This is dedicated to all of my friends, Sanna, Sanchi, Yu Ying, Yu Yu, Pansy, Phyllis, Amy, Allen, Kenny, Wen, Tina, Dana, Mitsuki, Margret, Amy Leiu, Joyce, Amy Loung, Amy G, Kendrick, Kevin, Timothy, Vina, Michelle, Christine, Jeanette, Stephanie, Alex, Chris, Laine, Jeff, Peter, and Jan, who stood by me throughout my academic career. Thank you all for being there for me, when I needed you most, and I'll miss you all.
The dark haired girl sits wordlessly at the desk, her pen rapidly scribbling in the spiral bound notebook. She looks up at the clock occasionally, dark hazel eyes filled with excitement, longing, and deep sorrow. It is Friday, June 9, 2006, 2:27 PM. There is only ten minutes left before she, like her fellow Seniors would leave the campus for the last time as a student, only returning for cap and gown distribution, for the graduation rehearsal, and for the graduation ceremony itself.
She looks at the clock again. 2:30 PM. Seven more minutes. Seven more minutes of childhood, of sitting in the classrooms, echoing with laughter of previous students, seven more minutes before the echoes of the Graduating Class of 2006 becomes mere memories in the long beige halls, memories like the graduating classes before them, memories like the graduating classes that will come after them. It was almost time to go. Anita Wong, a Junior who sits beside her pulls out a camera.
“The only Senior in this class besides the Student Aide,” Anita said, “Lets take a picture!”
The girl smiles, and nods, as she and Anita leans toward one another. There is a few seconds where her heart leaps, and for a brief moment, the cold loneliness in her is replaced with a sense of belonging, of warmth of being with a friend. There is a flash, and she and Anita pulls apart, and she and Anita smile as they look at the picture on the screen. Anita smiles at her, and she smiles back, a sad smile tinged with warmth. Anita returns to her seat and turns to the boy behind her and strikes up a conversation while the girl turns back to her story, the warmth in her heart slowly being replaced by a creeping cold.
2:35, and she throws her things back into her bag and the teacher nods in permission and she runs out the door. The cold and pain is almost unbearable, and she runs to catch up with a friend, putting on a jovial mask. She whoops as the actual bell rings.
“Glad to be gone?” the boy asks.
“Yeah,” she answered as they run to the crosswalk. They say no more as they wait across the street for the bus.
The bus arrives at 2:40 as expected, and there is the usual jostling and pushing as students eager to get home board the bus. She is among the first ones to enter and take the seat nearest the door, and her face is a blank mask. She knows that this will be the last time she will be taking this bus as a student, and her chest tightens. She fights back tears as the bus leaves the stop. She gets off early, at the stop near the Senior Citizen Center, the quickest way home without riding the entire circuit. Her pace is brisk and almost desperate. She forbids herself to cry as she walks the familiar path.
She arrives home, and drops her things on the floor in the middle of her room. She sinks to her knees and buries her face in her hands, but she does not cry. Slowly, she gets back up and takes things out of her bag. The clothes from her Dance final goes in the hamper, her binders joins the collection on the floor beside her nightstand near her desk (she will go through them when her heart is less raw, she thinks), her yearbook and sketch pad goes on the shelf, and her notebooks joins the collection under her desk. The loose sheets go into folders and drawers and are placed with the binders and notebooks. Loose cash and change either go into her piggy banks or her wallet. Pens and pencils go into pencil cases in various parts of the room, the bag goes into her closet, her wallet, keys, and cell phone go on her nightstand, and the ipod goes into her drawers.
‘Keep moving, don’t think,’ she repeats to herself over and over, “don’t think, keep moving, don’t think!’
Maybe if she doesn’t think about it, if she keeps busy, she won’t remember that she is leaving behind her friends, and her surrogate family (classmates who took on different roles in the ‘family’ from various grades in the school), she won’t remember that she is leaving everything she once knew. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so sad, so lonely, so frightened, or so empty. The silence is too much, she turns on the music. After a while she turns it back off. The music on her computer is too lyrical, too sad, it reminds her too much of her pain and loneliness. She turns on the radio. After a while, she turns that off to. The upbeat music reminds her too much of the fun she had with her friends in her Dance Class, in Fifth Period. There is nothing left to do, there is nothing, and she feels the loneliness hit her full force. She forces back a scream of rage, loneliness, and pain, and forbids herself to cry. She throws herself into the internet, concentrating on the fanfiction, on her writing, on her drawings, anything to avoid reflection.
She does not check her email, she does not sign on into AIM or MSN. She doesn’t touch the phone except to call her mother to let her know that she is home. She doesn’t look at the yearbook, or at her old work.
Night falls, she stays up. She doesn’t want to sleep. She knows if she sleeps, her subconscious will force her to remember, but she hopes that sleep will allow her to escape, to not think, to not feel, to not remember. She does not realize it when she drifts off.
She wakes suddenly. She feels calm, warm, content. She remembers nothing, then she sits up and sees the pictures of her friends on her desk and she remembers. The pain and loneliness returns. She tries not to scream.
The day passes in a blur of meaningless work, of fanfics and writings. She immerses herself in a thick book that she had bought earlier in the year but had never read. She concentrates on her mother’s voice when she lectures her, anything to escape.
The next day is the same. There is nothing but a whirlwind of meaningless work and words to escape. She feels nothing, thinks of nothing, concentrates on nothing, she says nothing. Night falls. She does not sleep. She stares at the computer screen in the darkness until the words blur and she begins to hear echoes of laughter, she remembers snippets of old conversations with friends. She screams in her mind and slowly, she turns off the computer and goes to bed, squeezing her eyes shut.
She dreams of graduation. She dreams of being with her friends, they are happy, laughing, and she waves her diploma in the air and her friends hug her. She dreams of joyous lunch period long past, and of the hours of practice that went into the Dance Final, only for her to screw up in her best routine, Hip Hop, only for her friends to reassure her that it is alright. She feels the warmth of belonging.
Morning comes, and she wakes. Her heart is full and she does not try to run. She turns logs on to AIM and MSN and waits for her underclassmen friends to log on. She checks her email and leaves comments on the Xangas of the friends that she cannot reach on AIM or MSN or with email.
She leaves entries on her journals and cleans her room. There is nothing left for her to do. She stares out the window at the trees and plants in the garden. In the end, she allows herself to think, to reflect on the past year. Tears pool in her eyes, but still she does not allow them to fall. She holds them in her heart, and promises herself that they will not fall until the right time, until she knows that she will never have contact with her school friends again. She promises herself that she will let herself cry later, knowing deep inside herself that later will never come.
She sighs and begins planning what she will wear on graduation, what she will wear for Grad Night, what she will wear for the celebration on June 17, 2006. She plans what she will wear when her Aunt gets engaged on June 24, 2006. She plans and reflects on the past, but she moves forward.
She knows that all the other Seniors in the world is feeling the same way, and that all of them are moving forward. She knows that she will miss her friends and vice versa, and that she will never have friends like them again. She knows that the sadness will fade with time; after all, the sadness of her Eighth Grade Graduation had faded over the past four year.
She moves forward, and does not look back.
The End
