Last spring, I graduated high school. We weren't planning any big parties or anything, partly

because of the whole germ thing, and partly because we were never into big parties in the

first place. When I say we, I mean me and my two best friends, Mia and Cooper. We weren't

nerds, or if we were, we were the socially acceptable type of nerds that had a lot of

friends at school and rarely got picked on. We went with the flow, and that did sometimes

include us going to games or parties, though usually we target smaller hangouts with people

we could tolerate for a few hours. Most of the time though, it was just the three of us.

And as we got closer and closer to graduation, our little circle of three seemed to involuntarily

contract more and more, almost like a clenching fist. Mia was going to college in Nevada. I

was staying here. And Cooper? Well, he wasn't sure yet, but the odds of him staying in

state for school were getting slim. There was an unspoken tension between a three of us.

A secret dread that said, you better spend time together while you can, because come

the fall, you'll be all alone. It was silly of course. We could still talk and visit,

and we'd make new friends to give us company while the three of us were apart. We all

knew that rationally, but as the time ran down, I became acutely aware of how large my fear

of losing them was. How powerful. So we didn't go to parties. No. But we found excuses to

do stuff all the time. Not just hang out, watch TV, play games and stuff, but actually

do activities. It had started right after Christmas, and by May, we had found an impressive

variety of stuff to do. Parks, State, National, and amusement. Fairs, both the Kani type and

medieval type. We had gone camping, hiking, fishing and swimming. There was a video of me

rollblading down a hill, though mere mist when I wiped out of the bottom and photos of

us petting goats at the world's smallest petting zoo two counties over. It was literally

...