19. things you said when we were the happiest we ever were
“It is my pleasure and honor to pronounce you all graduates of Twelve Corners —”
The superintendent doesn’t even get to the end of his sentence before everyone starts cheering, standing up and throwing their caps in the air and hugging each other. Evan tosses his cap too, just a few feet overhead; when he looks down his row of seats, he sees Jared throwing his well above him and scrambling to catch it before it hits someone.
The teachers usher them into a back room to pick up their real diplomas, alphabetically organized and waiting to be placed into the empty cases they were all handed on stage. Laughter and whispers of where’s mine? and I can’t believe we’re high schoolers now! fill the air from wall to wall.
Just as Evan’s found the certificate bearing his name, Jared taps him on the shoulder, cap tucked under his arm. “Come on, my mom wants pictures.”
“Hang on a minute —” Evan slides the paper into his diploma case as best as he can before letting Jared tug him by one hand through the throng of graduates still crowded around the table and flooding into the parking lot. They pass Sophie Rodgers, who won’t look at Jared but waves to Evan, and Connor Murphy, who’s arguing with his dad, before reaching Jared’s mom, who’s waiting side by side near the front doors with Evan’s mom.
“Oh, honey,” Evan’s mom says, pulling him into a hug. “I am so proud of you.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Evan protests, but he doesn’t try to fight down the giddy warmth that’s filling him up — he did it, he finished middle school, and she always tells him that things will only get better from here.
Evan’s mom lets go to step back from him, hands on his shoulders, assessing him. “When did you get so tall?”
“Last week,” Jared says, making both their moms laugh.
“Pictures!” Jared’s mom arranges the two of them next to each other under a tree, straightening Jared’s tie and smoothing his collar as he swats at her hands, then pulls out her camera.
They stand there long enough for Jared’s mom to take what must be a hundred pictures, alternating smiles and serious expressions and goofing off. Normally Evan hates smiling for photos — it always feels so fake and forced, and it looks that way in the final picture — but now it isn’t hard at all, even when he’s been smiling so long that his face is starting to hurt.
“That has to be enough pictures,” Jared says at last, taking his arm away from around Evan’s shoulder. “Mom, you said we could go to Abbott’s after, they’re still open.”
“I did — Heidi, do you and Evan want to join us?”
Evan turns to his mom, who’s looking doubtful. “Can we, please?”
She checks her watch. “I don’t know, sweetheart, my shift starts in an hour…”
“I wouldn’t mind taking Evan with us,” Jared’s mom says. “I can drop him off for you.”
“If you’re sure you don’t mind —”
Jared high fives Evan, and they both take off running across the parking lot, over Evan’s mom’s admonishment to “be safe, I love you!”
Abbott’s Frozen Custard is close enough to the middle school that they could walk, but they all get into Jared’s mom’s car instead; though she offers Jared the shotgun seat, he slides into the back row next to Evan. They pull out of the parking lot, passing the nearby fire station. Jared’s mom turns on the radio, and a song Evan doesn’t know pours out, fast and twangy, something about fallout and walls and standing alone.
Jared gets quiet, looking out the window for a minute, before turning back to Evan. “Do you think we’re still going to be friends in high school?”
“Yeah,” Evan says, baffled. “Why wouldn’t we be?” Jared’s mom is watching them in the rear-view mirror, even though she’s pretending not to.
Jared shrugs. “High school is where, like, everything happens. It changes things.”
“I guess.” That’s kind of a less optimistic version of what his mom’s been telling him. “But it doesn’t have to change everything, I don’t think.”
Jared nods and looks relieved.
“What about you?” Evan says. “Do you think we’ll still be friends then?”
(blue) columbine!!! i think u will like the meaning it's my fav flower bc of it!!
picrew
BC is the resident outdoors queen! She loves doing anything out in the wilderness, from hiking to skiing and everything in between! Her heart belongs to the earth she walks on and never regrets a day she’s alive!
fairy, mermaid, elf!! also u were in my dream last night but icr what it was about besides that it had both you n soph
oh that’s great! honored to co-star brilliantly in any dream.........my dreams last night were crap as my dreams usually are b/c they are mostly Anxiety Dreams and almost always Not Terrible But Never Fun. e.g. i was in school and kept missing a couple classes every day like oh jeez great.....and i had a dance performance coming up that i kept missing rehearsals for but that’s less stressful cuz i’m like “great, that’ll still be fun,” except my dreams never let me get to the performance. also there were nice vampires but even That wasn’t fun
Fairy- What is something that you get excited about?
everything ever that i’m interested in.....and whenever i have Opinions, which is often lmao.........
Mermaid- What are you looking forward to?
well i’d say billions s5 b/c winston will surely be in it, but billions is partially cursed and while the fact that the s4 finale avoided our fears And bestowed upon us more than we ever would’ve hoped for, it’s still This Damn Series, and you have to pray it will only be kind(er) to winston and/or at least mostly leave him alone please
so the thing that i am looking forward to Without Disclaimers is soph getting to see be more chill!!!!!! i’m haha....i ha.....i’m NOT chill about it and keep thinking about bmc stuff and going (soph is about to See that in person :o!!!) and going :o!!!!! about it aaa
Elf- What are you proud of?
well back when i was cursedly living with my parents i realized i Did have the advantage of having surplus income every month and i always want to give people my money and i was like “someday in the near future i will either be de-ceased or else more pressed for funds and less able to give $$ to ppl who could use some, so i’m always gonna look for opportunities to throw funds to ppl” and i did that and like, i’m not Proud of it in that i’m like wow that was such an effort for me!!! b/c look one of the nice things about me is that my lack of restraint applies to ~generosity~ or whatever, so it honestly comes naturally and it’s not like oh what a heroic effort from me. i’m just very glad i was able to do this thing and chose to follow through with it despite it sometimes taking efforts like Logging Into Accounts or Figuring Out Money Transfers and etc......my anxiety is no match for my determination to help ppl out
It’s 12:59 AM, and Jared hasn’t slept in about nineteen hours, and the Connor Project website still stubbornly refuses to load. All his time waiting on hold with the hosting provider and wrangling with the command line has done approximately nothing, except bring hundreds more people to every one of their social media sites for Alana to deal with. How she puts up with all their complaining he’ll never know.
A piercing shriek cuts through the electronica filling his headphones, making him jump, and half a second later a Skype notification pops up at the bottom of his screen, bearing Evan’s face. Why did he ever change his incoming call sound to a death metal scream, anyway? (And why hasn’t he changed it back yet?)
Jared pauses the music and accepts the call, expanding the window to fill about half the screen. On the left, the cursor still blinks in the Terminal window; on the right, Evan blinks at him from a dim room.
“Hey.” There’s a pillow behind Evan’s head. He’s lying in bed, then.
“Hey.”
“You’re awake late.”
“You’re the one who called me.” Jared taps lightly on the keyboard without pressing any keys. “The website’s still down.”
Evan makes a sympathetic noise. “Again?”
“Again. Our server is trash.” Normally Evan doesn’t make small talk like this — he just jumps right into presenting Jared with some new problem he’s made for himself and then sits back to hear about how he should fix it. Either he’s feeling bizarrely sociable thanks to Internet stardom, or he really doesn’t want to tell Jared whatever he’s called to tell him. “Can’t imagine you’re taking time out of your evening just to hear me complain about how we should have sprung for more RAM, though.”
“Uh, no, not really.” Evan glances around and away from the camera, rubbing at his face. “I… well.”
“Did you kill someone? Because there’s nowhere good around here to hide a body.”
That doesn’t even get a verbal response, just a roll of the eyes, but Jared will take exasperated Evan over anxious Evan any day. “I went over to Zoe’s house today.”
Not the Murphys’ house — Zoe’s house, as if she’s the only person who’s ever lived there. “And?”
“And.” Evan tugs at his collar. “We were in Connor’s room. She told me about, how much I’d given her and her family, how I’d given her Connor back, and then…” The longer he draws this out, the higher Jared’s own adrenaline levels are spiking. “She kissed me.”
Jared freezes.
“What?”
“She kissed me,” Evan repeats, rushing through his words now, “and I didn’t, I wasn’t sure what to do, so I kissed her back, and we —”
“Yeah, I get the picture. I don’t need a description.” That he can imagine all too well. Evan walking through her house, Evan sitting on her brother’s bed, her mouth on Evan’s, her hands on Evan’s shoulders or around his waist or in his hair —
Jared gets the picture. He wishes he didn’t.
Evan’s still watching him. “Are you going to say anything?”
“Like what?” He feels like he’s falling, that same sickening weightlessness that happens just after going over the top of a rollercoaster, and that’s not conducive to pulling a bon mot about Evan getting with the girl of his dreams under the most nightmarish circumstances imaginable out of his ass.
“I don’t know! You always have something to say about me and Zoe. Like, ‘wow, Evan, you let Zoe Murphy kiss you on her dead brother’s bed, that’s fucked up and probably illegal or something.’” His imitation of Jared’s voice sucks.
“Well, there you go. You’ve clearly worked out the obvious issue for yourself. What do you need me for?”
“I haven’t told anyone else,” Evan says. It sounds an awful lot like please don’t tell anyone else. “I couldn’t.”
“Why don’t you talk to Zoe?” The words taste of acid to Jared, and Evan must agree, judging by his grimace. “She’s the party in interest here.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
Jared laughs. “Good luck with that, then,” he says, and hangs up.
It’s 1:01 AM. Skype says the call lasted for 2 minutes and 27 seconds. A lifetime.
