Final Goodbye

The plastic heart-shaped candy holder was eleven years old, cracked, faded, and in a plain brown paper bag, but I knew exactly what it was.  It was the Valentine’s Day present Eric Koo had given me in third grade.  It had once contained red, pink, and white Skittles.  Eric Koo.  I hadn’t thought about him since graduating high school a year ago.  He had stopped paying attention to me and become a jerk shortly after, and had probably already gone back for his sophomore year at Syracuse University.  I tossed the heart into the trash.  I didn’t need to get sentimental.  Starting tomorrow, I’d be free of this life.  I would be starting a job in graphic design at a company in Boston, proving to the world that college isn’t necessary for success.

“Ronnie?” my sister Eva called, coming into my room.  “Are you almost done packing?” 

“Is that a shopping cart, E?” I asked, rolling my eyes.  Eva was also leaving Rochester tomorrow and starting her freshman year at the University of Michigan. 

“Well, we don’t have a luggage cart.  How else can we take all of our belongings to the car?” Eva said quite seriously. 

“We have arms.  And we don’t even need to pack the car until tomorrow.  We’re going out tonight, remember?”  Eva and I got along well and we even had many of the same friends, but I never understood where she got half of the things that came out of her mouth. 

“How could I forget?  Our final night out in our glorious hometown before everything changes.  Is the whole gang coming?”

“If you count the five of us that are left as ‘the whole gang,’ then yes, everyone is coming.  Just let me finish packing and we’ll get ready together.”

“I’m giving you ten minutes.”

            Five hours later, our night was well underway.  Miss Party Queen Sumi and I were sufficiently drunk on scotch and cheap liquor, partying it up squished in the shotgun of her car.  Eva, the designated driver, was taking us around Rochester and, being the only sober one, shaking her head at our drunkenness.  The Lexs (my best friend since forever Xandra and her boyfriend Alexander) were making out in the backseat.  Everything seemed so normal that it was easy to forget this was the last time we would being doing this. 

“Hey guys,” Eva said, parking the car.  This was enough to get Sumi and me to stop dancing to Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” like twelve year old girls, and the Lexs even broke away from each other.  This was something serious.  “Don’t you think that we should be doing, I don’t know, something different?  I mean, this is our final night out before everything changes,” she pointed out, using the same words she had used on me earlier. 

“A roadside jam?” Alex suggested. 

“We don’t have our instruments,” Xandra noted.  The Lexs made up the bassist and drummer of our local rock band, and they were leaving to go tour cross-country tomorrow, so it was their last night too.  Even Sumi was leaving to go back to USC tomorrow. 

“Don’t think of it like that,” Sumi said, pouting.  “You’re making it seem like we’ll never go out again.  We’ll come back.  After all, I was good about visiting even though I was in school.  So were Sebastian and Carey.”  Sebastian and Carey were two friends of ours who had already gone back to school.  “The Lexs will be on the road together.  Their entire life will be a party.  Eva and I will be hitting parties on campus.  And Ronnie, well, can’t help you there.  You chose this whole adult working thing.” 

“Hey, just because I have a job doesn’t mean I can’t have fun.  And Eves, I think this night has been pretty awesome.  If this is our last night together, I don’t know about you, but I have no regrets,” I announced.  And if being sober means thinking like Eva, then I’m glad I’m drunk, I thought. 

“Aww,” everyone said.  Whatever feelings of our lives being torn apart that were there before had been pushed aside.  These nights of freedom and recklessness, they were what being young was all about, and they were the times I would remember when I looked back on my life.  Our lives might completely change tomorrow, but tonight we were living the dream.

            Sumi cranked up the radio volume and the opening notes of “I Like It Like That” played.  “HOT CHELLE RAE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Sumi and I screamed loud enough to turn heads.  But we had the “we’re just young kids trying to have fun” excuse and nostalgia on our side.  The five of us sang as loud as we could,

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,

If you’re with me let me hear you say!

I like it like that, hey, windows down,

Chillin with the radio on.”

I had never felt more alive than I did in this moment.  My moment of glory was soon interrupted when Eva forgot to signal for the next left turn, pissing off the driver next to us.

 “Use your signals, you crazy ass teenagers!” he screamed. 

“Ignore him,” X said.  “By tomorrow we’ll be out of here anyway.”  That got me serious for a while.  Everything we had built in Rochester would soon no longer matter.  We were starting fresh.  But then I realized, we were going to be gone by tomorrow, so who cared what we did today?  The past was the past.  Tonight was ours.  I cranked the music even louder.

            That night in bed, I thought about my night.  In some ways it was just like any other night spent with my crew, but many things made it stand out.  It had given me confidence for my new life and had shown me that I was ready to burn my past and let it die.  I was destined for something greater than living at home, and I was able to take anything life threw at me with an open hand.  Tonight had been the epitome of all nights, the showstopper, the grand finale.  The final goodbye before the great escape.  That night, I slept easier than any night before.