Days For Stars

Day Seven

Day Seven: The Day Before High School Graduation,

            Parked outside was a pale pink hearse. It had been there since the day before: the final day of High School.

            No one had known quite what to make of it. I'm pretty sure that each and every kid (myself included) attempted to peer through the windows to see what was inside. The windows were tinted originally, but someone, presumably the owner of the car, had taped pieces of black cardboard to every window. It was impossible to see inside. But that didn't stop us from trying.

            During our last class of the day, an announcement was made: Could all seniors please report to the auditorium?

            We all figured that there would be one final torturous assembly before sending us off into the world. What we didn't expect was this:

            Once we were all seated, the secretary tapped the mic. "Attention, please,"

            Reluctantly and lazily, our gazes turned toward her. She was about to say something else when a deafening roar sounded from the lobby. All heads turned.

            The doors swung open. Two teachers held them tightly, standing as close to the wall as they could. To this day, I still wonder how on earth they managed it. But they did, and there it was. The pale pink hearse stormed into the High School auditorium.

            Gasps and cries filled the air. I could see crowds of students gaping through the doors. What the heck was this?

            The hearse skidded to a halt inches from the edge of the stage. Out climbed our principal, the vice-principal, and-guess who! - Gwen.

            If it was even possible, the whispers increased. Gwen ducked back into the car and ripped off the pieces of cardboard. Then she threw them to the principal, Frisbee style.

            How could she not have told me about this? I wondered. We are dating, after all.

            Gwen was always good at keeping secrets. Too good, in fact.

            She was all smiles as she climbed up the steps to the stage. Can't you just imagine the irony of it? A hearse- colored pink, mind you- and the three people that emerged from it: happy, healthy, and most definitely not dead.

            I (and the rest of the senior student body) turned out to be kind of right. It was a motivational assembly to send us away with it in our minds. But there was a message that would matter at some point... to me at least.

            Principal Spire held up the first piece of cardboard. "Who can tell me what this says?"

            Live. I whispered along to the chorus of everyone else.

            "How about this one?"

             Life.

            Without.

            Regrets.

            Smile.

            Laugh.

            Love.

            Live.

            Eight signs. Eight words to live by. And I understood the point to the irony. Representing life and death was my girlfriend and a pale pink hearse.

Everyone was given a pink umbrella the exact same shade of the hearse at the time that we received our diplomas the next day. A personal message was sewn into the lining of each one. Mine was a quote: To Max: We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. ~Oscar Wilde  I Love You!

I didn't need to ask who had sewn that message in. Thinking back to that awful day in February when Gwen had asked we about stars, I fingered the royal blue thread. Nobody else could have given me something like that Oscar Wilde quote and know that it truly meant something. Or write "I Love You," for that matter.

When Gwen met up with her parents and I met up with mine, we managed to look in each other's direction. She smiled at me. I smiled back and raised my umbrella slightly to her. She gave a little giggle before her attention was diverted back to her mother.

My family and I left for dinner when the chairs were being folded up and the last of the people were dwindling. I took a look at my pale pink umbrella one last time. What do stars symbolize? I asked myself.

And this time, I knew the answer.