Growing up is 2 hard

"...He was never okay after March."

(June 16th, Monday, 2:oopm)
Pony's POV:
I graduated a little over two weeks ago, and damn. I never thought I would make it. I mean, I knew I was gonna get there, but with my brothers it came a whole lot faster.

Anyway today is Lanson's sweet sixteen and he wants to spend it at the water park. His sister has a big party and stuff, but he just wanted a cake and the damn water park. Crazy, man. Kids these days are just crazy.

We finish singing happy birthday and he blows out his candles, before taking them out.

"Brantley, I think that's one of your hairs in my cake?" He frowns and nods like he's disgusted.

She squints down at it, "aw I'm so s-"

He stuffs her face straight into the spot she was staring at. We all gasp, but Steve's distinctive loud ass laugh starts cackling out. Which then leaves to all of us laughing, but Brantley who is wiping her face with a napkin.

"You're so funny." She smirks.

"Sweet sixteen."  He shrugs, and then he yanks her up and while she's kicking and screaming, goes full sprint into the wave pool.

"Teens." Soda shakes his head, ew, buddy is like old now.

We spend a few more hours here before changing and going to dinner. Somethings been different about Cadey recently. It started about a week ago, he got really... happy. Like happy how he was when he first came around, happy how he was before March.

And he's been hanging around more, not going away, not going out. Obviously he's not gonna go to club or anything for a long, long while. But he's never alone. Not even alone with Berty as much as he used to be. They bought a house, but aren't moving in until fall, because they wanna 'get the full summer effect'. I think that makes enough sense, I mean they normally have to spend summer in their boarding school still. But I don't know.
It doesn't feel bad, just weird.
I just hope he's okay.

(June 25th, Wednesday, 10:34am)
Soda's POV:
I finished my delivery's fast today. So I went ahead and came home. Steve is doing school in the summer too, so he can graduate in December. He's been flying through the program to get his associates degree in psychology. (I don't remember if that's what he majored in guys😭, I think so?).

I peek in the living room, he's typing away like hell. I wish I could be like him, smart like that. Sometimes I feel like I'd do anything go back to school, it was hell, but it gave me something to do, and it gave me a challenge. Sometimes a challenge doesn't hurt.

"What's on your mind?" He looks up from his computer.

"Steve why couldn't I have been smart enough to go to college like the rest of you?"

"Smart enough my ass. People with actual problems like, being blind or deaf go to college all the time. It's not about your abilities it's about what you make yourself do. So what do you wanna do babe?" He folds his arms and shrugs just like his damn mom.

"I wanna go back to school like...High school. Probably the funniest shit I ever did." I nod.

"You should be teacher then. I could totally see that." He gets to smirking and rambling like how Steve always does.

"What do I do? Just go to college?" I squint.

"Pick a college first, dumb, dumb. We should get started on all this tomorrow, I'm excited." He claps.