ASHLEY SAMSONITE
Eleven Months Later
It was Saturday night and I was out with my college friends. My brother Matt was also in town, visiting his girlfriend, who lived here in DC. We were dancing it up at a place called Local 16, a relatively classy restaurant located in a historic three-story row house on U Street. At night, they cleared away the tables upstairs, brought in a DJ, and lowered the lights, and the space turned into a small, sweaty, kinetic dance floor.
After a while of dancing/jumping/flailing with my crew, this girl came up to me and asked about my tie. I wear ties for this exact purpose. Not to try to look good, but because they can be a good conversation starter. They give girls an excuse to talk to you. So we were standing there talking about my tie and whatnot, and this girl with platinum-blond hair and a silver spaghetti-strap dress walks up to me from the other direction and says, “You’re awesome.”
Girl Number Two was drop-dead gorgeous, absolutely stunning. And she just walked up to initiate a conversation—with me! How often does that happen? Um, like, never. This was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of opportunity. But being the gentleman that I am, I felt I owed chronological preference to Girl Number One. I couldn’t just blow her off and start talking to the blonde simply because I preferred the way she looked. That’s not how my mother raised me, you know?
So I gave a terse thanks over my shoulder to Girl Number Two and then turned my back on her to continue discussing the fascinating history of my tie with Girl Number One. Girl Number Two walked away, disappearing from my life for what I assumed would be forever.
Eventually I broke free of the conversation with Girl Number One (who, as it turned out, had a boyfriend—so why was she even asking about my tie in the first place?) and returned to dancing with my crew. I told them the story, yelling over the music. Girl Number Two. The hot blonde. A sad missed opportunity. Just my luck.
After a few songs, I noticed that not three feet in front of me was the back of a blond head. I turned to Matt.
“Hey, isn’t that the girl who said I was awesome earlier?”
Matt agreed that Yeah, dude, it was totally her.
The problem was that now there was a guy hitting on her. And as soon as she shut him down and sent him walking away with his head hanging, another guy jumped in to fill his place.
I knew she already thought I was awesome. The door was open for me to talk to her. The problem was the continuous stream of bros trying to hit on her. And then there was this moment when she was gloriously alone, just standing there dancing by herself. I reached out to tap her on the shoulder, but reflexively pulled my hand back before it touched her. I had just witnessed this girl shutting down five guys in a row! Who cared if she thought I was awesome? She was clearly in the zone—the rejection zone—demolishing egos with ruthless efficiency.
No, this was no time to back down. I’d come too far. I’d learned too much. About girls. About myself. I wouldn’t miss this one.
I tapped her on the shoulder. She turned around, eyebrows raised.
“Aren’t you the girl who said I was awesome earlier?”
“Yeah, I am,” she said, smiling.
I felt a warm tingle all over my body. She was clearly happy to be talking to me again. Now all I had to do was chat with her for a few minutes, dance with her for a while, and she would offer me her number at the end of the night and this would be the beginning of—
“We’re leaving.”
The voice came from another girl, a tall brunette, whose tone communicated My ex-boyfriend showed up here or I just saw another girl wearing the same dress as me or some other such female night-ruining disaster.
“Oh… all right,” said the blonde.
“Wait, you’re leaving right now?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Sorry.”
She did look genuinely sorry, but she was being pulled on the wrist by the girl who was not having fun. She got dragged a few steps away and started to disappear into the crowd.
“Wait!” I called. “What’s your name? I’ll Facebook you.”
Notice: not a yes-or-no question. So she couldn’t reject it.
She smiled. “Ashley Samsonite.”
“All right. Got it. I’ll friend you, okay?”
She nodded and then she was gone.
I turned to Brad.
“You remember Ashley. I’ll remember Samsonite.”
His forehead wrinkled. “What?”
“Ashley. Just remember that name, all right?”
“Ashley. Got it.”
I spent the rest of the evening repeating her last name over and over in my mind so I wouldn’t forget it. It was my only connection to her, the sole thread holding us together. Samsonite, Samsonite, Samsonite.
When Brad and I got back to our apartment, I immediately logged in to Facebook, assuming there couldn’t be more than a few Ashley Samsonites out there. Wrong. There were over six hundred of them. The search results showed their profile pictures as unrecognizably tiny thumbnails. Plus, because of privacy settings, I couldn’t see where most of them lived, so I was not able to simply sort by who resided in DC. I spent the next two hours scrolling through the search results and friending every single Ashley Samsonite who was blond and either lived in DC or did not specify a hometown. It was three AM when I reached the end of the list, having friended around thirty girls with identical names. I had waited too long to meet this girl. I was not going to lose her now.
When I woke up the next morning, I signed in to Facebook and found that five Ashley Samsonites had accepted my friend request. Five! This made me wonder: Assuming that one of them was the “real” Ashley Samsonite, who were these other four girls? They get a friend request from some random guy with one leg and say, Sure, I’ll be friends with him?
Also, when the real Ashley saw my friend request and looked at my profile, presumably she saw on my timeline an activity feed something like this:
Josh Sundquist is now friends with Ashley Samsonite
Josh Sundquist is now friends with Ashley Samsonite
Josh Sundquist is now friends with Ashley Samsonite
Awkward.
Anyway, I checked out the five Ashley Samsonites who had accepted my friendship. Now that I was friends with them, and could see their photos in full size, I was able to pick out the one I had met the previous night. So I sent her a message about how we should, you know, hang out sometime.
One night a few months and many perfect dates later, she agreed to let me be her boyfriend.
And just like that, I had a girlfriend. I looked at myself later that night in the mirror and noticed, somewhat to my surprise, that I looked pretty much the same as I did before. I was still the same person I had been all along, the person I’d always been inside, the one who was always worthy of a relationship, always worthy of love. Being an amputee doesn’t make me a fraction of a person. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I am whole just the way I am.
A few weeks later Ashley and I were out dancing, and I started to lose my balance. Normally, when this happens, I put out a crutch to steady myself. Or, if I’m not fast enough with the crutch, I fall. But on this night of dancing with my girlfriend, before either of those things could happen, Ashley caught me and pulled me back to center. I stopped dancing and looked at her.
“What?” she asked.
“No one has ever done that for me before,” I said.
And that’s what I love about Ashley. She keeps me balanced. And she just won’t let me fall.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Miss America 2010 for (sarcastically) suggesting the idea for this book. (To watch a video about that awkward encounter, Google my name and “Miss America Made Fun of Me.”)
T
hanks to my agent, Lucy Carson, for (not sarcastically) suggesting that the time was right to put this story on paper. Gratitude to the rest of the Friedrich Agency for their support of my writing, including Nichole LeFebvre and Molly Friedrich.
Most of the good parts of this project, including the graphs, the subtitle, and the organizational format, were suggestions by a wonderful human being without whom the book itself would not exist. I’m speaking of my brilliant editor, Elizabeth Bewley.
Many wonderful suggestions also came from Elizabeth’s team, Pam Garfinkel and Pam Gruber. Thanks, Pams.
I am grateful to Little, Brown Books for Young Readers for getting behind this project, especially my publicist, Hallie Patterson; my marketer, Jennifer LaBracio; and director of publicity Melanie Chang. Appreciation to my sales team, Shawn Foster and Dave Epstein.
For the last several years, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have a smart and talented assistant, Lisa McLaughlin, who works tirelessly behind the scenes to hold the Sundquist Company LLC together. Thanks, Lisa.
Thanks to the girls I’ve described in this book for their kind and generous conversations, which helped me come to a better understanding of myself and my life. I want to acknowledge that the girl I’ve called Francesca ended up writing me a long and thoughtful message about our relationship, but unfortunately I received it after the text of this book was already finalized.
Shout-out to my YouTube subscribers for being the first audience to hear many of these stories as they were happening in my life. I’m particularly grateful to those who helped me get started on YouTube, especially iJustine and the Vlog-Brothers (a.k.a. Hank and John Green).
Thanks most of all to my family and friends for making life worthwhile, and for tolerating me writing about them in (yet another) book.
Also by Josh Sundquist
Just Don’t Fall
1 I have only five of something most people have ten of. More on this later.
2 Whenever I argued this was not enough money to fill a wardrobe, my parents would respond that if I bought everything at the Salvation Army Thrift Store on its monthly ninety-nine-cent day, I could buy ten new (well, new to me) items per month.
3 Anecdotal evidence does suggest that factual errors may be created when information is passed between BFFs, particularly if said information is shared via online chatting platforms. In fact, there is a direct correlation between the number of times a piece of information has been passed along and the number of factual errors it contains.
4 It’s never been clear to me whether you’re supposed to let a girl win or not. I went with not.
5 Side benefit of dating me: free motivational speeches. It’s like friends with benefits where the benefits are inspirational.
6 I’m actually an Eagle Scout. But the only time I ever did orienteering, I got lost and my artificial leg got stuck in some bushes and then it got dark and cold and I had to blow my emergency rescue whistle until the Scout leaders came and found me. Unfortunately, I did not bring such a whistle on my date with Francesca.
7 Creepiest sentence in this book?
8 “Cipher” being the technical name for a circle of spectators formed around a break-dancer. Good to know, right?
9 Heel, singular. Not a typo.
10 Figuratively speaking. Otherwise I’d be dead. Just saying.
11 It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I was thinking about how strange that conversation was, and it dawned on me what a massive misunderstanding we’d had. That guy is probably still out there organizing candlelit prayer vigils for me.
12 In answer to your question: DC and Puerto Rico.
Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
WELCOME
DEDICATION
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PROLOGUE THE NOT-SO-DISTANT PAST
SARAH STEVENS
BACKGROUND CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
HYPOTHESIS
INVESTIGATION CHAPTER 4
LIZA TAYLOR SMITH
BACKGROUND CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
HYPOTHESIS
INVESTIGATION CHAPTER 9
FRANCESCA MARCELO
BACKGROUND CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
HYPOTHESIS
INVESTIGATION CHAPTER 17
EVELYN WILLIAMSON
BACKGROUND CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
HYPOTHESIS
INVESTIGATION CHAPTER 24
LILLY MOORE
BACKGROUND CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
HYPOTHESIS
INVESTIGATION CHAPTER 30
SASHA WRIGHT
BACKGROUND CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
HYPOTHESIS
INVESTIGATION CHAPTER 34
RESULTS OF INVESTIGATION CHAPTER 35
ASHLEY SAMSONITE ELEVEN MONTHS LATER
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ALSO BY JOSH SUNDQUIST
COPYRIGHT
Copyright
Copyright © 2014 by Josh Sundquist
Cover art by Lee Crutchley
Cover design by Greg Stadnyk and Marcie Lawrence
Cover © 2014 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Little, Brown and Company
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104
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Little, Brown and Company is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Little, Brown name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
First ebook edition: December 2014
ISBN 978-0-316-25101-3
E3
We Should Hang Out Sometime Page 16
