It is about 8:10 in the morning in my economics class while I sit next to my friend Fahad. The past few months we rarely spoke for he was always sleeping (Thanks Mr.E for being such an understanding teacher) and I was most of the time buried in my notebook writing nonsense. Yet today we speak like twin souls connected by the feeling of lost and nostalgia. He softly recites:
Man, I’m gonna miss High School. Senior year felt like a breeze. I can’t believe I have only 9 periods left until I reach maturity. Some people are extremely happy to go and I am, trust me I am, but these days I am really sad. I’ve hated this fucking school since the first day I walked in but senior year was different. Freshman year I was super quiet with only myself as company but this year I was mad hyper, doing things I never did before you know, living! It’s funny how sophomore year I would’ve cut the whole last week of school and not give a fuck but now all I want is for these days to never end, these last days of High School, these last days of innocence. I’m gonna cry on graduation day, I just know it.
He then pauses and looks around the classroom with a blue autumn gaze, the kind of gaze that for a few seconds brings you back to the very first day you carved your name on your beloved desk and to the last day when you see the strains of it having been painted over by some unknown brush the past few years. Yet somehow it is never fully painted over, you can always feel the hand as it dug into the surface. A few seats ahead of me are kids writing each other love stories in their yearbooks and that’s when he looks at me with his eyes red and asks “Are you coming to school on Monday?” I shake his hand firmly and of course I say yes.

He then leaves for a few minutes, allowing my friend Sharon to come over and recite her piece. Yet I can’t write it this instance for I am still stuck in Sharon’s face. Her auburn locks graze her forehead as her light tan soft skin glows and her lips open to create a smile. The smile creates several beautiful trenches on her face and for this smile, for this smile only, I wish there would be a war, just so I can hide in it as bombs explode because I know I would be forever safe in it. I finally come out of hiding and this is what she says:
I hate how I feel you know, leaving school. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I’m gonna miss you a lot, I really am. It sucks that we have to move on and live for ourselves, be serious. I’m glad about leaving all these bad people though, people who just wanted to fight me for no reason. I hate how people judge without ever getting to know you and I always strife not to do it myself. Yet even after high school this still happens. I get very angry sometimes and so I box to get it all out… I wish I was going to college. I hate staying home but I can’t go and study architecture because I have no money. I can’t get financial aid either because I am illegal. You should definitely go man even though I know you don’t want to because you are a smart cookie and just for the experience, you don’t want to regret it. (I speak) I just feel they are people out there that deserve it more than me, like you Sharon, you really know what you want to do and I can see that drive in your eyes…the world is just stupid and unfair. Yea, it just doesn’t make any sense.
The bell rings and we all say that we will see each other at graduation and of how all the seniors should have a huge party. I walk through the halls and just remember Fahad carrying a balloon in his bag with a picture of his face drawn over it. The drawing makes me laugh every time I remember it. I find it funny how for 45 minutes in a place crowded with gum, chalk, spit and hormones, it felt like paradise.