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If he were here, I bet he would’ve found a silveron his hat in the middle of the ceremony, just to piss off Mrs Lane He would’ve launched a beach ball into the crowd like Nick and Evan did at their graduation Think ym has a lot of memories I first met Kyle here when I s about it nownot to cry, it comes out as a snort

"You okay?" Leslie Warren asks I’in with W We had French together

"Just thinking about how rins "Re the first football pep rally this year, how the senior guys played tug-of-war against the guy teachers?"

"That was hilarious," I reply with a laugh The senior boys had been strutting around for days boasting how they were gonna kick souys toppled to the floor like bowling pins

Our cere, and a ruoes around that crazy Zack Burns is coe

The evening growshis valedictory address, Mark MacCullum says, "Kyle Crocker was friends with everybody He alandered around the cafeteria, talking people up and eating food right off their trays He also was a pen thief"

Murh the crowd It doesn’t reallytheir own Kyle stories I glance down the aisle to where Kyle’s best friend, Seth, is crying

Even the people who didn’t know hi Maybe not for him specifically, but for what Kyle lost: the chance to have experiences, good and bad and crazy and life changing They feel sorry his mother and father lost their son Andtheir own parents or children or brothers and sisters and how that feels like darkness, a hole that can never be filled And if they’ve never lost somebody, ill it feel like when they do? When you finally watch your loved one being lowered into the ground, away from you forever Before October, I couldn’t have fathomed it

I felt immortal

Guilt builds up underhere at graduation Never gettinga house out on Normandy Lake, where he could live on a sailboat on weekends, doing nothing but swi up with me under sunsets He’s the one I should feel sorry for But I feel bad forout

•••

Later that night, I curl up in bed withI have a ten-mile run/walk tomorrow Matt told me I could skip the run and raduated today But I told hi on the senior cruise

The entire class is out on the General Jackson Riverboat on the Cuht I went back and forth on whether to buy a ticket, and ultiht and wish I’d gone? There’s nothing on that boat for me Sure, I could pose for pictures with Vanessa and Savannah, but then they’d go dance with their boyfriends and I’d be left alone Kelsey would ignore uys would ask me to dance, and they wouldn’t be Kyle The entire ti: I’m here, and he’s not

My mind flashes to junior proet off work at the Quick Pick We rushed back to my place and made love, then wrapped ourselves up in my bed sheets We sat Indian style and talked about the road trip to Myrtle Beach ould take that su, He is all I could ever want He’s the guy for me He’s my fate

But when Kyle laid it out forup Why couldn’t he have waited until after graduation to ask? Or after I graduated college?

If he’d just respected ram up on my phone and watch pictures from the cruise pop up Cute, colorful dresses and dark suits fill my screen: a selfie of Vanessa Green and Rory Whitfield leaning against the boat’s railing; a photo of Savannah Barrow and Jack Goodwin kissing in theto roll down rab so to o blank I stuff my phone under my pillow Grab the photo of me and Kyle from my bedside table and turn it face down