Unhelpful Guide To Senior Year | ✓

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Graduation Day.

The day where everyone makes promises to keep in touch and cherish the memories but clear away half the contacts the other day.

The day when even the sad loner from the corner table puts on a happy smile as her enthusiastic mother flashes a camera in her face.

The day when even that one physics teacher who was called Mr Scowler instead of Mr Fowler gives a beaming smile to the valedictorian.

The day where I, the valedictorian, smile down from the podium and deliver a speech that took 17 days for me to write to an audience too busy either saying goodbye to some fling or crying their hearts out or simply not caring.

This year though, there was something else in the air. That something else was misery.

It is not every year that the graduating batch vividly remembers a specific someone who was currently six feet under in a grave.

That someone was Daniyal Amer. He could be called the boy next door in my story. The one with the sweet smiles, the one who offered his umbrella when you forgot one, the one who isn't some wiz himself but tutors you in math.

He didn't fit in with any stereotype, he made his own.

He was the boy who rushed and gave first aid to the track star of our school when he fell during a meet. He was the one the head cheerleader found a shoulder to cry on when she failed a math test, he was the one who gave me the idea to come up with the name for the school newspaper, he was the one who willingly sat next to Sandra during lunches because nobody else would.

In short, he gave everyone a shock worth of 110 volts when he committed suicide a week before prom night.

And as we all stand here, below the bright sun of the last day before June, the thought that comes to everyone's mind as they say what may be the final goodbye to each other is the mystery of smiles that could actually be unshed tears of Daniyal.

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"Mom!" I exclaim, "I think Nana would be very happy with the other 12000 pictures you took of me in the past minute." Seriously I love how my mom is excited that I managed to pass High School, but her enthusiasm is making me feel a sense of sentimentality towards the penitentiary that I recently managed to survive.

"Laura Esther Marple," why oh why does she feel the urge to say my full name, "it is not every day that my baby is graduating High School, let the poor woman have a moment. You might go off to college tomorrow, what will I do then?"

She begins with her guilt speech she uses every time since the last year to get things done. One might think she is the one who holes up in her room watching dramatic classics from the 1940s.

I let my eyes leave my mom fussing over the camera and dad trying to help her and they surf through the crowd of people I am possibly seeing for the last time and I feel a slight twinge in my heart.

I am actually leaving this place, these people, this town and the memories I had here.

I eventually catch the eye of the person I was looking for. Irina Martin, the blonde beauty and my partner in crime.

I break away from the little huddle we all are forming on the grass and go and hug her tight because tomorrow is her last day in our small town as she's packing away for England.

It is funny how the human brain works. A few weeks ago we were arguing about how there is proof that dragons might exist but today I want to just sit her down and discuss the universe, talk about the future, share past memories....in short, I don't want her to go and I hug her just a bit tighter to let her know that.

We are all grown up and I feel the familiar pang in my chest I get every time I remember Daniyal.

The boy that was my neighbor since second grade, the boy with a resting smiley face, the boy whose midnight black curls always fell on his forehead even after a haircut, the boy whose dusky skin was intriguing to half the female population but he never used a girl.

The boy, who will always remain a boy.

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Sitting on my bed on a Sunday night, not having to set the alarm ever again has never felt like more of a bliss.

The future without the oppressive regime of school may daunt me but till college starts, I am going to enjoy each second of it for as long as I can.

After the ceremony, when mom was finally satisfied with the number of photos, we went to a restaurant to eat and mom and dad next went to visit Mr and Mrs Amer after dropping me home.

My parents always taught me to ask a bit more questions, dig a bit deeper, take a bit more effort... all the things that made me into the aspiring journalist.

But, right now, as I nestle my head deeper into the pillow, I have the same thought as every night and the same realisation; not everything I ask can have an answer.

I mean, who could know what drove sweet, kind, popular, loved and smiling Daniyal Amer to fling himself off the terrace of the school building?

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A/n: this is a story I am writing for #teenfictionanotheryear contest but I will update and continue this like any other of my books.

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