Zac Brokenrope: All things must end

In the end, it all really was a blur.

When I was little, everyone told me that high school would go fast.

Of course, I never believed them.

And, of course, it really did.

How much of who we are is a product of the time and the place we are raised? How much of our destiny is determined by our very first step? How much does my ACT score really matter in the real world?

On the last weekend of my senior year, I spent a lot of my time driving without really going anywhere, which is how I spent most of high school, period. My mother is probably cringing reading this, mentally noting that she needs to tell me again that money does not, in fact, grow on trees.

I know, Mom. Seriously, just back off a little.

Over the past two years, I became the teenager I never wanted to be.

I spent my weekends "cruising" the square and watching as my friends did the same, only stopping to form groups on the east side, where we'd pull out lawn chairs and sit and talk until the early hours of Sunday mornings. I learned to play tag with cars in the middle of the night, and I was good at it. I found out that getting kicked out of Wal-Mart was a right of passage. (I apologize, Wal-Mart employees.)

My high school years are captured in images that I took with my camera and my mind, simple frames of color and light that can barely comprehend the life that I lived. I remember voices and laughter -- and the way I cried when my friends died.

In school, I was a student of epic mediocrity. I wrote papers at the last minute. (I don't advise this.) I didn't try hard enough in chemistry. I stayed out late on weekend nights when I should have been doing homework.

I hated Aurora when I moved here, and I constantly begged to go back to Grand Island. I hated the cliques and the way that everyone had been raised together since the womb. I hated that I didn't know the inside jokes and that I didn't belong in their stories.

Then I became one of them.

After six years, I knew the jokes and I knew the gossip. I knew where to go if I just wanted to hang out and where I could go to be alone. I can smile at old yearbook photos and wonder exactly what was up with people's hair. I am an insider in a place that I wanted only to be out of.

On my final day of high school, I will do what I am supposed to do.

I will smile and shake hands, with a grip that's tight enough to demand respect but light enough not to break bones. I will hug the friends that have been there since the beginning and make peace with the people for whom hatred was mutual. I'll clean out my locker with a trash bag and discover the homework at the bottom that was due the first week of school.

I'll let the sun shine on my face the way it only can on the last day of school. I'll kiss my mother goodbye, one final time, before I leave for school. I'll say goodbye to the teachers who have changed me, who have taught me more than I can begin to imagine.

I am a product of this place and of this time.

I am a man with big-city dreams and a boy with a small-town heart.

Zac Brokenrope is a senior at Aurora High School.