The Opposition

Epilogue

Sadie

You are hot.

After well over a year of dating, Carter has not let up on his promise to pick a new word everyday to describe me. Whenever he has a free second during his day, he'll send me a message like this: You are... insert adjective. Throughout our relationship, he's used a multitude of different words. Considerate. Infuriating. Intelligent. Breathtaking. Perplexing. Adroit. Comely. Effulgent. The list goes on for practically forever. But today–graduation day–he chooses a three letter word. Hot.

Classy, I text back.

True, he combats, almost instantly.

I can't help but smile at my phone. The graduation is ceremony is in three hours. Three hours until Carter and I stand side by side to give our Valedictorian speech. But it's not just the speech. We've spent months planning graduation, prom, literally anything that involves the seniors of Fairridge. Valedictorian at Fairridge isn't just a title, it's a responsibility. Which is why only the best of the best get awarded that responsibility. That honour. And, this year, it was me and Carter. Coming out on top, together.

Together. That thought makes me happy. But not as happy as the fact that I beat Carter for the official top spot on the Headmaster's Principal's List. Most student's actually call it the Dean's List. But Carter and I have always used the name Principal's List. They're interchangeable. After going back and forth for the end of junior and beginning of senior year, we were all tied up until the final one. Which I won. By 0.1%, but it was still a gloating-worthy win. Carter and I agreed to look at the lists separately and, when we finally met up, he didn't look too beat up about it. I rubbed it in his face for a while, until he silenced by insults by kissing me. I didn't mind his form of retaliation, if I'm being honest.

I have to go meet up with Carter to pass him the last of our notes, but my first priority is it go see Ana and Angie in Cadwell House. At the end of junior year, I was asked to be a Head Girl, and one of the duties that I accepted was to be in charge of a girls-only dorm for freshmen. Carter–no surprise–got the same title, and he moved into a boys-only dorm. We spent senior year without roommates, but our dorms were rivals for all boys vs girls activities, sparking more competition between me and my boyfriend. I still spent most of the year having sleepovers at Ana and Angie's dorm in Cadwell House.

Checking the time on my phone, I pick up the pace to reach my best friends' dorm in time. Dr. Hitchman insisted on having one final session with me before the official end of the school year. Carter recommended that I see the school therapist during junior year, a few weeks after we started dating. At first, I firmly shook my head, telling him that I didn't need help. But, gently, he insisted I just go once. And then once turned into twice. And, soon, I was spending two days every week talking to Dr. Hitchman about everything I've kept buried in the back of my brain for years.

Entering Cadwell House, I race up the stairs, using the key Ana gave me to unlock my friends' dorm. The room is almost empty, everything packed into boxes, ready to be sent back home after the ceremony. During the school year, though, the walls were covered in hundreds of coloured sticky notes, book quotes written in loopy on each of them. Ana put them up and Angie never complained. I liked them, too. The only thing not packed in brown boxes in Ana's pink and blue bedding, which is still on her bed, along with a very breathless Ana and lustful-looking Landon, who's hand is under her shirt. He's on top of her, their lips connected and hands roaming.

I shut the door with a loud clip, startling them apart. Those two got back together during senior year and have been going strong ever since. It was... complicated, but they got to this point in a messy but romantic way. Much like my relationship with Carter, Ana and Landon are seen as a power couple among the student body. Fairridge athletes practically worship the ground they walk on. "Hey, Sadie," Ana says, flattening her bedhead.