~ Prologue ~

A TV screen flickered on in a darkened room.  At first it was just white snow, but then, a small, white arrow appeared, but only if you knew to look for it.  Then the screen illuminates black on the lone occupant in the room.

Suddenly, a blurry image of a yard occupied by young people appears, followed immediately by an auto-tracking bar, adjusting itself, and then vanishes behind the newly clear image.

The person holding the camera moved over to a table with a white plastic table cloth on it and confetti that had been seemingly randomly scattered, but upon closer inspection, it would become apparent that someone had taken each word confetti and flipped it so every single piece could be easily read.

Sitting at the table were three kinds, high school age.   An African-American boy, who was wearing a baseball cap and glasses playing with some sort of hand-held electronic device, was not really paying attention.  To his left, in the middle, a boy with long-ish black hair and blue eyes was looking at the camera, mortified.  To his left was a girl with long, brown, curly hair that was pulled back using two butterfly clips that looked antique. She was throwing something at someone off screen and was laughing.

A woman’s voice came floating around from behind the camera.  “Hey kids! Enjoying your party?”

Two on the end both said yes and smiled while the one in the middle just rolled his eyes, but couldn’t keep from smiling.

“Now, y’all are all going to the same college in the fall, isn’t that right?”

Another round of “yes”.

“And Danny, you and Blaine are going to be roommates, right?”

“Yes, mom.” Finally, the boy in the middle spoke.

“Now, Christine, have you picked out a roommate yet?”

The girl on the end started talking, “Well, I did the lottery system, and I just got the assignment. We’ve already talked and everything.   She sounds nice, and we seem to have similar tastes. We both thought it best to meet and to get down there before really deciding on how to decorate our dorm room.”

"Oh now boys, since you're roommates, have you decided how you're going to be decorating your room?"

The two boys gave each other a funny look, and then started laughing.

“Mrs. E., we’re boys, we don’t decorate anything…”

“Yeah, if anything, it’s going to be band posters and geek junk all over the place.”

“As long as you keep it clean.   Now, what are y’all going to be studying while down there?”

The girl went first.  “I’m going for an art or graphic design degree.   I haven’t entirely decided which one, but they are very similar, so I have some time to work it out.”

Then the boy on the other end spoke.   “I’m going for a computer science and computer programming double major.”

“I’m…un-declaring!”  Said the boy in the middle

“Danny… your friends all have chosen majors, why haven’t you?”

“Mooom.  We’ve talked about this.  Chris has been an artist all of her life and Blaine won’t put down his techno-junk for ten minutes.  What else were they going to do with their lives?   And I don’t really want to talk about it on camera.   I promise I’ll have a better grasp of things when I come home for Christmas.”

“Alrighty. Well, I’ll let you three get back to your party… Any last words for us?”

Then all three in unison said “GO DALTON U!”

Then the camera turned off and the TV went back to snow, casting a strange shadow on the sole occupant of the room, who had started crying.

She was going to miss her boy…