While Mrs. Hoss looked closer at my paper, I zeroed in on Felicia Thompson’s desk in the front row. As I walked back to my spot with a new test, I chanted her answers quietly to myself. A, A, B, D, C, C, A…
Over lunch I felt so guilty, I completed an entire practice test, just to prove I could have done it if it hadn’t been for NPC. (I aced it. But still.)
On the last hour of high school, while everyone in the senior hallway was ripping papers and books out of their lockers with vicious glee, I caught up with Coop and told him.
“Aw, baby’s first guilt trip,” he said, and put his hand on top of my head, ruffling my hair. “It’s over! Who cares? You would have killed it, right? You didn’t do anything wrong. Sometimes it’s just about timing.”
“Sure,” I said. For Coop it was.
Coop stopped in the middle of the hall, next to me. “What are you doing now?”
“Walking,” I said without thinking, because I was thinking about a million other things.
“People are coming over to my house to grill hot dogs.”
“That sounds fun!” I said, and waved good-bye.
Later I realized he might have been inviting me. Oh well. Me and social cues.
As we walked out of Hanover’s doors for the last time as high schoolers, I wasn’t reminiscing, I wasn’t crying, I wasn’t celebrating. I was praying. God, Jesus, Mary, and all the saints, I said over and over. Please, please, please let graduation day be the right timing.
BUT WHAT IF IT’S NOT
It’s three a.m. and I just woke up in a cold sweat from a nightmare where I got onstage to give my speech, but a bear started moving through the crowd, and no one was scared of it except for me, and it came barreling through and everyone stepped aside for it even though it was heading straight for me, slowly, and right before it went up on its hind legs to maul me, I woke up. And I realized: Coop’s methods may work for tests and class time, but they don’t work for speeches. I’ll be up there with nowhere to escape, and no way to avoid it.
UNTITLED, IN A GOOD WAY
This morning I was up again at sunrise. I recited my speech in a long, hot shower. It’s a beautiful spring day, practically summer. Mom and I had picked out a dress from one of the boutique sale racks earlier this week, simple white with thick lace, and Mom took in the waist and let out the shoulders so it fits just right. She also bought some stuff to make my curls less frizzy, which I worked through my wet tangles, and I even brushed on some of her mascara.
Soon Grandma and Grandpa (just the ones from Dad’s side—Nana can’t make the trip from Canada) will meet us for lunch before the ceremony. Stuart asked if he could take me out before all the craziness and family stuff began, and Mom said yes, since today was a special occasion.
We went to the 4 Aces Diner in Lebanon and sat in a booth. Because I was so nervous and my stomach couldn’t take solid food, and hell, because today was the first day of the rest of my life, I ordered an Oreo milk shake for breakfast. Stuart burst out laughing and ordered one for himself, too.
“You look adorable,” he said as we sucked on our straws.
“I feel like I’m going to start puking into this glass in two seconds.”
“Good puke or bad puke?”
“Both.”
“You probably wouldn’t be the first person to lose it over a milk shake here. They are so good.”
“I can barely taste it.”
Stuart dug in with a spoon. “That’s a tragedy.”
“We’ll have to come back here after this whole thing’s over,” I said.
“Two milk shakes in one day? Living fast and loose.”
I laughed. “No, I mean later this summer.”
Then we were both quiet for a minute. Even though we talked about our futures constantly—Stuart finishing his collection of short stories, me going to NYU—we never really talked about what our future looked like, or whether there was even an our future in the first place. I had moved so fast to make things clear between us, I didn’t really think about why.
Maybe it had a lot to do with the fact that I thought it was almost too good to be true. That I wanted to get as much out of him as I could before he moved back into a world where there were thousands of girls just as smart as me and just as encouraging and ten times more pretty, and there he would move on.
I wondered if he was thinking the same thing.
“Stuart…” I began.
“Yeah?” he asked, still digging into the glass with his spoon.
“Look at me,” I said.
Looking puzzled, he stopped and took my hand across the table. I loved when he did that. I always had the urge to look around to see if anyone was looking at us when we held hands, a sort of silly, vain little thought that they might look at us and think, Aw. That couple is in love.
But my words caught in my throat. Maybe now wasn’t the time to have this conversation, on the brink of one of the biggest moments of my life thus far. And anyway, we had never said “love.” I’ve said it here, but I realize I have a very small understanding. A very true understanding, but a pretty small one.