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One time I went on a spring break trip to one of those really nice places where people say all college students should go.

Me and my friend, I’ll call him 73 because that’s the highest prime number I know, did the vacation thing. We went to museums, ate at nice restaurants and talked about living life the way life was supposed to be lived.

One night we went out looking for a party. We thought we could just go to the university and find kids walking around acting drunk. We were wrong. On a Friday night, the university was just a bunch of locked buildings and the occasional janitor wiping the guts of a dead fly off a clean window. 

On the way back to our hotel, we saw an American girl talking to an old guy on a subway platform. She acted like an American in a far off place. She pretended she wasn’t judgmental and acted enthusiastic, the way one would if she wanted to look like a fun person.

In the train she flashed a smile that made 73 and I want to talk to her, so we followed her to her stop. After leaving the train, I told 73 that we missed our stop in a voic loud enough for her to hear.

She did, and said she’d help us out. Her name was Marnie. She didn’t know her way around the city, but she had some friends who did. 

She led us back to her apartment. When we got there, she and her friends were going to a bar near our hotel. They said we could walk with them, and they’d show us to our hotel. 

They were all college kids, so we talked about our schools. Everyone acted interested, and we played the do-you-know-so-in-so game. Somebody probably even said, "Wow, it’s such a small world."

We went to a bar called Penny Lane. Marnie mentioned that it was St. Patrick’s Day, and she used to go to fraternity parties on St. Patrick’s day. When she told her story she didn’t know that every little detail made her look homesick.

A guy came into the bar selling flowers. I bought her a blue rose because it matched her eyes. I thought I was a real prince charming.

When it was time to go home, there was a problem. Marnie didn’t have a place to sleep. She wasn’t allowed back to her friend’s apartment because it was after curfew. 

We had an extra bed in our hotel room, so we invited her to stay with us. The only thing was: the bellman told us not to use in the bed where she was to sleep.

The hotel was the sixth floor of some really old building. It had a cage elevator and used those big, skeleton keys that you only see in mystery movies.

We snuck Marnie into the room fine but were worried about the bellman finding her in the morning. We thought he’d think her a prostitute. 

We had to wake up early because we were going to a really nice museum. It was one of those museums that they talk about in movies. It had one of those paintings that was supposed to make you feel like you were seeing God.

When I woke up, I was all hung over and needed to use the bathroom. I felt bad because Marnie had to sleep in jeans, and her bed didn’t have sheets. 

I had locked the door from the inside the night before because I was afraid of the guy coming in and finding the girl. That was a big mistake.

I tried unlocking the door. Didn’t unlock. Through the keyhole, I could see all the way down the hall. There was a big plant that made me feel like I was locked out of paradise. 

The lock was broken. The guy working at the desk tried to unlock it but couldn’t. Marnie had to hide in the closet because I was afraid they’d find her. The closet was just a wooden locker that was so small she had to pull her knees to her chest like a toy ball that might roll away if not held on to.

We thought about climbing out the window, but the sixth floor in real life is higher than in the movies.

We waited an hour until the manager arrived. When he arrived, he yelled, "Attention!" Then, he started banging on the door. The locker shook each time he banged. Marnie must have felt like she was locked in a hole.

He broke down the door. Then, he had to fix the lock and talk a lot while Marnie waited in the locker. It was a little weird. We were in a hotel room on a different continent with a random girl locked in our closet.

He left and we all escaped unscathed. We went to the museum and talked about how funny it was that we were all locked in a hotel room. It might not have been that funny, but I kept saying it was because I didn’t know what Marnie was thinking.

In the museum 73 and I told stories about all the paintings. Marnie was really impressed and acted interested in everything we had to say. 

We both thought she was perfect. She thought we were really cool and acted really excited to be around us. 

She made the museum exciting because she was a girl. She gave us someone to talk to. Not talk with, just talk to.

After we left the museum, she went her own way. 73 and I ate lunch. What 73 said was what I was afraid he was going to say, one of those truths that show how things that seem cool
aren’t really that cool.

"When a girl listens to everything you say," he said, " it’s like she’s not really there. When all you do is talk, it’s like you’re just having a relationship with yourself."