Pure

Epilogue

-Demi

When people say time flies they're not usually lying. I mean, yes there is moments when time drags on forever, but my god can time fly too.
When Cara said she'd stay till the end of the school year, it sounded wonderful. We were only halfway through so I still had close to five months with her. In that time she went home twice for two weeks and it gave me a taste of something I was trying not to think of as much as I could. I hated all of the weeks she wasn't with me. But I knew it was good. She was rebuilding the relationship with her family and that was wonderful. Tali had also decided to come here with her whole family for a week and it was great. Cara is literally an exact copy of her. Besides for Tali being a little more on the shy side, they are practically the same person. And much like Cara had predicted, we became great friends.
But as much as I enjoyed her company and as much as I love talking on the phone with her and texting her and all that, it keeps reminding me of the fact that Cara is leaving and I don't know if I'll ever see her again. She's going back to her family, halfway across the country. It's still crazy to me to think that she actually walked all the way from there to here. It's like a three hour flight, it's not close by. Couple towns over, my fucking ass. That girl is something special.

She is graduating today!

At sixteen years old, with grades better then I even knew were possible, she is graduating high school.
She's been amazing ever since she got back in touch with her sister. I still every once in a while get tiny little glimpses of her bitchy side, but she really improved a lot and only made it harder for me to accept the fact that she would leave.
Her whole family decided to come in for her graduation. She doesn't know, though. It's a surprise. And it's fucking hard to keep to myself. Every time I see her I wanna shout it out and hug her and tell her, but I don't wanna ruin the surprise.
I set them up with a nice hotel that's not too far away- I couldn't host them cause they're way too many people and then Cara would know. And I've been in touch with mostly Tali but also her parents and her oldest brother and sister. It's quite adorable how much this whole family gives for her. She's their baby, their world. But she came to me with such an attitude that it seems funny for me sometimes to picture her being pampered by her family the way they make it sound they do.
I have met most of them by now. Not all of the little kids, but I won't really be able to keep track of who's who anyway.
But I've met Melly and that was quite interesting actually. She is the exact opposite of Tali and Cara in so many ways, but something is also so extremely similar. And she was also very sweet, ranting away and telling me all these stories of Cara as a little kid and showing me all the pictures she took of her. This family is quite literally family goals. Even though they are all on such different levels and stages in life, they are still so loving and caring of each other. It's like no matter what you do, no matter how wrong it could be, they will still love the life out of you and stick with you through it all. They don't care if you have a different view or a different direction in life then what they would've liked or wanted, all they care about is that you are happy.

"Are you ready to go, Cara?" I ask.
She's actually been trying to get me to call her Rina, but I was already too used to Cara to change it. And I like the name Cara. I feel like Rina should stay reserved for her family. I shouldn't take that away from them.

"I'll be out in a minute," she replies from behind the closed bathroom door.

"Nervous?" I ask.

She lets out a little giggle. "I feel like I have nothing to be nervous about, so why should I be? But I still am."

"Well, you do know you've passed with flying colors, so the only thing that could go wrong is you trip over your own feet while you walk across the stage and you just make a complete fool out of yourself," I tease her.