Our Little Love Story *NOW PUBLISHED ON AMAZON KINDLE!!*

chapter twenty four

A few weeks after Prom, school had ended for the year. It was officially summer vacation. Not much had really changed since last summer. I still worked at the diner, and Jared still worked on the farm. I spent time with Brooke on some evenings when Jared had to stay late working. The entire summer vacation became a routine, day in and day out. Once I finished working, I sat at home with my parents watching television, or maybe went shopping with Brooke, or spent time with Jared. It was a simple life, but I enjoyed every minute of it. Drama free, and carefree.

Soon enough, it was the beginning of our long awaited Senior Year. Our last year of a long, thirteen year sentence (longer for those that had attended preschool, which I hadn’t.). The seniors were the so-called ‘kings and queens’ of the school. Jared and I still didn’t have any classes together, and not even so much as a study hall this year. I was disappointed, but I’d deal with it.

The last year of school flew by as quicker than I had wanted. In April, the school put on a ‘Career Drive’ and had several different tables and booths set up in the gym with people behind them handing out information for the career that they represented. The seniors were allowed to attend the drive first, and have free run of the gym and the booths. When we were finished looking, we were to go back to our classes and resume the rest of the school day. 

“Hey, you want to go check out this Career Drive now?” Jared asked, coming up to me in the hallway after our first hour class.

“Well, I guess, we might as well,” I replied, sighing. I still couldn’t grasp that in a little over a month, we were going to be set free in the world. No more high school. We had spent a lifetime yearning for this moment, and now it was nearly here. Jared nodded and waited for me as I tossed my books into my locker, and then we walked hand in hand to the gymnasium. 

Walking through one of the heavy double doors leading into the gym, a mixture of voices flooded our ears. The entire gym was a buzz with students walking around, stopping at random booths, and some just walking around wasting time so they didn’t have to go back to class. 

“What booth do you want to look at?” Jared asked, surveying the gym in front of us.

“Oh, I don’t know, really. I hadn’t put a lot of thought into it, to be honest. Nothing like waiting  until the last possible minute, huh?” I replied, looking up at him with a smile. Jared smiled absently back at me, but he seemed to have something else on his mind. My smile faltered a little. “Is everything okay?” I asked, slightly concerned.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Just looking around, trying to decide which booth to go to first,” Jared said, still looking around. He finally looked down at me, and giving me a quick kiss on the top of my head, said, “Hey, I’m going to go over to this area. Do you want to come with me?”

I glanced in the direction he had motioned to with his eyes, and saw nothing that really stood out and grabbed my attention. “Um, no, I think I’ll just head over there,” I answered, pointing to the other side of the gym.

“Alright. Well, I’ll meet you back here when we’re finished?” Jared asked. I nodded in agreement, and with another quick kiss on my forehead, he headed off to the right side of the gymnasium, and I started off in the opposite direction. Something was nagging and biting at the edges of my mind about Jared, but I dismissed it, assuring myself that it was nothing. 

The first table I walked past was for an intern job at a local business office, the second was information on becoming a teacher. I stopped at the third booth. Spread across the table were pamphlets about becoming a nurse. I picked one up, and slowly thumbed through the few pages.

“So, are you interested in becoming a nurse?” I looked up at the voice coming from the other side of the table. It was a lady probably in her thirties or forties. She had on a gray business suit, and wore her dark hair pulled back away from her face. Thin, silver rimmed glasses rested easily on the bridge of her nose.