American Runaways

Chapter 15. The American Runaways

I woke up to arms wrapped around me. I thought I was dreaming at first, but the alarm on my phone ringing, made me think otherwise. I turned over and seen Carter laying next to me. We fell asleep in his van last night. I reached for my phone seeing that it was 10:30 in the morning. Mel and I were meeting at Megan's at 11, so we could all get ready for graduation together.

"Carter wake up," I said.

He groaned and opened his eyes, "I could get used to waking up to that face," He grinned.

"Could you take me to Megan's? I supposed to go over there and get ready with her and Mel."

"Sure," He said, hopping up to the drivers seat.

We drove in silence, but it was a good silence. Like we were so happy and content that we didn't want to ruin the moment by saying something stupid. But Carter had his hand on my lap the whole ride over to Megan's.

*****

I walked up the long staircase to Megan's room, where she was doing Mel's hair.

"Are you getting nervous for your speech?" Mel asked me.

"A little. I figured I would just go up there and wing it."

We talked about the things we wanted to do after graduation. There were several after parties going on and we couldn't decide which one to go to, or if we should go to all. Megan curled my hair and did my make up for the ceremony. As time grew closer to graduation, my stomach would start hurting minute by minute. I honestly didn't know what I was going to say up there. I was the student speaker and was supposed to sum up everyone's experience at high school.

We all hopped in Megan's dad's car, which was a Rolls Royce. Megan said we need to show up in style. All the students had to meet up in the gymnasium to count and make sure everyone was there. But the students who were going to speak, had to meet up in a classroom, to go over our speeches. Mrs. Robbins was in there which made me a little less anxious.

"You are going to be fine. Look at Hanna, she's fine," She said pointing to Hanna, who was laughing with some other students.

"Hanna is class president, she talks in front of the school all the time."

"I guess, but I promise when you get up there, everything will be ok," She reassured me, "Do you want to practice saying your speech to me?"

"I actually don't have anything written down. I was just going to go up there and say what come to mind."

The principle came in and said it was time to start. Everyone gathered at one end of the football field were the ceremony was being held. We all walked out in a straight line to our seats. The speakers all had to sit in the front row, which meant I was going to be further away from Peter, Carter, Mel or Megan, which made my stomach sink in more.

The ceremony started with the principle talking about this school year and awarding some outstanding students with awards. Some staff members also talked about their favorite parts of the school year and then it was my turn to go up there and talk.

I slowly made my way up to the stage and gripped my journal in my hand. I didn't know why I had brought my journal with me. I guess I was hoping that if I got stuck, I could read something and then run off stage.

I tapped on the microphone to make sure it was on, even though I knew it was, "Hi my names Parker Moore and I was chosen to come up here and talk about everyone's experience here through out the 4 years. But that's kind of difficult to do, since we all had different experiences here. Some may have had the times of there life, while others couldn't wait to leave. Some students may have won us the football championship game, while others won us the state Science Fair competition. When you get to high school, you get put into categories. Like the popular kids, jocks, the rebels, the science geeks and so on. But once we are out of here and into the real world all those labels won't matter. Over the last few weeks, I began friendships with people who weren't in my category. But somehow the friendships worked. I wish I could go back to the first day of freshman year and befriend them then, because it would have been an honor to know them that much longer. We are going to leave here today with some of us going away to college, taking over family businesses, traveling the world, or maybe doing absolutely nothing. But that's okay. The time will come when you least expect it for you to figure out what you want to do with your life. I've decided that I'm going to read you all a poem that I've been working on that will tell you about my feelings about the last 4 years,and maybe some of you can relate to it as well. And please don't make fun of me afterward, if it totally sucks," That received laughs from everyone there. I pulled up my journal and opened it up to the last page and began my poem: