As senior year dawns...

~This is a writing assignment for which we had to describe the beginning of our senior year and our feelings about being a senior. Enjoy!~ 

The first few days, driving to school was an awesome responsibility. She could barely fathom the trust that parents, administrators and her passengers put into her. Getting to school on time was easy to take for granted. But they could crash. The car could break down. She could decide to skip first period and sleep in the car. They could drive right past the school and off into the sunrise, never to be heard from again. The possibilities were endless, exciting and terrifying, and it was good.

And yet every day, at an ungodly hour, they arrived. Walking into the school from the back parking lot, carrying car keys that jangled merrily to contrast the morning grumbles and a thermos cup full of hot tea, she felt so adult, so grown up, so mature and capable. It was a new feeling, and it was good.

Then, as always happens, new and exciting became routine. Now, when the car was in the shop and she was forced to sit on the gross seats of the bus, tainted by idiocy, spilled juice and God knows what else, it soured the whole day. But even in the backseats of the bus, that entitlement, that special feeling was still there. She was a senior, and it was good.

Those first few days of school, the honeymoon phase, she wasn’t sure she ever stopped smiling. Dorky as it was, from the fifteen minutes of social time before the first bell rang to the last, torturous moments of the endless eighth period, she savored every second. Everyone was tan and still riding on a summer high; the teachers were primarily ones she knew and loved. The friends she’d missed over the summer were there. Classes that she had chosen to take filled her day, and a delicious taste of college life lay in the senior study hall in the cafeteria. 

She promised herself that she would make this the best year yet.  And she believed it too. There was still a feeling, a current of electricity, a relaxed vibe that hinted at a year even better than the last. A year that would last forever and yet seem no longer than a heartbeat. A year that would stand out from all the others as the shining jewel on the crown of high school.  And if she was being honest with herself, after the near-disaster that had been last May and June, anything would appear wonderful and enchanting.  So with not a doubt or shred of bad attitude, she marched into senior year to conquer and take it for her own.

It was second period on the first day of school when she felt it: a pang of a frown, a missing part of her day. She checked herself over mentally. No stomach ache, no headache, not even a desire to go home yet. What was this sudden unsatisfied attitude? She felt it again, but after a minute it passed and she went back to her Journalism work.  As the first round of story ideas for that year were filling the screen, she thought back to last year and the fun she’d had. 

Her eyes drifted to the side of the screen and stared into the past as a soft, pure smile curved her lips upward. It was the kind of smile that transported you back into time, into a memory. It was then she realized that the pangs she was feeling were for those who had graduated. She missed her best friends, the ones who made her laugh and want to get up the next morning. She missed her friends who had taught her how to be herself and how to live unafraid of the opinions of others.

The smile faded and was replaced with the first hint of a frown. A wave of almost crying swept over her, leaving the shores of her mind scrambled, like sand. But just as every grain of sand found its place after a monstrous wave passed over it, so her thoughts settled back into place. She looked back, thought once more about how fantastic last year had been to her and then closed the door. It was over. 

But as she turned from the door of last year, she faced the golden gate that was this year. And as the gates swung open to welcome a new believer, she finally understood the meaning of senior year. It was collecting everything your teachers had crammed into your brain in the last twelve years, every memory of crazy times with friends, every tear, every giggle, every broken piece of lead, every tattered school book, every dented locker door, every ounce of coffee and every prom dress and condensing it. Condensing it until you had only the essence of high school. And that lump of goodness that was left, that nugget of pure gold, that was senior year. Nothing could go wrong because there was no plan. Nothing could come as a surprise because no one had the script to this play. It was literally the year of perfection. And it hadn’t even happened yet. 

She looked back to her computer screen and resumed her typing, with a new kind of smile on her face, one that appeared only when you looked into the sun. She was ready for senior year, and it was going to be good.