It's A Good Day

My first half of the day is spent testing for AP English Language. I'm excited, I know this material, I've been studying it for two years now. I hesitate to write my essays but putting my pen to paper, I don't stop for forty minutes. I do the first, the next, then the last. The day started grey and cloudy, making this test a bit of a drag, but when I am done and dismissed, I open a door to open skies and sunny air. It's my last day of high school. I have waited for this moment for countless days, begging and crying for it to come sooner, yet it always felt like the days were dragging on. But today, I feel a warmth and nostalgia, knowing this is the last time I may ever walk these halls, and those dragging days I complained about have faded to feeling like yesterday. In desperate need to retrieve my flask I left in the testing room, I go to my vice principal who was more involved in my freshman year. My bad year. As he walks me to the room to unlock and retrieve it, I think of all the terrible things that happened to me my freshman year. Bullying, rumors, abuse, rape, substance abuse... I look at him and see the growth of me within the absence of him in my life. I realize these are my last intimate moments, and I indulged in it. I hate my school, terribly so, but I also don't. Without it, I would not be me, I would not have my ambitions and abilities. Without his guidance in my freshman year, I wouldn't have accessed any of it anyways. I grab the bottle and head to math, everyone is testing, and I and my teacher already talked about me just not taking the test as I did not need to and it would waste paper. I sit there in silence for twenty minutes and I look around my peers. These are people who have made me laugh and enjoy math for the past four months. I take it in, the silence consuming me, making me realize that I am never going to sit here again. The bell rings and I make my way to class with my walking buddy Sauce. Almost to the last class, a girl runs up to him and gives him a hug saying how much she'll miss him, and for some reason, I hug her too. I don't even know this girl, but her goodbye to him and I felt so well and welcoming and warm. I hope she is a good student and gets into schools of her dreams later in life. A custodian stops in his cart, waiting for kids to get out of his way, and I like to spread kindness, so I tell him it's my last day and then proceeds to thank him for taking care of the school for four years. He looks at me for a bit, probably searching for sarcasm or anything, then nods his head in sincerity and tells me he appreciates it. That's probably the last time I'll ever see him. I and Sauce get to class and the attitude is already exuberant, but I still feel the somber thought that this is the last time I do any of this as a student. The class goes by, and a guy in class brings pizza to which almost everybody clapped to, and I cherish the moment because in the real world people are not happy with the simple pleasures of five dollar pizza. The last bout of true innocence is there. The last people sign my yearbook, we film goodbye videos, and this is the last time I know I will see anybody. The feeling is weird. It's how you feel the summer going from elementary to middle school, but more freeing, optimistic, and lonely. I take my last pics, I get in my friends' car for the last time, I go home. I am alone. That was the last time we do anything like that. I open my yearbook and I see notes of love, laughter, and well offs. I hope that everyone in my class is successful, I hope they all live life in a fulfilling way to themselves and earth, I hope they live comfortable. To anyone who helped me become me, I thank you. My journey now begins and yours does too. I hope we both become who we want to become. I hope you enjoyed today; it was a good day. Truly.