WRITE THE WORLD REVIEW ARCHIVE

Chaos rides in the back of the bus. I choose a seat near the front and create my own bubble of insanity; a controlled experiment. Chaos, but quieter. Chaos, but mine.

We spill our way out of doors. Released into the crowd like so many raindrops sliding across a window before disappearing into the storm. Barely-supervised teenagers flinging themselves into memories we’ll soon regret.

I make a joke to my friend. She laughs harder than I understand. Later, she tells me a strange boy added his own punch line as we walked by. I don’t know his face. He is my soulmate.

Someone dyes my hair purple. It will wash out tonight, but for the moment, sprayed-on color is how I pretend that I am cool.

I am not cool. But I am happy, and I am surrounded by people who love me. We walk around, eyes afraid of closing; afraid of missing a single second of freedom.

I don’t think it all over until days later. The pictures refuse to line up in my head. Instead, they all bubble up with an incredible disregard for order; they are popcorn exploding into my mind; they are teenagers exploding into life.

There is nothing profound about any of this. There is everything beautiful about all of this.

Perhaps I’ve left out a few details; kicked bitter happenings underneath the fridge. But these are the teenage years, the ones that belong to momentary euphoria and tall tales around a campfire.

Why not romanticize them ahead of time?