So at the beginning of my game the character walks a couple steps forward to meet her friend, but when she gets there, the character turns down and the next event doesn't play. Has this happened to anyone before?

I need more info, like what you have put in for the events, or you could just post a screen shot. without knowing more I could only guess that MAYBE you dont have the events in the same spot? did you put events in the friends sprite? if its not all together things get a bit different.

It could be caused due to event crash. By saying that i mean that the events walk into another event causing them to stand still.
When you set an event to walk somewhere, it will go there no matter what, if there is a wall in the way, it will literary wait till the wall has moved. Check if the event runs into another event, that may be the cause of it.

Um no, the others character event is like 2 squares away.
The weird thing is that the event does a command I don't think I have in the movement.
Like, I don't have any movement that says turn down, but it does.

Oh you are making this a guessing game lol, like I said add a screen shot for better advice, but ill take one more guess, you say there is movement without you telling it to move, the ONLY time I have ever seen this is when your PREVIOUS map events are still running onto the new one, check your pervious map and see if its running the same order of events.

I think I've had characters do weird movements because of parallel processes, or sometimes you just looped something and never ended it.

okay. I know this post is old and you probably are donin somethin else but for future reference I will try to help you. On to buisness. What I would do is make an invisible event somewhere on the map. It will be parallel process. It will have a move event or whatever it is called on the rpg maker your using. You said 2 spaces so in the move event put step up twice(this is what it is called in rpgmaker2000) oh dont forget at the top put(where you put what this move event is for) put hero. okay now test it and the hero should move up 2. okay now exit test play go to the invisible event and under the move event make a switch l(name it whatever) and it should be on. okay now make a new page that is blank and conditions on hero touch and it should be below hero. (once again this will be worded different depending on what rpgmaker your using) dont forget the event condition should be the switch you just made. what this does is kill the event on the first page. okay the next part depends you could make another invisible event or your npc could be the event but i'm going for the npc. okay on the npc make an event that is trigered by the switch you just made earlier. it should also be parallel process. now in the event commands you just put whaever the next event is about. then you put a switch at the end of the event making sure it is different than the other event and it is on then you make a new page ,blank and trigered by the switch you just made and not parallel. and voilla. now test it and char should move up 2 do whatever then npc should do whatever and voila. glitchless event. now note that this will make npc invisible so you could also make the npc visible do somthin different or whatever. phew... Sorry for no screenshots...using vita right now because computer is broke so reply to me if ya confused still...well glad to be of be help with my first tutorial.