Never Fall in Love with the Fisher Boys

41- I Blinked

You know how they always say that graduation is really just for the parents? Because I could totally see why that was a saying. I wasn’t even graduating and I was so bored with the whole thing. There were speeches after speeches from the superintendent to the principal to some student speakers and then the valedictorian and the salutatorian and I didn’t know any of the students that had spoken.

Carter, Sophie, and Ethan were the three people that I was there to celebrate. I mean, I was friends with a lot of people that were graduating, mainly from the soccer team, but I wouldn’t have sat through an hour and a half of speeches of people basically saying the same thing over and over for anybody except for Carter and Sophie.

“I don’t know why I come to these things every year,” Will mumbled with a shake of his head from beside me.

“To support your brothers,” Tom reminded him from the other side of him. Will had tried to convince Aster to come with us to the graduation ceremony today but not even she could be tricked into sitting through so many hours of boredom and sentiment. “They’ll be there for you next year.”

“Andy doesn’t go to anybody’s graduations, he’s only here for this one because of Sophie, not Carter,” Will defended, motioning to Andy, who was sitting on the other side of me.

“But I’m here, and that’s the important part,” Andy piped. Owen had made the drive up here to see Carter graduate as well as long as his whole family including his wife and his young daughter who are sitting on the other side of Tom with Ace and Alijah as they quietly amused themselves. Randy, Paige, Anthony, and Sophie’s parents were also in the row with us as we finally got to the part of the ceremony where they announced each graduate to cross the stage and receive their diploma.

“You guys really need to be quiet before you get us all kicked out,” Owen said with a pointed look.

I wasn’t sure how that got all of them to shut up, but it did. Since they were being called in alphabetical order, Carter was near the front of the list so it didn’t take that long to hear his name being called and to watch him walk across the stage in his long red gown and square cap with the red and black tassel hanging from the left corner.

Once they called his name, we all started cheering for him, even getting a few dirty looks from other people in the crowd, as he flashed a gorgeous grin in our direction before walking completely across the stage to shake hands with all of the school officials on the stage and then getting his diploma handed to him by his guidance counselor and then he disappeared back into the crowd.

Ethan’s last name was Moore, so he was in the middle and when he walked across, I clapped for him but nothing as dramatic as when Carter passed. And then Sophie, with the last name Turner, was pretty close to the end so the wait between Carter and Sophie was really long and slow.

I noticed a few people that I recognized walk across the stage like Rikki, who I hadn’t talked to in forever which was probably a good thing because she really hated me for dating Carter, Cleo and Joanie from the team, and a few guys that I knew from Carter’s basketball team and then a few more that I’d met from Will’s hockey team.

Eventually, Sophie went across the stage and when we cheered for her, she offered us a huge wave from the stage and then bowed dramatically in her black gown (boys wore red gowns, girls wore black gowns) before she grabbed her diploma and basically skipped off of the stage. She was so excited to be graduating, and you could tell because she was grinning from ear to ear, ready to start a new chapter of her life.

Although she was staying here for a year to take a break from school before college. I was sure that it was to spend more time with Andy before they had to figure out their future but she insisted it was because she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life. Either way, she was staying home for an extra year, getting a job, and taking a few classes at RCC.