The Fleeting Happy

Epilogue

When the sun rose on the first day of my junior year at Severn Valley High School, I was more or less feeling nervous. Throughout the summer break, I'd grown accustomed to the luxury of sleeping in until two in the afternoon and binging on junky snacks to my heart's content.

Now that school was back in session, I feared that things would be different.

Who was I kidding, though? Things would never be the same.

Seeing my friends again was weird. None of us had communicated over the summer. We were much too busy with our own lives.

Like for example, Stef Browning. Over the summer, she'd volunteered at a summer camp to be a senior counselor. She'd sent me letters from the camp, some obscure program thing somewhere in New Hampshire. The stationary was weird, tinted brown and emblazoned with the camp's cartoonish bear logo. Stef told me all about how she'd been doing all sorts of volunteer jobs— from working at the soup kitchen, to hugging crack-addicted babies, to teaching elderly people how to use their iPhones.

When I saw her again, her hair was no longer bleached blonde. It was back to its regular natural honey blonde, not quite different but surprising all the same. She still donned her signature eyeliner and her signature, perennially satisfied smirk. Seeing her again was nice. We'd hugged. We'd cried. We hadn't said much, but we knew exactly what the other was thinking.

Stef was preparing for her senior year at SVHS. She already had a plan in mind— graduate with the sufficient credits. Go straight into the workforce by becoming an apprentice hairdresser.

As for Diego? Over the summer, he'd taken a trip to Chile to see his family. He'd only sent me a couple pictures and a brief text assuring me that he was fine and that he'd get over all the traumatic events we'd gone through last year in due time. Somehow, I believed him. He came back with a new haircut, tanner skin and the smile starting to regrow back on his face. Diego gave me hope.

Like Stef, Diego was also entering senior year. I wasn't sure what his plans were, but I had no doubts he'd come up with a good one. Scratch that— a great one.

It was strange not having Greene and Owen hanging around the school anymore, since they'd graduated last year. The last time I saw Greene was literally yesterday— he'd sheared off all his hair, cutting his long dark locks into a military buzz-cut in order to join the Air Force.

"I'm retiring from drug dealing," Greene had told me wistfully. "And I'm becoming a pilot. I leave in a couple weeks to start training, actually. I'm pretty excited. My plan is to get free education through the military, maybe learn to fly some fighter planes. And then when I'm old enough, I can retire and become an airplane pilot."

"You look different," I'd told him. Different would be an understatement— Greene with short hair was a completely new person. One that I did not recognize.

"Good different or bad?"

"Good."

Greene looked like he had finally found himself. He was glowing. He looked content with his life. Truth be told, I was proud of him. I told him exactly that, and he told me that he'd visit often.

"You better," I'd joked lightheartedly. Then, when both of our smiles had withered, I said, "do you still miss her?"

"Every damn day... every damn day..."

And that was the last thing Mitchell Greene said to me before he left town to join the Air Force.

As for Owen, he'd been accepted full-scholarship to NJCU. I still talk to him occasionally, but Stef visits his campus every weekend and practically lives in his dorm room. I think that one day, Owen will be a pretty great engineer. He'd burned his varsity jacket the day after graduation— a testament to how much he'd hated football throughout his years at Severn Valley High.