This month’s theme is “states,” so each writer picked an American state as their topic. My chosen state is Wisconsin, because that’ll be this post’s endpoint, but like the title says, this is actually about three states: Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin.

It’s also about one person in particular. I’ve frequently mentioned and written a post about my best friend Brooke, but I said last May that I have five people I call my best friends. The story of how I know one of them spans three states, starting in…

Indiana

At my high school, we did “design challenges” the first week. Students in small groups brainstormed a solution to a problem, like trying to make a catcher for a falling carton of eggs that would keep the eggs intact (I can’t remember if my group succeeded) or came up with inventions. One year, my group thought up an assistant robot for the elderly with a built-in shotgun for personal defense. Another year, we drew schematics for a self-cleaning kennel, complete with complementary protective gloves for those with clawed/taloned animals like rabbits or birds of prey.

Junior year, our design challenge wasn’t speculative: we’d be brainstorming our own class trip. My group put our heads together and concluded: we were juniors, with college on the horizon, so we’d make it a college trip. Where’s somewhere with a lot of colleges? Indiana! We picked a couple of colleges—Ball State, Purdue and others I’ve forgotten—and then went looking for stuff to do. We didn’t want to spend all our time on the college visits, after all. What did we find to do?

Nothing. We said as much when we presented our plan.

I didn’t go on the junior trip due to lack of funds—get a job in high school, kids—nor do I remember the destination, but for years afterward, any time I heard ‘Indiana’, I’d mention the yawning void of things to do there.

Unbeknownst to me, had my group’s plans been accepted by the trip planners and had I gone, there was a chance, however miniscule in a state of almost seven million, that I would’ve had my first encounter with one Kalina “Kali” Reese.

Michigan

Due to it being almost a decade in the past, the sheer number of first meetings I had, and large chunks of that year being time I’d rather not reminisce on, I can’t remember the exact time I met Kali or a lot of those fluff moments that form a friendship’s foundation. Here’s what I do recall.

I remember sitting shoulder to shoulder with Kali early in the year, enjoying the spoils of a Taco Bell run. I remember studying in her room one Sunday afternoon, and by “studying,” I mean “falling asleep on her couch with Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy open in my lap.” Kali was an academic help ambassador (AHA) in the dorm, so she ran a weekly study hall in the basement. I remember one time she sent out the weekly email with it wRiTtEn In AlTeRnAtInG cApS, so I dropped in to make sure she hadn’t had a seizure. I remember when she returned from her spring break trip to Utah, she said I’d seemingly grown taller, and I assured her I wasn’t taller, there was so much Mormonism in the Utah air it somehow made her shrink. I remember her introducing me to Matt, my future study abroad classmate. And I remember mentioning to Kali, who hails from New Paris in Indiana’s far north, my beef with her home state many, many times.

Kali was one of the last people I saw before leaving for summer break. I caught her as she was about to pull off for home. She bear-hugged me, I bear-hugged her back…and then we didn’t see each other until January.

¡Asturias!

“Asturias. Did we get a fifty-first state after all?” you may be asking.

No. Asturias is one of Spain’s autonomías (autonomous communities), which are basically states. It’s also where Matt and I studied abroad in the fall semester of my sophomore year.

Kali was back home in America, but we texted frequently. She did come visit during a break, but she met Matt in Madrid…because they’d started dating! She also learned about my deep-seated hatred of maps.me, the navigation app our professor said to use that (allegedly) worked without Wi-Fi. It didn’t. Come to think of it, it didn’t work with Wi-Fi, either. Actually, can you excuse me for a moment?

Geto Boys’ “Still” plays as smashing sounds and “maps.me” followed by a string of vulgarities are heard.

Ahem. Sidequest done, back to the main story.

Michigan Resumed

I had a rough spring semester. Between being alone in a suite—no roommate or suitemates—reverse culture shock, feeling like an outsider intruding on campus, taking way too many credits, unsuccessfully running for Student Senate, getting the ‘let’s be friends’ speech from the girl I had a crush on at the time, and other various misfortunes I’d rather not detail, I dragged myself through that semester. Kali, who had a class next door to one of mine, was a bright spot in those dark days. Even at my most fatigued/depressed/seriously considering dropping out, I knew Tuesday and Thursday before my Business Writing class Kali would be there to hug.

I couldn’t tell you the exact moment Kali became one of my best friends. Maybe it was during one of those hugs. Maybe it was in freshman year, during one of those fluff moments I can’t quite recall. Maybe it was near semester’s end, when she (unfortunately—sorry, Kali) saw me at my worst as I had a stress-induced crashout several months in the making. Maybe it was when we texted over the summer or because her absence that fall as she studied abroad in Peru made the heart grow fonder. Maybe it was when she returned and I got to hug her to me like I’d wanted to for months and tell her how much I missed her. Maybe it was throughout the spring semester of 2020, where we’d study together every Wednesday night. Maybe it was through the year and a half of quarantine, where we kept each other sane through text, phone calls and FaceTime as it felt like the world was coming to an end.

I don’t have a clue. What I do know is I was one of the first non-family members to hear when Matt and Kali got engaged. A wedding invite followed shortly after, telling me that the first weekend of August 2021 I was headed to Madison…

Wisconsin

My gratitude for being invited? Unending. The trip there? Uneventful. My contempt for formalwear after I spent an hour trying to tie my tie? Reinforced. Kali and Matt dressed to the nines? A striking couple. Seeing old friends? Free serotonin. The reception? Great…until someone dropped a glass and broke it on the dance floor.

Being there the moment Kali Reese became Kali Rossler? Priceless.

Kali was busy, you know, being the bride, so I didn’t catch her on her own until near the end of the night. I gave her a hug I’d been wanting to give since the two of us parted ways for quarantine. We took this month’s photo, then I took photos with the bride and groom and photos with Matt. I didn’t return to my hotel room until well after midnight. Only once my godforsaken tie was off and a Forensic Files episode was on the TV  did I feel a little sad. It was that selfish sadness, the kind you feel when your friends make new friends, or one of your best friends has less time for you because she’s newly married and will be living hundreds of miles away. I watched a crime get solved, but I turned over a quote from Morgan Freeman’s monologue in the conclusion of The Shawshank Redemption: “Some birds aren’t meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knew it was a sin to lock them up in the first place does rejoice. But still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they’re gone. I guess I just miss my friend.”

I haven’t seen Kali face to face since her wedding, which isn’t to say we’re not friends anymore. She’s been up to her eyeballs in grad school for most of the last four years, but she elbowed aside the papers long enough to send me photos of the ultrasound that would eventually become her and Matt’s baby girl, and to invite me to virtually sit in on her Ph.D. defense. (She got it, of course.) I hope to change that distance  in the near future. If it works, maybe this will have a part two.

For now, Kali, I love you like my own blood. maps.me, I hate you like I hate AI being shoved down my throat. I’ll see you all next month, with a load of Stephen King micro-reviews. Now if you’ll excuse me.

Terrence Howard’s “Whoop That Trick” plays over smashing noises and invocations of divine judgment on maps.me by various deities and pantheons.

Noah Keene

Noah Keene graduated from Calvin University in December 2021 with a major in creative writing and a minor in Spanish. He currently resides in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan. He spends his free time reading and putting his major to good use by working on his first novel. See what he’s reading by following him on Instagram @peachykeenebooks and read his other personal writing by going to thekeenechronicles.com.