Elizabeth Rigney
The porch in front of my home is my favorite place to sit, when the weather is just right and someone down the street is barbecuing. My neighborhood is just old enough that porches are still installed in homes, but as I watch my friends all move out of the old neighborhoods and in to the new, I see that porches are no longer so much of a necessity as a bother. I smile to myself, glad that my parents are fine where they are, thanks. I shuffle my feet on the worn wood beneath me and swing gently with these thoughts settling in my head.
The air is dry and hot. Summer vacation is squeaking to a terrible halt as the prospect of my last year of high school looms just over the two-week hill ahead of me. I take a swig of my cold soda and watch some children ride their bicycles down the street in front of me. As soon as senior year comes, it’s going to be all hell, all the time. But not necessarily the bad kind of hell.
I bet you didn’t know there was a good kind of hell, did you?
Not only will I be frantically preparing for college for the entire year, as is required by the school administrators, but I will also be quitting my summer job in order to make room for what every senior in high school should be focusing on: football games, homecoming, barbecuing, bonfires in the fall, and basketball, prom, dating, and more barbecuing in the spring semester. The opportunities for senior/freshmen drama abound, and so I can only look forward to the coming year.
I glance at my wristwatch and watch until the second hand ticks all of the way to the 12, making it exactly six o’clock in the evening. A short, high-pitched horn beeps as a car approaches my home. Right on time, I think. An old double-cab Toyota truck screeches to a halt, its mirror inches from the menacing brick of my mailbox. It’s a Saturday night; the second to last of my last real summer, and all three of my friends are crammed in that little Tacoma, ready to show the town that we still own the streets.
The air is dry and hot. Summer vacation is squeaking to a terrible halt as the prospect of my last year of high school looms just over the two-week hill ahead of me. I take a swig of my cold soda and watch some children ride their bicycles down the street in front of me. As soon as senior year comes, it’s going to be all hell, all the time. But not necessarily the bad kind of hell.
I bet you didn’t know there was a good kind of hell, did you?
Not only will I be frantically preparing for college for the entire year, as is required by the school administrators, but I will also be quitting my summer job in order to make room for what every senior in high school should be focusing on: football games, homecoming, barbecuing, bonfires in the fall, and basketball, prom, dating, and more barbecuing in the spring semester. The opportunities for senior/freshmen drama abound, and so I can only look forward to the coming year.
I glance at my wristwatch and watch until the second hand ticks all of the way to the 12, making it exactly six o’clock in the evening. A short, high-pitched horn beeps as a car approaches my home. Right on time, I think. An old double-cab Toyota truck screeches to a halt, its mirror inches from the menacing brick of my mailbox. It’s a Saturday night; the second to last of my last real summer, and all three of my friends are crammed in that little Tacoma, ready to show the town that we still own the streets.
The porch becomes a symbol of an old way of life gradually giving way to a new one, a coming-of-age symbol, almost. I only wrote a few chapters before I sighed and closed my computer, deciding that something just didn't feel write and I couldn't get it done. It's really an off-season NaNoWriMo, but I guess I'm just not used to doing a NaNo by myself, outside of the month of November.
