After leaving the cafeteria, Karen and I headed straight to the gym to practice together.  It was at that practice that I began to realize Karen was a very likable person.  At first, I didn’t think we would get along. After all, Karen was Ashley’s friend at one point, and had ignored me up until our conversation in the cafeteria.  But as I spent more time with her, I genuinely began to like her and we soon became close friends. 

Ashley, of course, continued to ignore us both.  And even though I still wanted to know what happened between Karen and Ashley to cause their rift, I never brought up the subject again; the question had disoriented Karen so much before I knew their split was a sensitive subject.  My suspicion that Karen wasn’t over Ashley was confirmed everyday, as Karen constantly spoke about her.  In fact, it seemed like most of our conversations were devoted to Ashley.  But since I wanted to support her through what had to be a difficult time, I simply listened as she praised Ashley so convincingly that I was nearly swayed into thinking Ashley wasn’t actually as bad as I originally thought.

During lunch one day, Karen came up with the idea to have a little slumber party — just without the "slumber" since we all had to be back in our rooms by midnight.  We packed huge purses and a cooler with chips, ice cream with the toppings, and drinks from the cafeteria, and invited a few of the other girls. 

By the time the party rolled around that night, there were a handful of people dressed in their pajamas lounging around in Karen’s room.   In all there were five of us: Karen, Cindy, Amanda, Rebecca and myself.  Karen’s roommate, as usual, was out somewhere, so we didn’t have to worry about being too loud as we goofed around and blasted some music. We had been dancing and talking for about an hour, when Karen decided to spice things up a bit.

"Ok, people, time to play a little truth or dare!" she yelled, turning off the music.

In the past week, I had learned truth or dare was Karen’s favorite game.  We had played several times, just the two of us.  Since I was too afraid to take a dare, I always chose truth, giving Karen a chance to ask probing questions that, at times, I felt were too intimate, and seemed to focus too much on my love life…or lack thereof.