And then. And then. And then.

A text came through.

Later, I’d marvel at the precision of it, the just-rightness of the timing. The writers of Power Jam couldn’t have scripted it any better. I think about how much hinged on that text that came in at just the right second, just the right place, for a very furious Oliver Teller to hear it and return and find me crouched in a tree like some deranged superfan, which was admittedly half true, and we could argue over which half. Ros would’ve called it fate, but I knew the truth: The sound of the text arriving was nothing more than impossibly bad timing.

Oliver Teller whirled back around.

And I—stunned by that camera-ready face, by the shock of seeing my first celebrity up close, disturbed by the piercing light gray of his eyes—I cried, “Go, Soul Crushers!”

Oliver’s face contorted into disgust and hatred, which was a look I knew all too well, but I had to say, it felt different to have it directed at you rather than observing it on a screen.

“Un-fucking-believable,” he said.

Then he stalked off into the woods, leaving all the cell reception for me.

Footnotes

2 I had taken a break from them while preparing for our trip out here, but the general thrust was this: The show had just finished its second season and, due to low, if passionate, viewership, there was some question as to whether there would even be a third. WHICH SUCKED, because last season alone, Blade Mendoza and Kenna had had a pregnancy scare; he’d gotten his nemesis addicted to drugs; he’d thrown a Rollerblade through a storefront window; and he’d conspired to kill his brother (though fans were convinced that was a dream sequence). Needless to say, we JAMMERS HAD QUESTIONS THAT NEEDED TO BE ANSWERED.

3 “I feel uncomfortable watching this show,” my mother said. It didn’t help that Oliver was often shirtless.

A PARTY,
or Why I Don’t Eat Tuna in Front of Touchstone

The text—the text that blew up my spot, that made Oliver Teller hate me, that was indirectly responsible for the single most embarrassing moment of my entire life—wasn’t even from Ros. It was from Touchstone and read:

A girl invited me to see her goats

Is this code

The answer, we learned later, was no. Audrey, who was studying in the Young Company alongside Touchstone, was a local whose family kept goats, and she was having a party Friday night at her house, and we were all invited.

However, when Friday arrived, I decided I was sadly unable to attend, as I still was dead from humiliation from when I’d screamed “Go, Soul Crushers!” at Oliver Teller. Attending the party as a ghost might have been an off-putting vibe.