Counting Down The Days To Go

Time sure passed by fast when you are studying for your finals. Life passed by in a flurry of memorizing useless facts, sharpening 2B pencils and buying new pens which ran out of ink way too fast. But that was over soon enough since I could really care less about which college I can get into. After all, I’m taking a year off and grades are just some red ink, numbers and letters.

I’m sure Mike felt the same way since he didn’t come to school since Spring Break. So technically, he only studied for one semester and I don’t know how the heck he is going to graduate high school. I don’t care.

Really, I don’t.

But now, it was another season altogether. No, not summer although it’s coming soon enough. But it’s prom season. Prom was exactly one and a half weeks away and I am seriously not looking forward to it. When Amanda was here, we had plans to hire professional hair and make-up artists and maybe rent a limousine to go to the venue with a shit load of friends in tow. But now that Amanda is gallivanting across Europe, I doubt I’m attending prom at all.

Like Edward Cullen told Bella in the movie Twilight, “Prom is an important rite of passage.”

My foot.

Chanel is skipping prom because she’s attending the one in Jeff’s school and I…well. I’ve got no date. There, I said it.

I don’t have a date!

Sure, Aiden did ask me to go to the prom at his school but I said no because of two reasons. One, I still hadn’t fully forgiven him for the incident in Lihue and two, he attends a boys’ school. So I reckoned prom was probably a big joke in their school with all the horny gay/straight/bisexual boys bringing their dates for one big orgy after the prom.

Bleahs. Once bitten, twice shy. I’m never going to take my chances with Aiden ever again.

So, I’m probably skipping prom to stay home and watch some boring old chick flick while imagining about how it would be like to dress up for the fancy 1940s themed party. All the girls are probably going to copy Dita Von Teese’s look and go with white powder and red lipstick caked onto their faces, matched by a perfect little black dress and cute kitten heels. Not to mention those faux fur shrugs and exaggerated eyelashes.

And I’m going to miss all that just because I don’t have a date! I’ve been seeing guys loitering nervously around the locker areas and talking to girls all week. It doesn’t take a brain after seeing the happy smiles on the girls’ faces to know that they had been asked to go to the prom with their respective partners. Heck, it’s like all the seniors in my high school are matched up perfectly. The head cheerleader to the quarterback, the president of chess club to the vice president of the computer club, the smartest girl in my physics class was seen snogging that math nerd.

Is it wrong for me to feel a tad bitter?

Of course, I sure am happy about what’s coming exactly two weeks after prom.

Graduation.

The day that I had been waiting oh-so-impatiently for the past few months. I just can’t wait to get out of this school, this place, this environment! I’ve been here way too long and I’ve already got stuff planned for the summer. Chanel, Jeff and I were going on a road trip for a couple of weeks! Yeah, I feel like a third wheel but it’s either that or inviting Aiden along which is not what I want at all. We are going to take Jeff’s Jeep and drive for about two weeks, heading wherever the road takes us to. I reckoned that it was a good way to unwind after such a stressful school year.

Looking back over the past few months, I must say that I matured quite a lot. Okay, maybe not a lot but I did mature. For example, I lost my virginity. I wouldn’t really count it as ‘maturing’ but I definitely crossed a little threshold with that tear of my hymen. And I think that I had a little brush past the shoulder with love. Sure, Mike and Icould have should have ended things a little differently but still, he was nice to me and I felt something with him that I had never felt with any other guy before. It might not be real love per say because I’m only 18 and I’ve got a whole lot more things to learn but I wouldn’t call the thing with Mike a puppy dog love affair either.

It’s kinda like a neither here nor there thing.

Which then lead me think about what could have been if we didn’t break up. If he hadn’t gone missing for a week and if his attitude didn’t change so drastically after he came back, I might even be able to go to prom with him.

After that little incident with Mike's mom, I somehow had a feeling that his whole family is in on this thing. I just wished that Alice had spoke a little faster and if only his father hadn’t interrupted in the nick of time, I would have unraveled this little mystery of Mike’s.

If only.

And maybe a part of me hadn’t lost hope because that charm bracelet is still dangling off my wrist and the pink ring is still hanging off my neck. The teddy bear sleeps beside me every night and the photos we took that fateful day in the photo-booth at the mall are still pinned up on the wall.

Oh dear, who knew that it was so hard to say goodbye to your first love?