Years had gone by in agonizing, suspended oppression ever since that day in the garden. Five years had trudged by in mounds of mud, sludge and goop to keep them there forever in the hot, stuffy summers where nothing got done and no one ever cared about more than pampering Lola or telling me how to improve on my life. Or how I could help improve Lola's life by not being in the way so much or dedicating my life to helping her.

That didn't matter. She was fifteen now—a sophomore in high school. She wouldn't be a junior next year, either. She had flunked out this year and was chewing on the right way to say that to Mom and Dad. I hoped she would wait until much, much later. Somehow, I would get blamed for this.

You're too negative. You cost too much. We need more time and money to spend on Lola.

Those words would replace any positive remarks about how I had managed to survive that one thing that kills any light or innocence left in a child's soul: high school. I had no friends, no boyfriends, no nothing. I pattered about the halls alone and sketched tattoo designs in my little notebook, often to the taunting amusement of those who would peer past my wedged up pages to see what lay within them. I hated everyone in that tin-can hellhole. Who ever thought it was a good idea to let a prison architect design the high school? That guy designed every school in the county and every one of them had gates to trap us in the hallways and so few windows you were lucky to know what the sun looked like at all in the winter. It was maddening. Many of my fingernails probably littered the halls there in anxious dread for the lack of light and laughter within them.

Glancing down at the few white tips I did have left on my fingers, I sighed. I didn't bother curling or straightening my wild, blonde hair, though my mother insisted they were a rite of passage for graduation. I flat out refused and chose instead to just brush it out and go as I had been for the whole ride, anyway. Why break the mold for the sake of pomp and flare, when all I wanted to do was to recede within my sketchbooks and leave with the characters in the worlds that I had created. I breathed deeply, reaching up to scratch at the nose ring placed so delicately in my left nostril. My mother had fought me hard on this and it ultimately became another "you have what your sister doesn't" focal points in our arguments. But I didn't care. I needed that piercing. It was worth the ridicule; I would have been given grief for something else and I preferred to have what I wanted, in the very least.

The robes they gave me were far too large. Their black, billowing depths shone with illness and regret—regret at having lost so much youth to such a terrible place. In fact, I was willing to bet that the robes for graduation were traditionally black to mourn the losses of so many innocent lives to the even harsher adult worlds without at least giving the kids the right to be exactly what they were: kids. "Sit up straight, look straight ahead, fill out these forms and papers, do this homework, remember that assignment, and make sure you're dressed appropriately." What were we, robots? And the new curriculum was even worse. How was reading pamphlets supposed to ingratiate within our minds the importance of literature, writing or even basic grammar concepts? The answer was simple: they weren't. They were dull excuses to keep pumping funding into a decrepit system that needed to be yanked off the life support system years ago. It just wasn't working anymore.

My golden cord and tassel shone with pride at my accomplishments. I was headed to an ivy league college and my parents were brimming with disgust at the cost of such an establishment. They had no need to worry: I had secured a very fine scholarship and reduced the costs of attendance to that of a local school and I had already secured a job to start working at when I arrived... but this wasn't enough, apparently. I had to suffer at the behest of their ridiculous jealousness. A jealousness for something they wished to give their favorite daughter—the baby. I had no love for Lola anymore. We hardly spoke anymore and I couldn't stand being in the room with her for more than five minutes at a time. The "me me me" conversations just made my mind want to explode. 

They had turned her into a self-centered witch. Even my distant family could see that. My grandparents would give her begrudging gifts and smiles, but they could see right through her façade of innocence. My grandmother confessed she wished to adopt me and give me a home away from the horrors that faced me in my own. But that hadn't been as much of an option as I would have liked. She was growing ill and it would soon be time for her to find a home in the ground and in the sky—all at once and with sudden permanence. It would take a piece of my soul out of my body to process such a tragedy when it came. I visited her often.

Other students held the glistening keys to their new chariots to freedom and I swallowed the sting of having gotten an oh-so-amazing gift: a bike from the junkyard. It was "still new anyways" as my father had framed it. "Builds character to take something old." I hated that man. So, so much.

But that didn't matter. My body trembled with anticipation as we gathered about the auditorium. I hadn't noticed the ensemble of music playing to announce our arrival or even my own, giddy steps through the threshold of the theater for the last time. The red, ripped chairs and their stained cushions were an awful, yet comforting sight to behold here at the end of an era—the end of our class in the whole piece it would never come in again. We would part ways and never be all in the same room again. People would die, people would have children, people would go and do great things... and I would sit and rot in my dormitory and wait for my degree to come and never return to this dodgy old city. What could possibly await me in a place like this other than discomfort and being ostracized from society?

"Welcome class of two-thousand-twenty-three. It is my great pleasure to see you all here today in your seats and I am happy to see that so many of you have graduated with honors, certificates and so many notes of approval from your community, as they welcome you into their arms as adult members rather than children. It is up to you to take up the torch and carry it aloft for the future generations. Some of you may find the answers to the great phenomenons of science; others may make laws, regulations or enforce these laws to the fullest extent that they know how. But, most importantly, whatever you choose, know that so long as you are doing for the sake of others, you are doing the best that you can and it is appreciated, in whatever facsimile form that it comes in," our principal droned.

Why couldn't I take the words for the genuine intent from which they came? Had my principal earned my disdain now as well? Or was it just the genuine atmosphere of stuffy anticipation that made my blood boil. This shouldn't take so long. They made us wait twelve years for this. They had long given up the right to have us sit here in these sweaty gowns and wait for something we had rightfully earned. It was our turn to take over the world. They were pushing off the inevitable, anyway.

I zoned out as the salutatorian got up onto the stage and gave a trembling speech about success and friendship. They could hardly breathe and had to be escorted off stage amid hysterical sobs and the crushing weight that they could never be as much as they hoped to. Their goals were far higher than any human being could reach, let alone fathom. Jonathon had always been an overachiever and it was saddening to see the weight of it all crush him now when he was so close to success. His parents had gone off the wall when they found out he was gay. I don't think that was helping matters at all at this point; I wished to reach out to him, but he hated me just as much as the rest of them. They all did. I remained a mere phantom. Part of why he hated me was—

"Please welcome our valedictorian, Hybris Rose."

Well, my principal answered it. I was always one leg up from Jonathon at getting those things he just couldn't reach. I guess I'd always had a step-ladder to reach those highest shelves he couldn't. That stepladder's name was spite and I had every reason in the world to use it liberally and with fervent intent. I had things to do, people to see and worlds to conquer. Smart did not always mean quiet. Now was my time to shine. I had been waiting two years for this when we first got into it over who would win the class academic bowl. My team won... I was the only person on the team. I had a lot of free time and random facts and figures were my favorite things. The deck was stacked to my favor from the beginning. I never understood why he held probability against me.

"Thank you, Principal Tristen."

My smile faltered at the sight of his pale gray eyes boring dull holes through mine. He was bored. He had the audacity to be bored at a time like this? When our lives were changing forever? Huffing, I took my spot at the podium and began to read from memory what would be one of the most important speeches I would ever give.

"Hi all, it's good to see you, not that you ever actually saw me. And that's okay—I stayed invisible for the sake of safety, as I know many choose to do in high school. But I don't think that makes me any less qualified to tell you this: always listen to your gut. What you believe in.

In life, we will face many challenges, obstacles, and boogeymen of sorts, to put it childishly, as this will be the last time we can safely do so. People will tell us that we're wrong and that we can't possibly be right for feeling how we feel, talking how we talk or walking how we walk. But, to be honest with you, and take it or leave it if you will, I wouldn't take baseless advice from a side-winding crab or a straight-walking, righteous up-the-rear businessman. Not unless it's going along with what you know is right. Doing the right thing is often that soft voice in the back of our heads egging us along to do those things we don't want to do.

Listening to our gut isn't just about making the decisions we think are right, but also to remember that sometimes, what we know is right is not always the easiest thing to listen to. We make mistakes, friends. That's just how life is. But how can we move on and grow if we don't embrace those mistakes and listen to what we know deep down? If we don't acknowledge what we already feel and accept as truth? Trust your gut and tell others what your gut is saying. Two guts might not agree and it's always good to foster a good, healthy discussion about things that make us tick and thing that make us choose the paths we do in life. No two paths are the same, but we might as well shed light on each others'. Who knows, we might even earn a little light back ourselves?

Stay safe, love always, and be careful, my friends. This is the last time you will be together like this and I hope that's sunk in. You can't ever get this back. Cherish it while you can," I said, tears slipping free from my eyes, despite my apparent, defiant speech. A few mouths had clattered open at the sound of such a short, matter-of-fact declaration. But I had never been about the theatrics when it came to telling the truth. Don't get me wrong, I could act up any character you asked me to, but to have me do that when honesty was required of me? Absolutely not. Integrity was everything to a person like me. It was the difference between false hopes and moving past the pain before it got too big for me to handle.

My dark brown eyes met the empty seats where my parents had sat. They had likely been bored or Lola had grown impatient to leave. This was why I drove separate. I knew they wouldn't stick around to at least do me the courtesy of driving me home. I still didn't understand why my hair had been a big deal.

Part of me felt as dejected as I always did when they left me alone in big moments like this. My dark brown eyes swept the ground as I shuffled back to my seat, startled silence my sole companion in a sea of rejection. My principal seemed less-than-pleased with my oration.

"Now that Ms. Rose has so kindly given us words of encouragement, we shall begin calling names. We will go by order of last name alphabetically. You are asked to return to your seats once you have been given your diploma so that you can hear parting words from myself and the superintendent. Please retain your decorum and refrain from applause until everyone has been through the line."

My brain had already checked out for a long, long vacation. The letter Rs were called and my attention was as vague as the warbling voice that called my name over the microphone. As per the usual with my taste for decorum, I sauntered out of the auditorium before they could finish. They had no hold over me anymore; I was not about to wait for some old guy to tell me how I should or shouldn't live my life.

My dirty brown clunker—the Trash—blinked twice to let me know my key was in range of it as I clicked the button over and over again. They called like sirens in the middle of a hot summer day; I was soon to find myself drowning at their call. Settling behind the driver's seat, I stared with bleak resignation for the last time at a building that could not hurt me anymore, but had already done so much. If I could have torn it down from the inside, it would have been rubble long before I had been born. There would have been a line long before me to do it in. I still would have cherished the honor of chucking a brick or two in the lake across the street.

The Trash shuddered to life; I was gone with the wind.