You'll Just Know

Chapter 24

            To me, those winter months felt like summer all over again. Wendy and I became inseparable. During those weeks, it seemed like we were together every waking moment. We spent countless, intimate hours in the library, taking walks in the woods, holding hands in the cemetery, or just talking by the banks of the Witchahee. It didn’t matter what we were doing. Just being together felt wonderful and I savored every moment of it.

            I hoped and prayed that somehow this time could just last forever. It felt so perfect. I have heard it said often that you never know happiness until it’s gone. That’s just not true, though. During those weeks, I knew that I was happy. I felt it and recognized it and never for one moment took it for granted. It was such a wonderful, thrilling time in my life.

            That February, the groundhog predicted an early spring, and he was right. It came near the end of March in all of its Indiana glory. I was shocked at the suddenness of it. The world literally changed overnight. I woke up one morning to see everything blanketed by the deep green hues of springtime.

            By that time, the Joelester Crusaders football team had broken a record that year. They had lost every game but one (and that one they had not lost because the bus carrying the other team had broken down on the way to the game and they had had to forfeit).

            Chad Wright, as amazing as it may seem, soon lost his appetite for revenge. It seems that after our confrontation, all sorts of people found the courage to come forward and stand up to Chad. He had offended a lot of people, and it turned out that he had a lot less friends than even he had suspected. In those months, Chad’s arrogant boasting lost a lot of its steam as he found himself ignored more and more.

            It was early March that I began to notice Emily walking with Ernie Johnson in the halls between classes. The Grapevine verified that they had begun dating, and with that news another lingering weight was lifted from me. The hard glares that Wendy and I had been getting from Emily had been making us both uneasy. Now, when we passed her in the hallway with Ernie, she would just smile smugly and pull Ernie close to her. I suppose she thought she was “getting even” in her not-so-subtle way. I was happy for the both of them.

            Everything was changing quickly on a much higher level, too. We were seniors in high school and it seemed to us that we were on the teetering brink of something truly life-changing. Looming ahead, in everyone’s minds, like the finish line for this life and the launching point for the next, was Graduation. What lay beyond was unfathomable, and it suddenly seemed to be coming at us faster than any of us had expected.

            Wendy and I had already discussed college as something we would do together. There had never been any hesitation or doubt about that point. We couldn’t imagine being apart after all it had taken to get us together. College applications were nervously filled out, sealed, and sent, leaving us with nothing to do but to wait with crossed fingers.

            And that was where I was in my life before that fateful day in April. That day of the first spring thunderstorm. The day that everything changed forever…