Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self - By Danielle Evans Page 0,81

for this shit.”

“I’ve been killing myself my whole life for this shit. They don’t have to expect me to be all happy about it.”

“Oh, right,” said Geena, smirking. “Poor you.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“You always mean it like that.”

“Look,” I said. “I don’t even wanna go tomorrow. I have to. That’s all. No one will listen anyway. Half the parents don’t care at all about any part of graduation except when their kid’s name gets called. And the half of the ones that do care are going to be so pissed it’s me speaking and not their gifted child that they’ll spend the whole speech bitching. The only two people listening will be my parents, which means I can’t say anything I actually want to say, which is fuck you all very much for making me miserable since the third grade, I’m out.”

“If it were me, I’d say that.”

“Yeah, well. I can’t. Anyway, Mrs. Peterson already approved my real speech. It’s about success and obstacles and respect and bullshit.”

“Well,” said Geena, “I guess Mrs. Peterson’s opinion counts more than anyone else’s.”

I started to laugh, but she wasn’t kidding.

“You really don’t want to do this, I can get you out of it,” Geena said. “We can tell every-damn-body how you really feel. You and me.”

It was enough that I didn’t say no. Geena picked her shoes up off the garage floor where she’d kicked them aside and was already on her way out the door.

“You coming?” she called, dangling her car keys.

With a halfhearted last look at Tien throwing up on April’s front lawn, I followed Geena to her car. A few minutes later we were parked in front of her cousin Ray’s house a few blocks away. He ran a kind of automotive/construction business, in that there were usually broken-down cars parked on the front lawn, and occasionally he fixed something, and occasionally someone actually paid him for it. I didn’t ask what we were doing there. The lights were off, but Geena had a house key, and for a few minutes she walked back and forth between the car and the garage, putting things in the trunk: paint, a toolbox, a six-pack she’d stolen from the garage refrigerator.

“You aiight, CeeCee?” she asked when she got back in the car.

“Yeah, I’m good.” I stared out of the window and tried to look disinterested.

“You want to go home, I’ll take you home.”

“I’m not going home,” I said.

Geena didn’t respond, and I stayed quiet. The roads were all familiar. Within minutes I was looking at my high school in the dark. Geena pulled over in the back parking lot, right beside the football field. The field had been done over for graduation. A wooden stage had been erected in the middle of it, red, white, and blue circular banners were draped across the bottoms of the stage and the bleachers. A gold banner, stretched between two posts beside the stage, read: CONGRATULATIONS, ROBERT E. LEE CLASS OF 2000. In front of the stage, rows and rows of white plastic chairs had been set up for the senior class.

Geena got the six-pack out of the trunk and we sat in the car for a while, drinking and talking. I didn’t even like beer, but it gave me something to do besides look at Geena, who seemed sadder than I’d ever seen her, or the football field, all done up and ready for me to be a person I had never wanted to be.

“Remember freshman year?” Geena asked.

“Yeah.”

“It was like we ran things.”

“We didn’t, though. It just felt that way because we were kids.”

She made circles on the dashboard with her pointer finger. “I’m going to miss you.”

“I’m not going that far. It’s a three-hour train ride,” I answered, deliberately avoiding the reality that our lives were to be measured in a different kind of distance.

“So, you really don’t want to do this tomorrow?” Geena asked.

“No,” I said quickly.

“Bet you they won’t have a ceremony if the stage is all fucked up,” said Geena.

We got out of the car and I followed Geena to the stage, carrying the things she’d gotten from Ray’s. When we got to the field, Geena put down what she was carrying and walked the rest of the way to the stage. She climbed the stairs and walked around for a minute, pausing for a moment behind the podium. She spoke as if speaking into a microphone, but there was no mic, and from the other end of the