Aidan Millerick ’29
Colleen Hoover please return my calls
It began the way all great love stories do, through happenstance. I walked into the Brooks common room on a hot August night in good spirits. I had in my hand two double A batteries to replace the ones that had been mysteriously stolen from the common room TV remote a few nights before. Finally, I could watch My 600 Pound Life again in peace. But my good spirits were shattered when on the armrest of the couch facing the TV, I found not the remote but instead a decaying tile ripped from the walls of the 3rd floor men’s showers. The now notorious calling card of the Brooks Bandit. The tile was warm with the heat of gloved hands, freshly placed. I turned to see a dark figure running down the hallway, holding the remote in their hand. I should have given chase, but I froze. I hated to see them go, but I loved to watch them run away.
Our next encounter occurred a few days later, not quite by chance. I had heard that the bandit had taken to vandalizing the white boards people hung on their dorm doors, so I put one up and waited with my ear to my door, ready to swing it open at the slightest squeak of something inappropriate being drawn with a dry erase marker. I stayed up all night, but tiredness got the best of me, and I awoke to find that not only had my board been vandalized with images that would get me blacklisted from every newspaper in New England if I tried describing them, but that somebody had draped a blanket over me while I slept. The blanket smelled like a dorm shower. I took it off quickly, but the gesture was sweet. I checked the door and it was still locked. I wondered, “How had the Bandit gotten inside my room?”
I was at a loss. I put up wanted posters, offered rewards, and scoured the halls to no avail. The Bandit was a ghost. I finally went to bed, having lost all hope of finding my mystery man.
I woke up in a haze in a bathtub filled with ice in what I would later learn was a warehouse in Hoboken. A dark figure was retreating slowly into the distance. I looked down and saw what looked like stitches criss crossed over the left side of my chest. I was lightheaded and short of breath. It was official, the Brooks Bandit had stolen my heart.
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