It's funny how fast it sucks you in. It doesn't pull on you- day by day, class by class. It sweeps you off your toes before you can even kiss the sun in your skin goodbye. It's been two weeks and we feel it as a lifetime. And we sit in these cold metal desks- bums numbing their way through ninety minutes- and stare at the cold white walls and we wonder if summer really did happen. But it wasn't always this way.
No, last year, summer didn't end. Because my summer came with me that year. To every class, through every hall, to every lunch. He had wild brown hair and a car. I taught him to paint and smash grapes into juice with our feet. And he taught me not to be scared of what any one of these punks think about me. Because when has the air in their heads been worth two dimes to me? Never. That's when. We found lakes to swim in and swampy creeks to explore- my kind of boy. My kind of summer. We were summer.
But it got rotten real fast. All moldy and growin' weird things. The sticky-lint-between-your-toes-after-a-soccer-game kind of ew.
"We tried but they tore us apart. We gave our all but it wasn't enough. We lied but they read right through us." - Brady Reese's Senior Quote, graduating class of 2012
I ain't got enough feelin's, and, shoot, he'd gone and got himself too many of 'em.   ... And like Mr. Reese said (above), the whole world was against us. I soon realized why. Eventually, I explained to him that, yeah, it sucked, but the world's not the only reason it got all moldy and ew. I still don't think he gets it. But the rest is just whatever. There went my summer.
My friends and I called this past summer our last. Mass suicide? No, no, most definitely not. It's just that we are all planning on going to different colleges, and, honestly, we don't plan to see each other again. My friends are nice, really, they're great. But we've been friends for so long that I don't think any of us would mind never speaking to each other again.
I don't feel nearly big enough to graduate and move on to college like my brothers and sisters have. I still write fantasy stories and dream of fairy people hiding in the school all day long. I love to play dress up with anyone who is willing, but, usually, it's just with my self around my house, making my chore list bearable. An attention span of a 7 year old comes with this type of immaturity. But growing up's for kids over 5 feet 4 inches. And I'm not there yet.
- Phyllis Dae Sloan