Chapter 6: Commencing our Lives

My mother actually made me open up my gown to show her I had clothes on under it. I suppose she was a little bit justified. Jasmine had sent me a picture showing me she had only a bra and panties on under her gown. Not to be outdone, Kelly sent a picture showing that she was wearing only a garter belt and hose. It’s a good thing I did have trousers on. I’d have been tenting out my gown.

There was something like three hundred in my graduating class. Carney High isn’t a huge school, but there are enough people that it isn’t possible to know everyone. They tried to get us to line up alphabetically, but we didn’t have to walk across the stage or anything. They would read the names of the graduates and we’d line up to shake the principal’s hand and get the fake. They just give you an empty folder with a flier in it that says ‘Congratulations! You’re a graduate!’ So, it doesn’t make any difference what order we go up in. It’s just so there will be a picture they can sell us when we get our diploma in the mail.

So, of course, our little clique managed to all sit together. All except Sarah Lynn. She was valedictorian and had to sit on the dais so she could give her speech. She’d had to give the speech to the principal and her adviser and have her slides approved earlier in the week. It was timed and had to be over in five minutes. The motivational speaker who was brought in for the keynote went before her and had half an hour of us yawning. I don’t think he had a single original thought in his speech.

As Winston Churchill once said, “Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days – the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.”

As Steve Jobs who invented the computer so many of you carry around said, “No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there.”

And as the great influencer of your childhood, J.K. Rowling said, “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all— in which case, you fail by default.”

You get the idea. As the snoring students said, “STFU!”

We finally got to the student recognition part and Sarah Lynn stood at the podium and attached her smartphone to the projector. The first slide was a picture of a bunch of us in first grade. We were all lined up in front of the school sign with our mothers hovering over us.

“Remember this? When we were all young and innocent and ready to take on the world? Well, most of us made it through twelve years of school. We’re sitting here ready to receive our diplomas—one more attaboy in the long list of awards and prizes that our parents have told us now that we have to pack up and take with us. I’ve saved a place for my diploma on top of the participation award for freshman cheerleader tryouts.”

The slide was a box of crap that had been given out over the years. I had one pretty much like it. Ribbons, plastic trophies, and certificates. There was even the mortar board all decorated up for our kindergarten graduation.

The next picture showed the box closed and taped with ‘Goodwill’ labeled in big letters across the top. I don’t know about the parents, but all of us sitting in caps and gowns thought it was hilarious.

“That’s what all that stuff is worth now. Now we have the real prize. The high school diploma. We are now fully qualified to take orders at McDonald’s, pull shots at Starbucks, and pump gas at Shell. Or to go a hundred thousand dollars in debt to get a college education. We might not be able to get a loan to buy a car, but we can get one to go to college.”

She had a clever graphic that showed an old-time scale with a Tesla on one side and a scroll on the other.

“You’ll notice that my choice of car is a socially responsible electric vehicle. It’s good for the environment and cheap to run because it doesn’t use gas. Not only that, it’s perfect for me because I never got around to getting a driver’s license and this vehicle is self-driving. That’s what we’ve all been taught the past twelve years. We’ve been taught how to let someone else drive us around, feed us, educate us, entertain us, live life for us without us ever getting to live life at all. Where do we go next?”

Her next slide was of Derek and Dee in their infamous blanket fort. We’d all played that where we got all the chairs and sofa cushions in the family room surrounding us and spread blankets over the top so we had a tent. But Derek and Dee had never grown out of that stage. They often ran home after school, even as seniors, and built their little blanket fort and huddled under it to study. When we chatted online, it wasn’t unusual to see them there, using flashlights to illuminate their faces.

“Got news for you, guys. Our comfy secure little blanket forts are going to turn into cardboard boxes under the overpass. Basically, everything we’ve been taught and told over the past twelve to eighteen years has been lies. There’s no happy ever after waiting for us after graduation.”

She showed a picture of the honor society that had been taken just a couple weeks ago. While it was displayed, a circle appeared over Lonnie’s face.

“You all know that there is someone missing today and I can’t finish my spiel up here without acknowledging my best friend and fiercest competitor, Lonnie. We drove each other. We compared test scores after every class. We drilled each other to memorize all the states and capitals, practiced for the spelling bee, had math flashcard contests. We always wanted to show that we were just as good as the other. A few years ago, Lonnie cut himself, so I did, too. He got really mad at me and told me that there were some things that were meant for him that I couldn’t have. That I had to find my own way. Lonnie wasn’t depressed suicidal, he was committed. He believed that the only thing he truly had control over was his death—that he could choose when and how he would die. So, he hung himself.

“We were told that he was dead when police arrived. They lied.”

The slide changed to a feed of Lonnie in his room. We all gasped because it was obvious that Lonnie had sent a stream of his suicide to Sarah Lynn. He had the rope around his neck, but before he dropped, the door to his bedroom burst open, knocking the stool out from under him. He swung away and then back and his body jumped as a splotch of red erupted from his chest. His leg pulled up and his back arched. I closed my eyes.

“You lied to us. You took away the one thing he thought he could control. Lonnie didn’t commit suicide. Police killed him. Thirteen shots as he was swinging by his neck.”

The people on the podium, of course, had their backs to the screen. They’d reviewed Sarah Lynn’s valedictorian address and it took them a minute to realize she was off-script. When the principal turned and saw Lonnie’s body jumping, he was so shocked he fell as he jumped up to stop Sarah Lynn. But she’d already unplugged her phone from the projector and stepped away from the podium.

“I hate you! I hate you all! You lied to us for eighteen years. I hate our parents. I hate the police. I hate the school and the teachers and the principal. I don’t even want your fucking diploma!” With that, she threw her mortar board down and ripped her robe off. She stood in just her bra and panties—what I suspected most of the girls wore under their gowns—and marched off the dais. “I hate you all!”

Sarah Lynn marched down the aisle as the room watched in stunned silence.

I don’t know what came over me, but I dropped my mortar board and pulled off my gown as well. Jas caught my eye and did the same, we headed for the aisle and followed Sarah Lynn. There was a general move in the auditorium as many of our friends dropped their caps and gowns and left the room as the principal tried to get order restored with all kinds of threats and pleas.

Not everyone left. Not even half. Face it. Most of the people in my graduating class were drones. They probably thought the video Sarah Lynn played was an animation. I heard two guys near the aisle talking and one said, “What a fake.” But there were enough of us who left that there were big holes of empty seats in the auditorium.

“We need a place to go,” Jas said. Kelly, Rick, and Charmaine were piled into the back of the Mini and it was groaning as it pulled away from the curb. She had a good point. Where were we going?

“I need to paint.”

“Can we watch IRL?” Kelly asked. I don’t think anyone but Jas had watched me paint in real life. And she was modeling. But I had an image burned in my head from Sarah Lynn’s commencement address. I wasn’t sure anyone would want to watch me paint that.