Wild Ride - The Alternative Version (Book 2)

Chapter 72~Graduation Day

Abbie's POV

Monday and the half day of school today went faster than I expected it to, but that's probably because we haven't been doing much of anything in class. Aside from practicing the graduation ceremony, in the last two days we've been taking pictures like crazy to put into the slideshow for tonight. They'd asked for us to bring in pictures from when we were younger last week, and they already had some that elementary school sent over. Since I missed the majority of middle school here, Mom called Caravel and asked about any pictures they would still have from sports and such, or any photos they took throughout the year with me included in them. They had quite a bit from sports and sent them out, and I picked a few of my favorite ones and we brought them into the school. Our art teacher, who was in charge of creating the slideshow, also wanted pictures from the semi-formal, so I can already guess what pictures will end up in there.

Meanwhile, yesterday when we first began practicing the march, I found out that we're organized by height. The girls lined up going from shortest to tallest, and the boys did the same. I'm last, being the tallest girl in my class, and so is a certain guy who is the same height as me. I get to march with Dustin, and that makes me very happy. I don't get to sit next to him though, because guys sit on one side and girls sit on the other, and we do this whole rotation thingy to get our diplomas and stuff. It's a lot less complicated than it sounds, especially once it was shown to us instead of being verbally expressed by the principal. That was just highly confusing.

They wouldn't tell us what the actual songs we would march to were. They just used other subsitutes for us to practice the march to and that frustrated us all.  We tried to get the teachers to agree to let us see the slideshow too but they said no, mostly because we couldn't see it until tonight but they also said it wasn't quite finished yet. 

After we finished practicing the march, they let us go outside for the rest of the day. Dustin and I stuck closely by each other's sides, where it was kind of hard to do so before because of the busy day. We'd be in the middle of a conversation and teachers would just cut us off and start barking orders at us and it really irritated both of us. It was the last day of school, we just wanted to have a little freedom for once.

He and I went and sat in the shade, further away from everyone else. The great thing about the last day of school is that teachers don't pay as much attention to PDA as long as it's not super major. Like, if you stand in front of them and shove your tongues down each other's throats they'll probably lecture you for a while, but if you're holding hands and stuff like that they don't really seem to mind it but they'll kind of glare at you. Yeah, like a glare is gonna scare any of us off.

So, since the teacher's weren't playing close attention and we were kind of secluded here in the shade anyway, that's exactly what we did. We sat there, holding onto each other's hands tightly, watching the other kids run around. 

"Kind of crazy, isn't it?" He said, and I looked at him, a little puzzled.

"What is?" 

"Just how everything is coming together so quickly. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I've got you to brag about being with now."

I gave him a bewildered look. "You think it's hard to believe!? I can't even believe that you chose me, of all people."

Dustin raised an eyebrow. "Why not choose you?"

I stared at the ground. "I dunno, I just never thought you'd ever think of me as anything different than your best friend because y'know... I'm just me." I mumbled.

"But that's one of the things I love the most about you. You're just you. You don't try to be someone you're not to impress anybody. You just do whatever you want, and if someone doesn't like it, you don't care."