• It was hot out, really hot. California summers are very different from Washingtons’s. Anaheim was muggy, the water tasted bad, and when I walked around I could feel the dirt collect on me. But hell, we were in Disney Land.
    That actually was a lie. When I met Joshua Thomas, I was with my friend in the parking lot of the hotel that our high school band was staying at for the trip to Disney Land. We weren’t actually at the park. Me, Eli, Jake, and a few others were running around in shorts without t-shirts—did I mention it was hot?—playing Frisbee when it happened.
    Now, it’s not like Josh appeared out of thin air, and it’s not like I’ve never seen him before. He was one of the graduating seniors, a short guy with flaming red hair and freckles all over his body.
    He was a talented percussionist, and doubled in the men’s choir for fun. When it came to what he did, Josh was all business; he was also a hardcore follower of the Christian faith. Oh, and he was a little weird. Every week he’d come to school in hot pants for ‘Short Shorts Wednesday’, and could be found hanging out with the guy who slept all the time in class. Needless to say, I never really had a clue what went on in his head, and I never really talked to him either.
    On that day, when he called out to us, eyewitnesses say that he had been standing in his doorway with the towel for almost five minutes before getting our attention, like he was waiting for all of us to be in plain view. When I was about to catch the Frisbee I heard him, his voice loud and lucid.
    “HEY SOPHMORES!”
    We all turned to see Joshua Thomas, standing in the doorway of his room…naked.
    Later I would wonder how he managed to get freckles on some parts of his body, they really were everywhere.