Chapter 1-Graduation



I couldn’t believe it. It was finally graduation day. The last months of our senior year seemed to take forever, and we speculated that time was against us. Now that it was time to say good-bye and end this chapter of our life, we realized time really had been against us but not in the way we had thought. When I looked back at my 18 years, they flashed past me as time gobbled them up. Faces that had been howling with joy the night before, at our senior party, were morose or even sobbing now that our high school years had finally come to an end.

My three best friends surrounded me. To my right sat Katreena Johnson, Kat, she was bubbly one of our group. She flirts with nearly ever guy we meet and then tosses their hearts away as we move on. She has the kind of looks that grabbed a guy on the first look. Her long blond hair is loud and luxuriant and her gray-green eyes wink at any roaming flirt. These combined with her pleasant face and hourglass figure make guys commonly describe her as "very cute."

I, Melanie Potter, am very different. Not in a bad way mind you, but our looks were in two, opposite categories. More than one of Kat’s boy toys had tried to come on to me after a time. They said her cuteness was appealing for awhile but my deep looks were something that lasted. I have very fair, almost pale, skin and bright green eyes. My hair is long and wavy, a dark shade of cherry red. I’m a couple inches taller than Kat and much slimmer, still with the right proportions where they needed to be but not in excess. Mitch and Kyle said we were both ugly, they were my other two best friends.

Mitch Flagstaff and Kyle Smith are twins in all but one aspect, they arn’t related. They look so closely alike that each of their fathers give the other suspicious looks whenever they were around each other. Both had light brown, almost blond hair. Mitch’s hair was usually shorter than Kyle’s is and Kyle had recently bleached his to an almost white blond, so now they didn’t look quite as similar. They each have a pair of dark brown eyes that catch the attention of many females who pass their way, not because of the color, but the good humor that once could always detect in their depths. Both are 5’9, though they always claimed to be 6 foot, and have slightly muscular builds, not too beefy but not skinny.

The four of us have been friends as long as any of us could remember. Well, Mitch claims that he can remember a time when we weren’t but that road always leads into a hogwash story about what it was like in the womb. "Warm and red," he always says to anyone who asks. Sure Mitch, you just keep telling yourself that.

We mix with a lot of different groups but we always do it together. Usually the groups we hang out with one week are based on whomever we’re dating. We’ve managed to connect many groups through our relationship alliances. For example, Kyle was dating this girl named Shelia who hung out with the "slacker" types. At the same time, Kat was dangling a guy named John off her leash, who hung out with the wanna-be-gangsters. At first, the two groups acted suspiciously towards each other when we invited them to a party we had thrown. After awhile, they discovered they had mutual "interests," well quite a few of them did. They swapped the names of their dealers and turned out to mix well with each other, despite their differences. A few of the slackers funked out to the rap that the gangsters had brought, and a couple of the gangsters could be seen moshing. None of the four of us connected to them through their mutual "interests," we stay away from that kind of stuff, but it sure had been one great party.

As for dating each other, we haven’t done it. We’re almost more like family than friends and couldn’t dream of ever risking our friendships on love gambles. Kat flirts with the two guys but it’s all in good fun. She claims to try out her new "techniques" on them. Sometimes, we’ll pair up to pretend to be couples in situations where it would be advantageous to have a date. Mitch and Kat usually play the physical couple. They hang all over each other and start making out in public places; they get a kick out of it. Kyle and I play the awkward but totally-into-each-other couple. We hold hands and make nervous but loving glances at each other. Sometimes, Mitch and Kat stage huge break-ups. They scream and throw stuff at each other, generally causing a huge scene. They love being consoled by sympathetic members of the opposite sex but usually stage reconciliation before we leave.

If you haven’t been able to tell yet, Mitch and Kat are the rowdy two of the group. While Kyle and I let down our hair when we feel like it but stay more conservative in our personalities most of the time. One thing we all have in common is our love for one another. Now, we would soon be separated. I was going far away from our little town of Brimmingham, Washington to Colorado College, where I was going to major in English and hopefully one day pursue my dream of being a novelist. Kyle was going to the University of Washington to study marine biology. Mitch was going to community college for two years and then hoped to transfer to the UofW and join Kyle in studying marine science. He had spent the first two years of high school goofing off and getting passing, but not very good, grades. The last two years he toughened up on himself and worked his grades up but they weren’t quite high enough. Kat was going father away than any of us. She had been accepted to the Academy of Arts College in San Francisco. Even though she won’t admit it, she loves her art even more than guys.

Fortunately, we won’t be extreme far away from each other and we would all be returning home for holidays. We had made a pact to spend the summers together and to later settle down in the same area once we had graduated from college. We were going to begin our vow by going on a vacation somewhere this summer. This year’s "senior trip" was to Hawaii, as it always was. Kat had been on the committee and tried to convince them to go somewhere original, to no avail. All four of us had been saving forever for the vacation and decided to blow off the rest of our class and do something else with just the four of us. It would undoubtedly one of the greatest times of our lives. Well, I hope it will.

I let my wandering mind come back to the ceremony as the final speech by our principal concluded. Kat reached over and took my hand in her own, giving it a squeeze. He wished us happiness, fortune, and a long life. It was the standard shpeal but I realized that it was more than just that to me now, this was the final word. I previously hadn’t cried but at that moment my eyes filled with tears. I couldn’t stop as they rolled down my cheeks and onto my gown. When Kat saw my reaction, it must have been the final straw for her too because she started crying as well. Pretty soon we were crying and hugging each other while Mitch and Kyle looked straight ahead somberly, trying to be macho. If you looked into their eyes, tiny tears were tucked in the corners but they were never released. When it came time to throw our caps, we stood and tossed them with our tear soaked hands. I watched as mine fluttered away from the other hats in the breeze, coming to rest far away from where it had begun.