Chameleon ✔️

25 ceremonies

          The week preceding graduation is torture, filled with lots of television, naps, bowls of cereal, and sulking. By Monday evening, Dad's clothes are packed and ready to go. I intend to pack last minute as a quiet form of rebellion.

Eli is still grounded until further notice, but I sneak up to the treehouse with him every day after school for a couple of hours. We do a lot of sitting and not talking, hand-holding and sulking. I've never been very religious, but I ask him to pray aloud, and he does. It makes me feel a tiny bit better, like someone other than Gray has a say-so in the way my life unfolds.

On Wednesday, I get a letter in the mail. Alyssa George has been accepted to the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. They even want to offer her a scholarship. I ball it up and toss it in the trash.

Friday morning calls for graduation practice. All of the seniors meet at the gymnasium. The principal goes over the rules — no airhorns, no beach balls, no hidden flasks, no cell phones — and then we walk as the band plays "Pomp and Circumstance". I'm graduating with honors and seated on the second row between a girl named Nicole Fowler and a boy named Marty Gros, but a few boys in letterman jackets lovingly refer to him as "Mardi Gras".

Several speeches are to be given, but thankfully each speaker says only the opening remark during rehearsal. The class president, Mason Kentworth, opens the ceremony, followed by the vice president and valedictorian, Stefanie Sims. The school principal and vice principal will also give speeches, along with a special guest. After a grueling hour and a half, we are dismissed to the locker rooms to be fitted for caps and gowns. I will also wear a golden sash with an honors patch sewn onto it.

When I finally make the trek back to the Camry, I see something sitting atop the hood, its color catching the sunlight and blinding me. I pick it up, and it's a gift. A thin, square something wrapped in obnoxious pink paper that says "BIRTHDAY GURL!!" on it in a silver script.

"I know it's not your birthday, but this is the only wrapping paper we had at the house. Think of it as a going away present." I look up, and Eli is beside me. "Wait, when is your birthday?"

"June fourth. Why aren't you in class?"

He brightens. "Oh, well then this can be an early birthday present." He winks. "And don't worry about that. They think I'm pooping."

I roll my eyes at him. The boy has zero shame. "When's yours?" I ask as I peel off the first layer of paper only to find another.

"September twenty-second. Should I expect a gift?" Even though I'm not looking at him, I know he is smirking.

"We'll see."

Upon extraction of the item from both the second and third layers of paper, I find that it is a blank white canvas. I look up at him in question.

"Flip it over," he coaxes, annoying smirk still intact.

When I do, I find that it is an acrylic painting. The main focus of the painting is a tree with a thick trunk and many branches tangled together and covered in leaves of every color, most of them impossible. Hanging from one of the branches is a swing, the kind made of a single wooden plank and some rope. Leaning up against the trunk is a skateboard. Atop a few roots sits two pairs of shoes — black combat boots and shiny, golden heels. A stack of books sits atop another set of roots, and one of them is our math textbook, if I'm not mistaken. Off to one side of the scene stand a couple of sunflowers. Hanging from a smaller branch is a simple gold chain with a heart-shaped locket. Hanging from another branch is a dreamcatcher — beaded and feathered much like the one that hangs above Eli's bed; from yet another hangs a small, battery-powered lantern. A wooden ladder leads up to the tree from the far back left, its destination unseen in the picture. And, finally, carved in the tree trunk halfway up the middle are the initials E.W. + A.G., but the 'G' is drawn in a such a fashion that one could almost mistake it for a 'Q' if that were one's intention.