Editor’s Note: This was also published in The Daily Californian.

At 10 a.m. (plus Berkeley Time, of course), I picked up the incoming call, and Sharis’ face greeted me on my laptop screen. 

“Can you believe we’ve known each other for nine years?” she said.

Not particularly. I still vividly remember talking to Sharis for the first time as a sixth grader in math club. Her name had been floating around the hallways, but I had never met her before. But now, nine years seem — Wait, I think we counted wrong. Eight years! Close enough. 

…

I would argue that Litong has his facts wrong.

I met him in April 2018 on the bus to middle school. It was a frigid morning, and he was discussing some new video game that he and all of his friends were interested in. I wasn’t sure if we were going to be friends or if he would become another acquaintance I waved to in the hallway. I certainly didn’t think we would stay in touch eight, nine years down the road. But here we are.

In that time, we’ve survived a friend group implosion, gone our separate ways, come back together and learned how to be better friends for each other. In the present, I wear Cardinal Red and he wears Berkeley Blue.

…

The only physical separation between Sharis and me is a two-hour BART and CalTrain trip, but that’s a huge change from living 10 minutes apart from her for years and seeing her almost every day. 

But somehow, every now and again, out of the blue, something reminds me of Sharis. When I connect my S and H as I write “show” on my homework, it never fails to remind me of the way that Sharis signs her name on birthday cards and yearbooks. 

…

My mentor consistently reminds me that we have relationships born out of convenience and ones out of love. With time and change, we begin to understand what category our relationships fall into and if any will be able to make the leap in between.

I don’t see Litong for half a year after graduation. I experience life beyond our hometown, make new friends and begin to find myself. But despite that pause, he reaches out to me in November asking to stop by.

I think we are jumping across the chasm. This is no longer a friendship of convenience, it’s one of love.

…

A friend from high school who goes to UC Berkeley proposed we visit our counterparts at the Farm during Halloweekend. It didn’t end up panning out, but the idea of saying ‘hi’ to Sharis stuck in my mind. So, when my parents came to pick me up for the Veterans Day weekend, I asked them to drive me to Stanford first instead of going home. 

I don’t know why I decided to visit Sharis. I do know that I braved enemy territory — I mean, went to Stanford — solely to visit Sharis. 

Sharis paid for my smoothie at Coupa Cafe and took me to Green Library, where the woman at the desk looked at me skeptically as I said I was there to study with only a water bottle and Cal hat in hand. We sat on the floor of her dorm and talked and talked and talked about our first few months of college and figuring out our lives. 

I returned from Stanford that night feeling grounded and comforted in knowing I had a friend across the Bay. 

…

I don’t necessarily know what keeps friends in touch after high school. It’s so strange to see Litong walking around the hallways of my new life, my new home.

Somehow, despite the half a year of silence, we are still able to pick up exactly where we left off. He’s changing, I can tell, but I’m changing too.

Perhaps the difference is that we are now intentional. A single text in a month can substitute a daily casual interaction. I agree to come to the Big Game at Berkeley in late November. It’s time to see what Litong’s new life is like firsthand. And also, it’s time for him to cover the bill.

…

Sharis arrived at Memorial Stadium in time to see the Stanford Cardinal get absolutely pummeled by the California Golden Bears in the 127th Big Game thanks to former Cal quarterback Fernando Mendoza’s 98-yards-with-his-boys heroics. (Can you tell which one of us takes the rivalry seriously?)

After the game, I showed Sharis around — I covered my favorite spots on campus, pretty buildings and the 24/7 library (which Stanford lacked at the time). Then, of course, I covered the dinner bill.

…

Litong is a UC Berkeley tour guide. He tells me the niche facts that he’s learned, the celebrities he’s encountered on campus and, of course, all about the discovery of Berkelium (something that Stanford does not have).

We are living vastly different college experiences, lost to the hustle, bustle and grind of our own respective universities. But somehow, it still feels like we see each other. We are not that different from us at 14, with big dreams and big plans. We are still confused and unsure about what the future holds, but we are not alone in that struggle.

…

My big plans for college would be incomplete without mentioning journalism. While applying for college, I knew that wherever I went, I wanted to get involved with the student newspaper. Two years into college, The Daily Californian has been everything I had hoped for and so much more. 

But our high school didn’t have journalism classes or a student newspaper. So what even got me into journalism? 

In high school, I was admitted into a STEM summer program that Sharis had attended the previous year. Before that summer, her yearbook message to me ended with, “P.S. Keep (the electronic newsletter) alive.” Naturally, I took her advice.

I had no experience with journalism, but I fell so deeply in love with the editing and writing process as well as the bonds that I formed over shared deadlines and really bad grammar. I knew I wanted to find this again in college.

To say Sharis’ small message has shaped much of my college experience would be an understatement. I can’t imagine what my time at UC Berkeley would be like without journalism. In fact, I’m not sure I can imagine the rest of my life without it. At this point in my life, I want journalism to be in my future. 

…

Who knows what journalism is to me. I’ve been a writer, a columnist and now a desk editor at The Stanford Daily, working my way through the different roles and getting to know each and every face. I write a lot of words that make very little sense, and also, I harp on other people for their words that make very little sense.

At the end of the day, I enjoy telling stories.

Journalism is not the end all, be all of how I do that, but for now, it is the primary way I do.

…

This Saturday will be the 128th Big Game. A few hours before kickoff, The Daily Cal will play The Stanford Daily in the Ink Bowl. Though I look forward to watching the blue and gold on the field, I’m more excited to see Sharis. We’ve got to figure out where we’re getting dinner, though. 

…

Is there a trick or a special secret that helps you maintain friendships despite the distance, the silence, the increasingly busy schedules?

Perhaps that is a question I still ask myself. I am friends with fewer people from high school than I thought I would be. Close friends of seven years — the ones I thought were going to be there on my wedding day — I haven’t called once in the last two years.

Neither of us has the answers of how it all works or why it did for us. But the most we can do for each other now is to be present in the rare conversations we have, to send the occasional text and to make plans whenever there’s a gap in our schedules.

I will see another version of Litong when he comes to Stanford this Saturday. One of Cal pride, football enthusiasm and, of course, Stanford hatred. Yet, after the game ends and one of us gets to storm the field, I will take him out to dinner.

It’s my turn to pay the bill.

But the next one’s on him.