    No matter how much you resent a place you’ve been, you look back on it with some gratefulness, knowing how it made you different, whether good or bad. My classmates generally disliked having to spend their precious middle school years at the Village School . But not me. I loved every minute of it, if in public I professed differently. The Village School was my second home for 11 years. It would have to be me, the only person who cried at our graduation.
    Getting ready, I fastened the strand of pearls around my neck that had been a graduation present from my parents, attached the pearl earrings I had gotten from the Macy’s in New York , straightened my hair, and pushed it back with a wide, silk, cream-colored headband I love and wear to this day. My mom always liked my hair parted, with the head band placed on top of the carefully fixed hair; but I like it better pushed back. Then I slipped on my lacy white dress and shimmering beaded sandals. After we rehearsed our walk and diploma drill several times, we had to wait for the audience to fill the auditorium before we could start. In the meantime, we all congregated in the cafeteria. All the girls took off their shoes and shook out their hair. I had a wrap around my shoulders, another point argued by my mom and me that night. She thought I should have it on top of my shoulders, while I knew it looked better around my elbows. During the procession, I would have it around my elbows, but later, when I accepted my diploma, I would have it around my shoulders like my mother preferred.
    During our wait, we sat on the stairs we had climbed up and down every day, knowing they signified “big-kid-dom” to all the younger students, since it was where all the middle school classes were located. My best friend Katherine and I raced up the stairs and ran full speed through our middle school hallway, yelling and screaming, saying goodbye to a lifetime of memories.
    You know that feeling you get when you move, as you pack up your belongings and take down paintings and the rooms are again bare, even if a little dirtier and lived-in? You try to remember every special thing that you did in each of the rooms, but instead of extraordinary moments, the normal, everyday things come to mind and make you want to cry, knowing that it’s the ordinary, not the extraordinary things you will miss the most. That was the feeling I got when I looked around at my small grade. I knew these 58 people like the back of my hand, some better than others, but I would miss each and the lesson they taught me.
    “I’ve heard it said. That people come into our lives for a reason, bringing something we must learn, and we are lead to those who help us most to grow, if we let them.” That was the opening line of the song I sang on that night, and it captured a feeling. I started remembering these commonplace events and the message each one unintentionally showed me. Becky, not to be a fickle friend. Sam, not to kick someone when they’re down. Andrea, to keep your options and your mind open. Sneha and Sophia, that if you look at things with a positive attitude, things will come around in your favor. Miranda, that it pays to expect the unexpected. Meghan, to make friends when found in the same boat. Sarah, that if you hold a grudge, you might miss the best time of your life. I met Becky’s eyes as we started the duet. “And we help them in return. And I don’t know if I believe that’s true. But I know I’m who I am today, because I knew you.” Katherine, that best friends and soul mates can always stand the test of time. “Who can say if I've been changed for the better? But because I knew you, I have been changed for good.”
    After I accepted my diploma, I was supposed to walk offstage and take a picture with the thick, textured, cream-colored document and a rose I had received. I just remember looking into the lens like a mirror, knowing exactly how I would look when it had been developed, because at that moment my internal emotions matched my outward appearance. “The journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” My friend’s my mom quoted to me. I stepped away from the stage, towards my where I could collapse, knowing the climax of this evening had reached and passed. I remember the moment I started to cry. It was when the LIFERS, people who had been at the Village School their whole life, were announced and I was among the original four. At that moment, I realized my head had moved on, but my heart was still living in the moment. I was ready to go on to Kinkaid and find new friends, but my heartstrings had attachments to this grimy, lovable place that they weren’t about to uproot so quickly.
    That feeling of ordinary came to me again as the ceremony ended and we scattered about. I had imagined profound things being said, but instead we chatted about something immensely difficult for me as though it were everyday.
    “Oh my gosh, I’m not coming to the after party, so this is like, the last time I’m ever going to see you!”
    “Are you coming to the party afterwards?”
    “Keep in touch!”
    “I’ll miss you!”
    “We’ll have to get together over the summer, okay?”
    My graduation night was not like most people envision their own. When those two words, “graduation night,” come to mind, for example, they think of graduating from high school, not middle school. Then they don’t dream of having it in a grimy auditorium where the temperature is always an extreme, either boiling or freezing. They don’t think about uncomfortable brown metal folding chairs or a graduating class smaller than their own small group advisories. I looked around the gym and the stage. The green velvet curtains, old, musty, and moth-eaten, that I peered out from behind before the start of plays from 2^nd grade through 8^th grade, collected awards, been inducted into NJHS, the National Junior Honor Society, had STARS play practices, and won my first singing contest. I looked over in the corner where the sound booth was located. We desperately needed a new sound system. The closet below it was where all the toys and the TV set was stored for the little kids. They would come an hour early to school for day care, playing with puzzles, drawing, watching TV and learning how to interact with other little kids, making their first friends. That was where I met Raf, Kristen, and Zain.
    You couldn’t know how this gym appeared to some of us by looking down upon the scene. You had to enter our brains. With that I realized the cliché was true; life was a book, and this chapter was coming to a close.