Here You Go: A Collection of Garbage and Other Things

Future or Now #TKBMovieContest

I hate these walls covered with questionable stains, crude graffiti, and pink posters advertising everything from the cheerleading club to the D&D club tournament next Saturday. I hate the people that throngs these corridors, girls who spend way too long on their makeup for a Monday, guys whose boxers are visible at the top of their sagging pants, girls with high ponytails carrying huge stacks of textbooks, I don't care, I hate them all. I don't have very many friends, maybe because my personality isn't the easiest to get along with. I call it confidence and authority, others call it "being an ice-cold bitch". High schooler vocabularies can be so primitive. 

But I do have a weakness, though I'll never tell anyone. I haven't admitted it to myself yet, but I may, just maybe, be in love. 

I act like a queen, but I'm still a teenager, however much I wish I wasn't. So, unbelievable as it sounds, I do have feelings. I just don't show them. I've had crushes. The longest was Damien Coosh, in seventh grade, for 5 months. I dreamt about him all throughout summer vacation, then came back and saw his horrible new haircut. 

But Evan is different. 

I've liked him since junior year. 

We are now seniors, and I've seen him with multiple horrible haircuts, but I still can't help that flutter of butterflies that appear in my stomach when I see him. Even when he had that horrible man bun. 

He and I are friends, we nerd out over comics, we study for tests together, and we hang out like regular friends. I wouldn't say best friends, but we're close.

We're now seniors, and school ends in less than a month. 

I'm set. Valectadorian, captain of both the swim team and the water polo team, FBLA and Mock Trial president, with both my AP and IB diplomas.  I've played piano in Carnegie Hall. Yale has already offered me a full ride, along with Oxford, still waiting on Harvard. 

I know I'm going far, far away from this dump of a town and this prison of a high school. 

Evan is at the bottom of the IB leaderboard. He's applied to only California schools, and hasn't heard back from any of them. No sports, he's into music and wants to major in it. I know my family won't approve. 

Oh no, my  strict Chinese mother definitely won't approve. 

It's prom night. I go with Carly and Bethany, my best friends. Carly's going to Brown, Beth to Columbia, so we'd already agreed to meet up once a month in college. 

I lose Beth when she goes to John, her crush, and they dance. Carly disappears in the direction of the snack table. 

I see Evan, dancing with Megan. Then Leah. Crystal, Malika. He's handsome in a black tux, grinning underneath the strobe lights. 

He looks up. Sees me. Starts towards me, hands outstretched. 

I see my mother's face. I see the Yale acceptance letter.

I leave.