And as our lives change
Come whatever
We will still be
Friends forever
Some people you know will stick around forever and they do. They pick you up for tea and sandwiches every other Wednesday afternoon, they go to your aunt's funeral, they answer the phone every time you call even if it's 3am the night before examinations and they've a mountain of notes to page through. There's no proposal; he just passes you the ring one day and you take it, and it's official, just like that.
Some people will stay around until they don't, and suddenly after ten years side-by-side, painting nails, swapping lunches and taping bruised knuckles, helping copy lines so you can all be home by dinner, suddenly you start counting yourself lucky you hear from them twice a year when they've run afoul of the law again and they call you instead of a lawyer because you've always bailed them out before. And then after a while, they stop calling, and you never know if it's because the police finally caught up with them or if something else did or if they just ran so far and so fast they reached escape velocity and simply vanished off the face of the earth, and did they forget you when they flew? You can't even send a wedding invitation.
Sometimes graduation terrifies people because everything changes, but nothing really ever does. Because if you move on, if you leave this sacred bubble of tiny horizons and too many domestic problems and a life that's so dull it makes the palms of your hands itch with the urge to pound some spark into the town, you might lose the only friends you have; you might be left with a mother who tried to kill you and a father you never really knew. Because if you don't leave, you're certain to lose even what parents you have, and you'll never be a lonely demi-god leaving a trail of death in your wake, taunting love to follow so you can vanquish it as you have so, so many others. So you won't go, but you can't stay, and you linger until suddenly the choice is made for you and you're never quite able to remember how you woke up in Arizona, USA, in the bed of a truck with a gun and some cash and a stash of cosmetics whose fumes make you dizzy.
Promises are cheap. Tattoos are expensive, but they're permanent- -or at least they seem that way, for a while- -and so sometimes two sixteen-year-old girls will sit in dentist chairs in the shop of an Artiste D'Ink with a scrawny cat winding about their legs and a lanky boy looking on while they get identical blue rectangles marked on right hips. And sometimes when you look, the box will disappear; sometimes time itself seems to have changed, but if you look again, the box will still be there, so maybe everything's as it's meant to be after all. And if you someday happen to bump into a sauntering woman who despite her walk isn't possibly the right age or color or shape to have gone to school with you, to have shared homework and bandages and pilfered bottles of wine with; if you run into her on your bike and insist on inspecting the resulting gash you can clearly see starting to bleed through her shirt, she'll protest, but you're both as stubborn as the day is long so someone will give in and it won't be you; if you raise the hem of her blouse just the slightest bit and you catch a glimpse of a blue geometric shape, then, well, maybe rectangles are more common than you thought, and you just don't know enough people from different times and places.
Sometimes graduation isn't the beginning of the end; sometimes you just need to wait a bit longer, run a bit further, sit patiently just one more time. Some people you'll find in unexpected places, at the wrong time and in dangerous company, some people won't recognize you, and some people you'll be sure have died. Sometimes they have died, and you just don't know it yet. Sometimes you'll never know. Sometimes tattoos are more permanent than you can possibly imagine. Sometimes
will be
are
always
A/N: Lyrics and title from Vitamin C's "Graduation (Friends Forever)."