By: Angel Ramnani

On a typical day of tedious classes and tennis practice, my dad was running late from work. I decided to go to Cerritos library to start on my daily pile of homework, so I wouldn’t have so much to do at home. It took about ten minutes to walk, as I was carrying a couple of textbooks, tennis gear and my backpack, that felt like I was carrying rocks in. As I walked into the library, I threw my stuff on a nearby chair and decided to relax for a bit. I closed my eyes, and small tears ran down my cheek to show my defeated body from the walk. As I opened my eyes, a clique I used to hang out with, during freshmen year, were definitely an eye catcher. My old best friend was there too, Weston Bui. Alongside him were his friends, Ryan, Lawrence, Simon, Peter, William, and Alysia. I didn’t remember much of them, but I was glad to see them after so long. I pushed myself to get up, in order to say a greeting before they left the library.

“Weston!” I called out, while almost tripping myself. He turned around, a big smile grew across his face.

“Angel! It has been so long since I’ve seen you,” he said as he approached me, his other friends tagging along.

Weston and I were talking about how much our lives have changed since the start of freshman year, while his other friends didn’t see too excited to see me, so they wandered off someplace else.

“What are you planning to do after high school?”, I asked with such curiosity.

“I want to major in computer engineering because we don’t have a lot of those around,” he replied with a slight laughter.

He was telling me how there are so many people around the world that aren’t aware of the dark web and how so many people around the world are being stalked through their computer’s camera.

“I want to create a software or a new type of computer, where it’s unhackable, if someone tries to violate the other person’s privacy,” Weston stated in a serious tone.

This guy was serious about this. I never considered Weston as someone so concerned about the world and what he wanted to do to save others. All I remember about him from freshmen year was that he loved sleeping and video games. He was always hard working, but I never saw him studying or trying to look for solutions to such a thing, in this matter, because he used to loathe it. Come to think of it, I would’ve never imagined him in a place filled with books. Since when did he start to become a bookworm?

“Do people still call you wonton,” I snickered, as I had several flashbacks of us calling each other nicknames during freshmen year.

I created that name for him during our first year of high school, because all best friends have nicknames of each other; mine was obviously devil. I wanted to know if he still had the interest of playing basketball because we used to play against each other all the time.

“Do you still like playing basketball after all this years?” He shrugged when I asked him; it seems like he didn’t like it anymore.

It made me disappointed because that was our sport and we used to play all the time during the weekends. He would always tell me that he wished he had a sibling to play basketball with at home, so he wouldn’t have to always meet up at the park. When we met, we both didn’t have siblings, so it was essentially easier for us to have a lot in common, until two years ago, when my mom was pregnant with twins. The newborns were some heavy baggage, so I didn’t always have time to play basketball with him.

“How are your twin siblings doing?”

“Growing,” I laughed sarcastically.

“You know, when they’re older, technology will surround them. Hopefully someone, if not me, creates the safe technology I talked about. I think technology has taken over our lives so much, that it is starting to harm us because we can’t control it.” After hearing all of this from this, I started to realize how much we rely on technology. I wanted to know more about his ideas and to generally hang out with him.

“I’m sorry we became so distant over the years. Are you busy this weekend? We could catch up on some stuff and maybe you could tell me more about your software.” I asked him, hoping he would say that he wasn’t that busy, but he got my hopes up.

“I would love to, but I actually met this girl and have a date with her this weekend. You know she’s buddhist, like me?” He replied so enthusiastically that it kind of scared me.

“Oh that’s nice! Since when were you so good at talking to girls?” I shot back, with a laughter. He never was good at talking to girls; who would’ve thought he had the guts to ask someone out.

“Since forever, Angel. I’m an extrovert,unlike you.” After he said this, I turned into a tomato, my cheeks flushed. I hated when people class me that, but sometimes he could be an exception.

“Alright Wonton, I’ll see you later. I think my dad is here to pick me up, but try to keep in touch!” I said with a big smile and that was the last time I saw him.