Mel and Jared have waited for her just off the stage and even though they’re not supposed to, they do the same when my name is called.
I stand, I turn to my mom and Meredith – the former taking photos, the latter screaming like I was in Bolts of Fire – and I wave again. I step up onstage, still feeling at sea, feeling like I’ve just lost sight of shore and though I’m swimming okay for now, I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep it up.
“Congratulations,” the Principal says, shaking my hand.
I take my diploma from him.
And that’s it. That’s how simple it is. I graduate.
I see my friends clapping, waiting for me. They hug me as a group when I get there, a whole bunch of arms around me. The four of us, my friends.
At the end.
Jared hugs me individually, too. “There’s something more,” he says. “Something good but big. If you’ll let me.”
“We’re kind of holding up the line here,” I say, stupidly, still reeling from all this new info.
“I don’t care.” He takes hold of my shoulders. “I can finally heal you, Mikey,” he says, in the middle of all this graduating. “The OCD. The anxiety. Everything.”
“But you can’t. That’s always been too complex–”
“I can. That was another of my conditions if I took the deal.”
I don’t know what to say to this. Henna and Mel are still there, watching, other graduates trying to squeeze around us, a number of them just staying and hugging their own friends because why the hell
not? The music from the band is loud and endless.
“Could you heal Mel?” I say, not even knowing I was going to say it. “Could you make it so she’s okay forever?”
Mel starts to cry when I say that, but in a good way, even though it’s clear she’s not at all sure what we’re talking about. Jared just smiles. “See, Mikey? This is why you’re never the least wanted. Not ever.”
I see a teacher finally wading his way over to us to get us out of the way, as more and more students are hanging around beside us in front of the stage, waiting for even more friends, waiting to have last conversations.
Or first conversations, I guess. The first conversations of the new life.
“I waited for this,” Jared says. “I asked for years and they said it was too much for my realm. It would give me advantages over too many other Gods, but I kept saying no.”
“Until you finally said yes,” I say.
“Until they finally said yes.”
I think of his resignation about healing the indie kid, how he had no choice but to take the deal. He must read my thoughts.
“I thought it would be you,” he says. “I thought it was you I would heal completely first, not Finn.
But healing you meant I had to take the deal. Had to leave. And it was either seeing you suffer or leaving you behind.”
“And now since you’re leaving anyway…”
He shows me his palms. They light up. “This is how much you matter to me, Mikey.”
I look up in his eyes. The day is hot, the crowd around us getting bigger, louder, that damn music still parping out from the eleventh grade brass band. Henna and Mel watching us. Even Nathan finally coming through the now quite uncontrollable crowd. My mom and sister out there somewhere. The future swirling in.
Suddenly a little less worrying.
“That’s all I ever really wanted to know,” I say, realizing right that second that it’s absolutely true.