Worth the Trouble ✓

35 | departure board

MOM COMES TO MY GRADUATION.

She leaves her partner in Boston and takes his car, pulling up into the driveway with so much familiarity it makes me want to cry. Dad and her hug awkwardly—a side-on squeeze—before I drive us all to the Academy, decked out in blue and gold streamers, balloons and finery. I slide into my navy graduation robes, already warm from the sun-speckled backseat, and don the hat before guiding my parents to the sprawling lawn, pointing out the friends and family chairs, across a grassy aisle from the faculty and student seating.

Brittany isn't here. I ended up taking Sophie's side, Brittany very publicly fell from grace a week before the Prom, and no-one's seen her since. When I message her, how r u or what r u up to? she always tells me to ask Sophie. I prefer her aggression over her passive-aggression.

I see Sophie and her friends clustered under a tree with their family members. She glances my way and smiles. Are people allowed to change overnight? One moment I was certain of a bleak, confined future and the next I decided I wanted something more. Don't I need to spend at least some days agonizing and deliberating over the right thing to do?

I'm afraid that all my goodness has always been a fluke. This time needs to be different, but I'm unsure whether being unconsciously good or consciously good is the epitome I want.

I collect my high school diploma in front of all the students of Carsonville High School. Applause is supposed to be reserved for the end of each batch of ten, otherwise the proceedings will be too long. I do not receive smiles, except from Reece, Derek, Madison, Sophie, Mom and Dad. The rest hate my guts, and rightly so.

Dad looks good in a well-pressed blazer jacket and shiny Oxfords. Mom is shielding her eyes with a hand over her brow, the other fanning her face with a copy of the graduation ceremony programme. I was worried they wouldn't want me going to Washington, but they both took the news well.

Dad especially. I think as badly as we supported each other through the hard times, nothing will change the fact that for a long while, it was just him and me. There's something about shared experience, even if the experience is bad. He said I should look for happiness wherever I think it is, and that he'll always be waiting for me, if I ever need a roof over my head.

"Though I think I might sell this house," he murmured thoughtfully. "It's way too big for just me."

"Do it," I agreed. "More incentive to move in with your new girlfriend."

"What?" he balked, before running a hand underneath his chin. "When did you find out?"

I shrugged. "Since the beginning? Work meetings don't last all night." He gave me a look that said okay, shut up now.

I always thought I hated this town. The uneven, asymmetric grid of streets, Haywood Park and its ghosts, the bad memories in every single corner. That locker I trashed once. That lake that nearly killed me. That bar I hate. That road I ran along in the ice storm. That toilet I shoved a person into. That beach I threw up on. That bus I drove into the sundial.

But then the reality sank in—I'm leaving my hometown—and I realized I do love this place. I will come back, I will miss it, but only if I give myself the chance to miss it. It's exactly the same as the Dad situation: something about shared experience, even if the experience is bad. No other place has known me as well.

Two hours later, when every senior has walked the stage and all the friend groups have taken fifty photos of the same pose, I approach Sophie and her friends. She peels away to talk privately with me, but a girl with fiery hair and stormy eyes follows, her graduation robes billowing behind like a war banner. Delaney Morrison.