Help me.

Tonight we had a session of Stake Conference. Only Hillary and I were home, so we got dressed and started to head on over. I was quite pleased when we got to a traffic light just as it turned green. "Ah! Perfect timing!" I exclaim.

But then, the unthinkable. Will approaches. My stomach drops through the bottoms of my feet, and I groan. "Oh. Never mind. Definitely NOT perfect timing."

So here comes a confession... I really just cannot stand Will. Even though I'm trying not to, I'm sure at some point I may mention things about him I don't like, but I will probably exaggerate because they happen to be my pet peeves. He's really not that bad. I just... don't like him. Forgive me.

Please don't let Will notice us. Please don't let Will notice us. Please, please, please, please let him not notice me... Maybe if I ignore him and don't say anything he won't see or hear or notice I exist....

"Hey, Jenna." Aw, crap.

"Hi Will," I say weakly. I elect not to say anything extravagant and just... be as terse as possible. I really have a hard time with conversations with Will... They're all the same: "Hey Jenna" "Hi Will" "How are you" "Manamana blah blah blah" "Oh that's good..." At which point he always starts talking about incredibly depressed he is, how much he wishes he had a girlfriend, reminiscing about his first kiss and how much he enjoys making out, how he just can't forgive someone for insulting his friend even though he's never met them, and how excited he is about his mission -- doesn't matter what topic it is, as long as he is the center of it.

"How are you today, Jenna?"

Ay caramba. "Not as happy as I could be." That, at least, was the truth.

"Oh... that's too bad. Do you want a hug?"

My soul recoiled. I manage to keep my physical self steady. "No, no, I'm okay..."

And then he launched into an incredibly boring about something, surely involving himself. For someone so depressed, he certainly loves himself a lot. In fact, I would recommend never trying to pick an argument with Will. He is always so incredibly convinced he is right. Since he is always complaining about being depressed, sometimes I attempt to give him advice. But... here's inevitably what happens... he makes up some ridiculous excuse about how that doesn't apply to him in the slightest. And then he goes on about how depressed he is. It's like he secretly enjoys being depressed because it's an excuse for him to become the center of attention, even if it is pity attention.

Hillary and I walk over to the Wilk, hoping to lose him. Oh dang it. He's following.

I whisper to Hillary that we could go through the doors behind the Cougareat, almost no one ever uses those... but Will had the same idea. He was a little ahead of us at this point. He announces, "This way!"

I grab Hillary... and go the other way with the rest of the group. Aha, here is a weakness of his. He can't admit being wrong, and he never backs down when no one agrees with him. He continues on in his announced chosen path, looking wistfully at me. Hillary and I rush to get out and as far away from the last location of our Will encounter, and...

Ah, crap. There he is... The rest of the group starts going down the stairs... and he joins the group again. I grab Hillary... and instead of taking the stairs, I turn right.

We are breathing heavily. Maybe we lost him. I look to my left, down the slope. And there was Will. He had separated from the group and was now walking alone and walking quickly in order to catch up with us. "Hillary! Walk slower! Much slower!"

Will keeps going. We walk slowly. But not slowly enough. Before we get to the place where our paths would have crossed, Hillary pulled out her phone. We stopped as she fiddled with it. "Who's called you?" I hiss.

"No one," she hissed.

Comprehension... Aha. "Ah, I see. Hillary, you're a genius." She fiddles with the phone until Will is far ahead of us. And then we continue in our journey. We walk slowly, hoping to put as much distance between us as was possible.

We finally show up to the JSB. We walk in carefully. Scan the room. No sign of him. We therefore assume that he had found a seat in the huge mass of people. Looking around again cautiously, we carefully pick a spot near the door. We no sooner sit down, when...

"Hey! Do you mind if I sit next to you?" I think I paled, and perhaps started trembling. Through clenched teeth, Hillary muttered, "Yeah..."

The stupid thing about starting something with "do you mind" is that an affirmative answer means saying "no" and a negative answer means saying "yes"... so of course there is room to interpret a "yeah" as "yeah, go ahead and sit here!"

And that is what he did. He smugly took his spot and proceeded into his usual self-centered talk. He then proceeded to brag all about how he got himself a Spanish set of scriptures and a hymnbook. I'm not sure what bothered me about this... by all accounts it was a perfectly innocent thing to do... maybe I imagined it just because I don't like him, but it seemed that it was the sort of action he'd do just so he could say, "Look at me. I'm going on a mission. I'm going to rub it in your face. Look how good I am."

Hillary and I ignored him through the meeting, terrified that he would launch into another intensely awkward descriptive narrative of this one time he made out... And as soon as it was over, we bolted out the door. Ran home. Locked the doors behind us. And finally just breathed.