Prolouge
"Wow." Stacey McGill breathed as she looked at herself in her mirror. She wasn't saying it because she looked good, because Stacey always looked good and she'd kind of gotten used to it. She was saying it because she was wearing a white high school graduation gown and a cap. For the first and last time ever.
"You ready?" Claudia Kishi swept her dark hair off her shoulders and stood behind Stacey in the mirror. "Are we doing this?"
"Yeah, we're doing this." Stacey said.
"Oh my Lord." Claudia said. "Stacey, we're graduating."
Stacey felt tears prickle the backs of her eyes. Don't cry Stacey, you'll ruin your makeup. "I can't believe it."
"I thought I would never get here." Claudia said. She crossed Stacey's room and picked up the brochures from Columbia. "I can't believe at the end of the summer we really have to leave this place."
"Isn't it crazy?" Stacey agreed.
"Stacey!" Her mother called from downstairs. "It's nearly time to go!"
Stacey and Claudia turned to each other.
"Wow." Stacey said again. In mutual understanding, they grabbed each other's hands and squeezed tight. They'd been through a lot together. But they were graduating. Going to college. And growing up.
It was kind of intense. Stacey was going to Columbia, in her home town of New York City. Claudia was moving all the way across the country, to UC San Francisco.
"Are you ready, girls?" Mrs McGill asked them as they swept down the stairs and into the kitchen. An attractive woman even in her early forties, she placed a pan of cookies fresh from the oven on the kitchen bench, whipping off her apron to reveal a stylish black suit. "Claudia, do you have to go home first?"
"Nah, my parents are meeting us there." Claudia replied. She bit into a cookie, extra chocolatey, the way she liked it.
"I'm so proud of you two." Mrs McGill reached her arms out for a hug, and Stacey and Claudia both sunk into them. The three of them had become quite the little family, Claudia practically living at the McGill's house while her parents had gone through a messy divorce in the past year. And to think all three of them were going to be separated. It was unimaginable.
"Mom, we're going to go get Mary Anne and Dawn, okay?" Stacey said. She kissed her mom on the cheek, they grabbed their things and ran out to Stacey's car. They were doing it. They were graduating.
"It's the end of the beginning." Claudia said, as she pulled out her SideKick to message her friends.
"Everything is going to change now." Stacey added as she backed out of the driveway.
She couldn't have been more right.