I barely even remember my junior prom. One of my friends from school was going with one of the male counselors from camp. I had known him from working there, and she had met him after coming down as a camper for high school week. They came by and picked me up. I hadn’t even planned to go, but decided at the last minute that I guess I would. At the thrift store I’d found a used and decent forest green dress for nine dollars.

After freshman and sophomore year, I pretty much thought school dances were stupid. If I went to dances, I didn’t go with dates. I went with friends. One of the exceptions to this was the time I went with one of the boys in our youth group. Our youth group was small, consisting of me, my two sisters, the friend I went to junior prom with, our next-door neighbor, and three to four boys. He sadly ended up taking his own life several years later.

Phil never asked me to any dances. I never understood this. We had just started going out before I left for camp my first summer. I don’t remember how that dissolved, except that I became part of completely different world. I fell for the first college male that I saw, who I hoped could be the one I was destined to marry. That same year there was another guy who female staff didn’t like in that way. I didn’t understand this either.

Humans can be quite shallow at times. He often seemed to me to be more spiritual than the others. He also played the guitar, which made me wonder if he was perhaps the one I was supposed to marry. I was only at camp for the last half of the summer, but during that time we’d stay up in the dining hall, holding hands and praying together on a semi-regular basis. For the final staff get together of the summer, I chose his car.

When camp was over, whenever we’d talk on the phone, he’d sometimes tell me about the less than godly things he’d done in his life. He too was from a larger Christian family, which made his confessions all the more puzzling. When my dad had a possible job transfer in the state where this young college man was living, I thought maybe this was a sign that God was bringing us closer together. Our family didn’t end up moving.

He came down one weekend and picked me up. He was visiting a friend at Illinois State. I followed him into the co-ed dorm, one of those sin-infested places of fornication and debauchery. I don’t even remember what happened there, other than that I wasn’t enjoying myself and wanted to go home. He took me home and those days were over. I later decided that it hadn’t been worth getting my braces off half a year early for him.