The Yearbooks

By: Aviantei

An Awkward One Shot

[Twelve Shots of Summer: Second Raid 12/12]

Their yearbooks arrived in the mail before they knew what had happened. It was a lot like the end of high school—it, too had arrived before they even saw it coming.

Peppi's yearbooks were all together in the corner of her bookshelf. She was, Jamie often noticed, much more organized most people considered the artist types. He also had all his yearbooks, but they weren't anywhere close to being in one place.

"It's so weird," Peppi said, flipping through the pages without really looking at them. "Where did high school even go?"

"Where did any of the time even go?" Jamie answered, picking out one of the books that had probably come from Peppi's previous school. Finally, he found her picture, an older shot from what had to be elementary school, given how she was missing a tooth. "Wow, you look so different."

"Don't look at that!" Peppi sounded more panicked than anything, and she quickly retrieved a middle school yearbook for ammunition. Old pages of Comic Punch spilled out, the yellow of sunlight and age. "You changed a lot, too, see." She pointed to his middle school profile—cute enough, but still scrawny, which still hadn't changed much over the years.

"Yeah, whatever." Reaching over to the book in Peppi's lap, he flipped through the pages. "Man, this was ages ago," Jamie commented, recognizing the pictures, remnants of memories.

Peppi still looked embarrassed, a bit less than mortified. "It was the year we first met," she said, and Jamie realized she was right. "You know, I'm still sorry about the whole pushing you down thing."

Jamie almost laughed. "It's cool. You apologized, right?" Encountering a photo of their indoor planetarium, he stopped. It had seemed like a big deal at the time, but had the yearbook staff really given it a whole page? It seemed like a bit much.

"We did that," Peppi whispered.

"Yeah."

"Wow."

"Yeah."

They continued to stare at the page. It had been years ago, but he could still remember—all the work that had gone into it, how the science and art clubs had come together, how the majority of their friendships had stayed intact, even people moved, even when times were tough.

"Hey, Peppi."

"Hm?"

"Let's keep creating things together." It was probably clichéd, but if anything, it was what he really wanted to do: to keep building up their lives and the world, one small brick at a time.

And Peppi's response was to grin, a smile more contagious than anything. "Definitely."

And so, another round of T-Sauce comes to an end. All that's left is the Last Rose of Summer, then we'll move on to other things.

This was written for the [Twelve Shots of Summer: Second Raid] challenge, and is my final piece (I actually posted all twelve weeks this year! Major excitement). The prompt was "The Legend Lives On," and after reading Svetlana Chmakova's Awkward, I just knew I had to write something for it. I like the idea of something legendary to Peppi and Jamie in middle school living on through their yearbooks. And, well, since Awkward and T-Sauce are really all about building, the two fit together nicely. I wouldn't mind writing more for Awkward in the future.

That being said, I want to thank the entire T-Sauce crew for coming around this summer. CG did a fantastic job at running the place. Katie has grown in leaps and bounds. Dina has shown an amazing endgame enthusiasm. L, FMP, Fahiru, and Element all have given us their small (and not so small) takes on the prompts. Tash and Nova joined the game as newcomers. And, X, I know you didn't join us this time around, but you were definitely thought of during this journey.

And, to all of you, for letting me in on this journey, thank you.

Seriously, these guys did great this summer. You can find them and their works in the [Twelve Shots of Summer] forum and community, and I highly recommend it. And as summer comes to a close, you'll be able to (hopefully) find them milling about at [Equinoctial Stars over Seasons] until [Shibuya Operation - Story Storm] rolls around again.

(And no one cares but next weekend I'll be giving summer one last hurrah by posting the missing one shot from last year's T-Sauce challenge, Dungeon Crawl before I start working out some chapters for Exception)

Again, thank you Saucers. Thank you for writing. And for those of you who stopped by, thanks as always for reading.

As the seasons change, may you build, from the tiniest to the largest of things.

[POST] 082215