One Choice

Chapter 46- You Know:

Chapter 46- You Know

          “And now, seniors, please rise to your feet!” the principal’s voice rang out through the gym and all of us seniors stood up. He began his speech, telling us all a bunch of lies about how wonderful it had been to have us in the school and how sad he was to see such a wonderful class go. Everyone knew that he was lying straight through his teeth. Just by looking at the teachers anyone would know the truth. They couldn’t wait to see us get out of here. They couldn’t care less about what happened to us after this. They were just happy that they didn’t have to put up with us for a moment longer after this. The thing is though, most of the students here weren’t going anywhere out of town. Most of them were going to stay right here and go to college, or just find a job to support themselves. I knew this because of the school newspapers that they handed out yesterday.

          My eyes danced around the room, and I knew just who I was searching for. I knew that for me, this was not only a goodbye to this school. This was also a goodbye to all of my friends. This would be the last time that I would ever see them again.

          And it wasn’t the way I’d wanted for it to happen.

          I wanted my last few days with my friends to be filled with laughter and hugs and tears of joy and cheers. We were finally graduating. We never had to come to school again. We didn’t have to wake up at the crack of dawn anymore to come to the place every teenager hated with every fiber in their being. We no longer had to put up with annoying, irrelevant teachers that tried to teach us things that most of us couldn’t care less about.

          But this was anything but hugs and cheers and happiness between me and my friends. In fact, it’d been the complete opposite. Instead of growing closer like I’d wished we could, we grew apart.

          My eyes caught the gaze of Katie. Her eyes though, were filled with nothing other than pure hatred. I knew she hated me. She had every right to. I’d abandoned her and ignored her for the past few days and I’d lied to her countless of times. I even had to snap at her a few times because she didn’t listen. I had to say a few rude things as well. I’d never felt lower in my life than when I’d said those things to her.

          She was the first to break eye contact. She looked ahead toward the stage and clapped at something someone must’ve said. My eyes scanned across the sea of students and my eyes found Mason. He wasn’t looking at me, but I knew that he didn’t like me much more than Katie did, but he didn’t send me icy glares at any chance he got. He just preferred to ignore me altogether. Chris was standing next to him. He caught me looking and sent me a sympathetic smile before looking back up to the stage again. Chris was the only one that felt bad for me. He didn’t know what was going on with me, and he chose to leave it at that. He seemed to think that whatever it was that I was going through, I’d get over it eventually.

          Oh how I wish that was true.

          As I looked at Chris for a moment longer, I saw that his gaze shifted to something a few rows ahead. I followed his gaze, knowing exactly who he was looking at.

Stephanie sat just a little ways away from me. She wasn’t paying any attention to the two people that were focusing their attention on her. She was too engrossed into what was being said and what all was happening to notice. Stephanie wasn’t rude to me like Katie was, but I knew she didn’t like me very much anymore. She never spoke to me. She’d tried to get me to speak to her but every time that she did, I just blew her off.

My eyes scanned around the room again. I looked through the crowd of senior students, trying to see if I recognized anymore faces in the throng of happy, excited teenagers. I searched all through the girls in the room—all of us wearing our yellow caps and gowns. My eyes danced across the faces of the boys in the room who were all wearing their navy blue caps and gowns.