"Oh my gosh, this stupid hat!"
The girl's bathroom is full of girls shifting around each other to see their reflections in the mirror. Endless straightening, girls tossing bobby pins to one another.
"My hair, does it look ok?"
"Yeah, it looks great."
We find ourselves getting in line for the ceremony. Some administrator is marching up and down the building's long hallway, "GET IN LINE! A CLEAN SHIP IS A HAPPY SHIP!"
Some guys grin at each other,
"I bet someone is naked under their graduation robe."
"--What?"
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
"There's got to be someone."
"Hey guys, I'm stripping it ALL off - GOIN' NAKED!"
"If you're doing it, I'm doing it."
"That's what I'm talking 'bout!"
"If our group leader falls, we all fall!"
"GROUP 8! 2008!"
"--WOOOOOOOOO! WE'RE MOVING! WE'RE MOVING!" Someone near the front yells. People in the back join in, "WE'RE MOVING, WE'RE MOVING!" After a long wait, we begin proceeding from the houses.
We're crossing the field and some guy I recognize from my senior English class is in the line to my right, his hands up in the air - victory - "I'M ALMOST THERE! I'M GRADUATING! I'M GRADUATING! I'M ALMOST THERE! I'M ALMOST DONE!"
It all happens so fast.
I was wandering down an empty street at 5:00 AM, this morning in fact, twenty-four hours sans sleep, feeling strangely more coherent than I actually was. My high school graduation and grad night were better than I ever expected them to be.
But a phrase hit me then, something from my subconscious, or perhaps something I already heard before:
"This is where everything fades into nothingness."
And I can't begin to tell you, how many things this meant to me but one.
She lowered her gaze to the glass of water sitting on the table between them. Inwardly she drew a breath, then looked away, "The glass... is three-quarters empty."
Suddenly in corner of her eye, a swift flash of his hand - cutting through the air, hitting the glass -- it descending from the table's edge. Instinctively her body jerked back at its collision with the floor -- shattering. Time moved slowly then: shattering pieces separating, water separating. Her eyes watched the shards of glass and drops of water pushing out from each other. Individually, yet collectively.
"--Is this what you want?" he demanded.
Her eyes focused on the shattered glass, the irregular breaks, water splotched across the floor. Chaos... Something in her mind was separating then, pushing away from itself -- Insanity.
She looked up at him and caught his eyes, grinned perversely, "That is exactly what I want."
"WOOO! I'M TWENTY-ONE!" some girl has her hands up in the air and is dashing through the women's athletic apparel at Target. She's there with two friends and they start chattering, all weaving through aisles and inspecting merchandise. The "twenty-one year old" leaves to go check another section and the two friends are talking to each other with a clothing rack between them.
"Hey, has she ever been kissed? I don't think she has."
"I'm... pretty sure she has."
"Um, I'm not so sure."
"Oh wait --yeah, she totally told me about making out with some guy."
"...Really?"
"Yeah."
Five minutes later one of the girls, perhaps the twenty-one year old again, goes, "I'M GOING EXTRA EXTRA LARGE BABY!" She pulls an XXL top over her M torso and sprints around.
That's when I realized: social bliss is what I want.
