Location: Graduation Cookout
Date: Saturday, June 5th
Time: Afternoon
(open)
There’s a duffle bag half packed in their dorm room. They’d started taking down posters, folding clothes—and then gotten distracted by the party in the Vixen’s Den, by graduation this morning, by the fact that they have more stuff now than they did at the start of the year, and how are they supposed to pack it all, fit it in Dana’s living room?
After this weekend they’ll be on a bus. Leaving Palmetto the way they came to it, even if it’s only for the summer. When they’re used to always moving forward, to leaving people and places behind, it could feel almost like a regression, like moving backwards.
But they know it’s not. They’ll go back to that futon for the summer, but Dana will never again be their legal guardian signing their permission slips in high school. Things are different now. And, in some ways, that’s frightening: they and Dana had learned to be siblings in that cramped apartment in high school, and now everything’s changed. They spent this year trying to learn how to be siblings on the other end of a phone call, and they didn’t always get it right.
But River knows they’re trying. Trying to be better to each other than they’ve been in the past. And River’s trying to be someone that can belong in both New York and Palmetto, who can be both a sibling to Dana and a Fox.
They’ll miss Palmetto. They’ll miss Exy and they’ll miss their teammates. But there’s a lot to look forward to about a summer in a big city. Especially when they’re not a high schooler—a little kid—anymore.
For now, the sun is shining in Abby’s backyard on their last day all together, and River grins. “So, if graduation means that Grayson isn’t a fifth year anymore, does that officially mean I’m not a freshman anymore?”