Summer, Beginning: Chapter One
I stared at my reflection in the mirror. A week since graduation, and still, it felt weird. An image of myself, almost frozen in time, because so much had changed, and yet there I still was. Same face, same pajama bottoms. It had felt, for so long, that the day would never come. That high school would keep its grip on me forever, but then one day I’d walked across a stage, and then just like that, it was over. And all I had to show for it was a rolled-up piece of paper. Reaching for my toothbrush, it hit me, suddenly, just how much had changed over the last few years. Sure, this was when kids developed the most of their personalities, and I knew that if I ran into my younger self it’d be like talking to a completely different person, but it was still odd to reflect over all of it. All the little things that had come and gone, and left their marks on my life in little chalk marks and pencil shavings. Last year, after five years of struggling against it, my mother had succumbed to her br...