lab than show him around campus.”
“How do you ironically smoke a cigarette?”
“Every teenage dirtbag has their weird quirks, I guess.”
“Which makes them all the same,” Greta replied with a dramatic sigh.
The TA dismissed class, and the girls gathered their things.
“So what else do you know about this guy?” Greta asked as she pushed in her chair. “Besides the fact that he’s ironically going to get lung cancer?”
“He’s not on social media—I checked the usual accounts and did an online search” They pushed open the double-doors of Dwinelle Hall and ended up in a courtyard swarming with students.
“The only thing I really remember him doing is brooding in the darkroom during photography” Freja re-adjusted her backpack. “I don’t think he ever actually spoke.”
Greta changed the subject to the DelPhi party happening that evening. Neither of them would go, of course, but they traded rumors on what was supposed to happen that evening. The frat had a volleyball court out front and a trampoline in the back—a guaranteed recipe for disaster.
They lingered and enjoyed the spring weather for a bit before they parted ways: Greta up the hill to the chemistry buildings, and Freja down Telegraph Avenue to Raleigh’s.
While she got her ID checked, Freja glanced around the pub, looking for the event. She saw the scholarship social was happening on the back patio, which had fire pits, lawn games, and a separate bar counter from the one inside. Today, the area was cordoned off with a sign that said “Closed for Private Event.”
Freja stepped back inside, ordered a Belgian tripel, and texted Seth that she would be waiting inside, underneath a painting of a village covered in powdery snow.
About ¾ of the way through her beer and thoroughly engrossed in her novel, Freja heard her name. She looked up and was met with a pair of shining blue eyes peeking out from underneath thick, black, bushy brows.
“Seth,” Freja said, closing her book. He looked markedly different from how she remembered him: his face was less sharp and bony, his skin was tanner, his slouch was less of a stoop. Overall he looked much healthier, like someone had snatched him from death’s doors and shown him how to live.
She tried her best to hide her surprise. “How was the mixer?”
“Fantastic,” he said with a grin. Even his eyes seemed different: the garish headlights had calmed into icy pools of glacial melt. He plopped down on the bench across from her.
When Freja last saw Seth, nothing was fantastic. He hated everything, even his friends; and Freja didn’t blame him—his friends sucked.
“Well, I’m glad to hear you’re having such a great time,” Freja said, taking a last sip of her beer. “Are you ready to hear about how great Berkeley is?”
“I actually think I got enough of that from the Dean.”
“Well, did he tell you that Cal is the #1 public university in the world?”
“That came up a couple times,” Seth said with a laugh. Freja studied the way it warmed the contours of his face. The expression would have been totally incongruous with the old Seth’s trademark perpetual frown.
They walked out the door and back up Telegraph Avenue, towards campus.
“This,” Freja said, gesturing around her, “is the historic Telegraph Avenue. Home to only one, sad little grocery store—but at least five boba tea shops”
“And two dispensaries,” Seth added.
“Another one of the Dean’s fun facts?”
“No, just an observation from a prospective student,” Seth said with a grin. Feeling the buzz from the Tripel, Freja returned his smile maybe a bit too widely. As they waited to cross the street to enter campus, Freja pointed at a white building across the street.
“That’s the MLK Student Union. For some reason, they let just anybody walk in there and hang around.” She turned to Seth. “Keep an eye on your stuff. Someone I know once got their shit stolen.”
Seth raised an eyebrow. “Are you talking about yourself?” Freja made a non-committal noise as the traffic signal turned green, and they crossed Bancroft Avenue to enter Sproul Plaza.
The sky was still clear and cloudless. They walked through the Plaza and past the Golden Bear Café, dodging aggressive students flyering for clubs and events. After passing through the iconic Sather Gate, most of them thinned out. The rest of campus was relatively empty, as was typical for a Friday evening. They veered left, away from Dwinelle’s courtyard, where Freja had class only a few hours before.
“This is Wheeler, home to the largest lecture hall on campus” Freja gestured. “The bathrooms in there look like the ones Moaning Myrtle haunted in Harry Potter.”
“Can we take a look?”
Freja frowned. “I think they lock it up over the weekend. We can circle back,” she said, not wanting to walk up three flights of stairs. And then there was the off chance she’d run into someone and have to explain why exactly she was sneaking a high school boy into the ladies’ room.
Pushing away the ridiculous image of that implication—and making a note to stay away from Tripels on an empty stomach—Freja suggested: “Let’s go further into campus.”
They climbed up the little hills, passing by the Life Sciences buildings. This prompted Freja to tell Seth horror stories from Greta’s pre-med experiences: impossible practicals, dissecting pregnant rats, and labs where they were forced to fight over beans.
“Beans?”
“Yeah. The TA’s would dump a pile of dried beans into the grass and make the students fight over them.” Seth just stared at her, wide-eyed. “To model predator-prey cycles or something.”
“You’re not really selling the school here, Freja”
“Hey—Greta grew from the experience. She’s a stronger and smarter woman because of it.”
“Because she fought with other adults, in the grass, over some dried beans.”
“You’ve seen Survivor?” Freja asked. Seth nodded. “Berkeley is a lot like that. You’ll suffer, but it builds character”
They looped back around past the Free Speech Movement Café and Moffit Library.
“It’s open twenty four hours?” Seth asked incredulously. “Why would anyone need access to a 24-hour library?”
“Here at the University of California, Berkeley, the learning never stops”
The rest of the tour followed this pattern: As they passed a new area on campus, Freja shared a related memory or bit of campus lore. She pointed out the hidden Bears on campus and her favorite places to read: Ishi Court, the Morrison Reading Room, and the shaded grass of Faculty Glade.
“So, we have this tower called the Campanile,” Freja said, gesturing to the large clock tower. “It’s home to some roosting falcons and hundreds of thousands of fossils.” They stood for a few moments looking at it. “And, oh yeah—our tower is bigger than Stanford’s.”
“Everything’s bigger in Berkeley, huh?” Seth asked with a grin. She smiled back; and instead of giving him a trademark snappy reply, she found herself at a loss for words.
Absolutely no more Tripels, Freja thought to herself.
They walked up one final hill, up to the chemistry buildings. They could hear some rock music coming from the Greek theater as they made their way back to the South side of campus. Seth continued to ask Freja questions about the school, her classes, her friends—he asked about things so ordinary to her now but so alien to high school life, like experimenting on dining hall food to make it more edible or needing a professional resumé to apply for on-campus organizations.
Freja and Seth cut through the business school and, pretending to be first-year MBA students, swiped some food from a corporate recruiting event. They took their plates loaded with finger foods to the tables outside Boalt Hall. Kroeber Fountain, Strada Café, and the undergrads making their way to Frat Row were all in plain view.
“Alright, we’ve reached the end of the official campus tour, but we have the option to extend the it” Seth raised his eyebrows. “Would you like to see my freshman year dorm?”
“Only if I get to hear some embarrassing stories while we’re there,”
“Lucky for me those walls don’t talk,” Freja said between munches of carrots. “But I’ll do my best to entertain you”
“Then make sure they’re embarrassing stories.”
“Well, you’ve behaved yourself this far, I guess you deserve it,” she replied with a shrug.
Seth and Freja walked the block off campus and to Unit 1, a collection of six dorm buildings including Putnam Hall, where Freja used to live.
As they wandered, Freja told Seth stories about her freshman year, carefully picking and choosing memories that would entertain him but not make her seem too stupid or childish or weak or idiotic. Freja found herself reading his face while he listened, calibrating her cadence and fine-tuning her delivery according to an eyebrow raise or a half-smile. She also found herself ignoring why her brain was doing these things—it wasn’t a conscious decision to care so much, what he thought of her: she just did.
And there was nothing really wrong with that, was there?
After doing a lap around the courtyard, Freja and Seth tailgated into one of the buildings and walked through the floors. In true dorm fashion, people left their doors propped open. They saw glimpses into people’s lives: studying, flirting, smoking, gambling, crammed on the bottom bunk watching sports or movies…
Each room had a similar layout but was decorated so differently. By the time they reached the eighth floor, Freja and Seth had chatted with at least twenty freshmen who seemed to have nothing in common save for the building they lived in and a desire to get to know one another better.
Exhausted, Freja and Seth called for the elevator. When they stepped inside, Seth sniffed,
“Does it smell like…”
“Vomit?” Freja shrugged. “That is something you’re gonna have to get used to—if not yours, you’ll be no stranger to other peoples’”
“Have you ever—” Seth paused. “You know, thrown up in the elevator?”
“I’m honestly offended you even asked,” Freja scoffed. The doors opened on the first floor, “but since you did, yes—Halloween last year”
Seth laughed, and she found herself thinking: was that a laugh-at-me laugh or a laugh-with-me laugh? Freja couldn’t tell whether she was oversharing, not just in this conversation, but the entire day. But did it even matter what this high school senior thought of her college experience? Or her jokes? Or the fact that she threw up in the elevator dressed as a Pokémon trainer? Luckily, she had the good sense to leave her Halloween costume out of that story.
The point is, none of this should matter. She’s just a college sophomore giving a prospective student a campus tour. So why did she second-guess everything that came out of her mouth the second she heard her words out loud?
They plopped down on the courtyard grass in front of the bike racks. The last of the sun was disappearing, and the flood lights shone overhead, bathing them in a stark, artificial glow.
They sat in silence for a few moments. It wasn’t awkward, and there were enough people to watch that it counted as an activity. She glanced at Seth. He was staring off into space, his thin lips in a line reminiscent of the old Seth.
“What are you thinking about?” Freja ventured.
“The people we met in the dorms,” Seth replied. “When we talked to them, I saw all the different potential versions of myself.” He ran his fingers through his hair, “At the risk of sounding like a complete cliché, I just—don’t know how I’m supposed to make a decision on where I’m going to school when I don’t even know who I want to be.”
Freja considered this.
“Well, that starts with making the small choices—choices that include where you want to go to college and what you want to study.” She shifted her position to face him. “When you reflect on the decisions you make, you’ll have a better idea of who you are.”
“Well, I know enough about myself to know I want to change,” he said with a short laugh.
“For what it’s worth, you seem to be making the right kinds of changes.” She paused. “Especially since I last saw you in high school.”
Seth groaned. “I was hoping you had no memory of who I was back then.”
“But now I appreciate the person you’ve become,” Freja countered. Appreciating it maybe a little too much, she thought to herself. “And that was only two years ago”
“The change has its roots in something… not-so-great,” Seth confessed. “But now that I am no longer a chronically depressed asshole ….” he let his thought go unfinished and made a noncommittal gesture with his hands.
“You have to figure out where to go next,” Freja said softly.
Seth looked at her with a peculiar gaze. When Freja thought back on it, she could only describe it as him seeing her instead of just looking at her. But in that moment, Freja was bombarded with a sudden awareness: aware of not only how Seth had changed in her absence but of how she was changing in his presence—her flushed cheeks, sweating hands, and the feeling of being kicked in the stomach. In hindsight, she knew she was holding this in for hours; but in the darkness and quiet of the courtyard, with nothing to distract her but her thoughts and his words, she finally allowed herself to feel it.
After a few moments of peaceful silence, Freja asked:
“What now?”
“I have some more thinking to do,” Seth replied. “I’ll go for a walk through campus.”
“Alright,” Freja said, getting up. “I should probably go to bed. I can give you my keys right before I head inside.” The walk to Freja’s apartment was about ten minutes long. They chatted about nothing in particular, watching the passers by who were having very different Friday nights from the two of them. “I’ll probably be asleep within two hours, but I’ll leave my ringer on just in case,” Freja said when they were on her doorstep, handing him her keys.
“Alright, I’ll see you later,” Seth said, clipping the keys to his belt. “Thanks,” he smiled. Freja smiled back. “Have a good night, Seth.”
He disappeared into the darkness of the street before them. It was good he was getting out of here. Her mind was starting to fog up.
–
Freja awoke in the middle of the night. She had a dream that she was falling, and when she woke up, it felt as if she had fallen both up and down onto her bed. As she came to, she heard the muffled noises of a party next door.
She checked her watch: 12:07 AM. She got up for a glass of water. On her way back from the kitchen, she checked to see that the door was locked. When she re-entered the living room, she realized something was amiss. The pillow and blanket she laid out for Seth remained neatly folded like she left them on the sofa. It took a little longer for the realization to hit her half-asleep brain:
Seth never came back to the apartment.
She checked her phone: no missed calls or texts. He’s probably still on his existential walk, Freja thought. Midnight isn’t even really that late. She called him, and his phone went straight to voicemail. She tried a few more times—there was no getting around it—his phone was dead.
Freja could feel her palms start to sweat. There was only one thing left to do.
This Week’s Top Three
- I started making pour over coffee ☕️
- I’ve always wanted a girlie cover of “Teenage Dirtbag” and here we are 💓
- Say Nothing 🤫