Mara hides a laugh behind a curtain of wavy blond hair. “I’m pretty sure neither of us needs it.”
“You want it?” Kirby asks me. “It has spermicide.”
“No, Kirby, I don’t want your old health-class condom.” If I need one anytime soon, I keep a box in my dresser, tucked behind my period underwear. “Besides, it’s probably expired.”
She peers at it. “Not until September.” She unzips my backpack and drops it inside, patting the backpack once she zips it up again. “You’ve got three months to find a worthy suitor.”
With a roll of my eyes, I offer Mara the last chip in the bag, but she shakes her head. Kirby tosses her gym shirt and some other tchotchkes into a nearby trash can. Every so often, a group races down the hall and shouts, “SENIORS!” and we whoop back at them. We trade fist bumps with Lily Gulati, high fives with Derek Price, and whistles with the Kristens (Tanaka and Williams, best friends since the first day of freshman year and virtually inseparable ever since).
Even Luke Barrows stops by with his girlfriend, Anna Ocampo—ranked number one on girls’ varsity tennis—so we can swap yearbooks.
“I’ve been counting down the days until they let us out of here,” Luke says.
“Since freshman year?” Anna volleys back. Turning to me, she says, “I’ll miss your Wednesday-morning announcements. You and Neil always cracked me up.”
“Glad to have provided some entertainment.”
They both got tennis scholarships to Division I schools, and I’m genuinely happy for them. I hope they can make it work long-distance.
“Kirby, oh my God,” Anna says, muffling a laugh when a pile of papers tumbles out of Kirby’s locker.
“I know,” she says with a small moan.
Yearbooks are returned to their owners, and Luke crushes me into a hug with arms made muscular from a killer backhand. “Good luck,” he says, and why can’t all breakups be like this? Drama-free, no lingering awkwardness.
While Mara uploads an Instagram video of Kirby extricating an eight-foot-long scarf from her locker, complete with creepy horror-movie soundtrack, I reach into my backpack for my journal. But my fingers skim something else: the envelope I shoved in there this morning.
I know what it is—or at least, I have a general idea. But I don’t remember the exact details, and that makes me a little twitchy. Carefully, I run my finger along the envelope flap and pull out the sheet of folded paper.
Rowan Roth’s Guide to High School Success, it says across the top, followed by ten numbered items, and the words drag me back to the summer before high school. I added number ten a month into freshman year. Naturally, I’d been inspired by something I read in a book. I’d been so excited about high school, half in love with the person I imagined I’d be by the end of it. Really, it’s more a list of goals than an actual guide.
I’ve accomplished none of them.
“What about this?” Kirby asks. “One hundred percent. On a math test!”
“Recycling, Kirby.” But Mara takes a photo of it anyway.
“Our little paparazzo,” Kirby says.
I’m still in the world of the success guide—particularly, item number seven. Go to prom with boyfriend and Kirby and Mara. Since Spencer and I broke up right before, prom didn’t happen. I would have gone without a date, but I worried I’d end up being Kirby and Mara’s third wheel, and I didn’t want to ruin the night for them.
It shouldn’t hit me as hard as it does that my life didn’t go quite according to plan. And yet here’s the physical proof of it. High school is ending, and it’s only today that I’m realizing everything I didn’t do.
It’s a relief when the clock hits 8:15. I spring to my feet, throwing the list into my backpack and my backpack over my shoulder. Time for the final test of my high school career.
“I have to prep for the assembly,” I say.
Kirby tears open a Snickers she found in her locker abyss. “Whatever happens, you’re a winner to us,” she says in a tone that’s probably meant to be encouraging, but from her, it comes out sounding sarcastic. She must hear it, because she winces. “Sorry. That sounded nicer in my head.”
I try to smile. “I believe you.”
“Go, go,” Mara says. “I’ll make sure Kirby disposes of any other potentially hazardous materials.”
As I head for the auditorium, their laughter takes a while to fade.
I’m leaving Seattle at the end of the summer, but Kirby and Mara are going to the University of Washington. Together. Mara wants to study dance, and Kirby plans to take one class in each discipline before deciding on her major. I’ll see them on breaks, of course, but I wonder if the distance will push me farther away. If this friendship is another thing I can’t take with me to college.
Rowan Roth’s Guide to High School Success
By Rowan Luisa Roth, age 14
To be opened only by Rowan Luisa Roth, age 18
Figure out what to do with your bangs.
Obtain the Perfect High School Boyfriend (heretofore known as PHSB), ideally by the middle of 10th grade, summer after 11th grade at the latest. Minimum requirements: - Loves reading
- Respectable taste in music
- Vegetarian
Hang out with Kirby and Mara EVERY WEEKEND! (As much as you love books, please don’t forget about the outside world.)
Make out with PHSB under the bleachers during a football game.
Become fluent in Spanish.
Never tell anyone you like romance novels unless you’re 100 percent sure they won’t be royally awful about it.
Go to prom with your PHSB and Kirby and Mara. Find a fantastic dress, rent a limo, eat at a fancy restaurant. The whole John Hughes experience, minus the toxic masculinity. The night will culminate in a hotel room, where you and PHSB will declare your love for each other and lose your virginities in a tender, romantic way that you’ll remember for the rest of your life.
Get into a college with a great secondary education program to fulfill your lifelong dream of becoming an English teacher to MOLD YOUNG MINDS!!!
Become Westview valedictorian.
Destroy Neil McNair. Make him regret ever writing that Great Gatsby essay and everything he’s done since then.
9:07 a.m.
“… SCREAM IT LOUD for the blue and white—
Westview Wolf Pack, time to fight!”
At the end of our school’s fight song, we all throw back our heads and howl. My first Wolf Pack experience at a football game freshman year, I was embarrassed and intimidated, but now I love the noise, the energy. The way, just for a moment, we all forget to be self-conscious.
It’s the last time I’ll howl with this exact mix of people.
Backstage, I hand over student council secretary Chantal Okafor’s yearbook, and she passes me mine.
“I think I used up the last of your space,” Chantal says. “I hope it’s you. For valedictorian, I mean.”
The high school success guide burns in my backpack. I try to focus on the fact that I have three months with Mara and Kirby ahead of me. We can have a perfect last summer before high school: music festivals, days at the beach, nights complaining how cold the water at the beach was.