(55) Graduation

I stand in the afternoon shadows from the late afternoon sunlight in front of her door. Listening carefully, I can make out only silence above the gentle rumblings of Sheryl Crow’s Soak up the Sun as I lift my hand to knock abruptly on the white wood.

“Come in!” She hollers. I turn the knob and let myself enter. The sight behind this open door is something I will probably never forget. She’s sitting in front of her vanity, clothed in white from head to toe with various items of cosmetics scattered across the surface of the table. I watch in her in amazement.

“It’s terrible isn’t it?” She frowns in my direction. “I look absolutely ridiculous.” She rips off her graduation cap and tosses it disdainfully on the pink and green plaid bedspread beside her. “I mean who on earth started this tradition, I look like a marshmallow!”

I rest on the edge of her desk chair. “At least everyone else is going to be wearing it.” I reply, picking up the hat to play with the tassel. “I don’t think it’s really that bad anyway.” I watch her resume her position in front of the glass before she grabs her mascara and I fiddle with the metal 2002 hanging from the blue and white threads. Then, it hits me.

As the lamp to her left bathes her soft face in a golden glow while she applies hints of Sunny Disposition blush, I see her in a whole new light. This over-analyzing, power-filled, almost-adult beauty queen sits nonchalantly before me at the moment, but in exactly two hours and twenty-seven minutes she will be forced to relinquish that crown just as soon as her name is called and she clutches her four-year high school diploma. Just as soon as she struts across the auditorium stage in those strappy sandals, she will be reduced to nothing, a mere name, a face in a sea of other high school graduates. She will not be able to order helpless lower classmen around or have reign over the car, the phone, or the television. She will go away to a whole other world, full of new people, new experiences, and once again she will be the freshmen. Tonight she will assume the role of a nobody, paving the way for other past juniors like myself to walk towards the threshold of authority, to step up to the call for influence and clutch the scepter of seniorhood. My friends and I will be the torchbearers for Darien High School, we will lead the wave, and if those past rulers decide to return, they will only be mere visitors.

“What are you thinking about?” She suddenly demands. I glance up at the face of my sister, and let the smirk of evil anticipation disappear entirely from my lips.

“Nothing.” I murmur innocently, gazing at every corner of her room imagining my own furniture and possessions in every cranny. “Just how now I’m a senior.”

“Oh, well let me be the first to congratulate you, Daria. Maybe you can suggest that for next year you wear white mini skirts instead of these awful things.” She continues to complain, but her voice becomes distant as I think about what she has just told me in her agitation. For four long years I have waited for this day, I have watched various groups of men and women come and go, never figuring that my own turn would come, and now it has. The class of 2003 are now the seniors, we have the capability to change or conform to what being a senior has meant for decades.

We can have the power to throw food at lower classmen if they just so much as let a toe touch the sacred tiles of the senior cafe, or to be smashed shamelessly on prom night or on a random Tuesday night in February. We the seniors can now make the freshmen carry the water cooler in lacrosse, we can cut the line for french fries, and stand in the hallway intimidating any younger passerby’s. All year as juniors we have watched the rising adults before us from the way they incessantly shouted obscenities in the lunchroom, revolted against the principal’s actions against alcohol during homecoming, and spoken words of wisdom during the meeting after September 11th. Now we will be in the spotlight, and where much is given much is required. We have shoes to fill, and whether we fill those shoes or go and just take it in stride and enjoy it while we can is up to us. One thing can be sure though, we will be watched every step of the way.

As Olivia brushes out her long golden hair, I can’t help but feel that the evening is hardly in her honor. The celebration at hand is only looked upon as the honor of surviving four long years of high school before journeying into the college world. What we should really be appreciating as well though, is the fact that a new crop of boys and girls are going to have an opportunity bestowed upon them. 2003, we are now society’s finest. Now what are we going to do about it?