04-21-2011, 04:38 PM
08. Balloon
Ten minutes until five, she told herself. Ten minutes until doomsday. Ten minutes until. March 30, 2011. For a second semester high school senior, that date is the equivalent of the apocalypse. Everything she's worked for until today will be meaningless if nothing good comes out of it. Eight minutes. Oh god, only eight minutes left. What'll happen if she receives zero acceptances? What of her then? And what will her friends think? Amidst hurried good luck text messages and frantic clock watching, the timer slowly clocked down. One minute. Best to open all the tabs now, close her eyes, and pray to that God that she only believed in during times of crisis (like now). Tick. With a blink of an eye, the analog clock on the lower right hand side of her screen shifted to 5:00 PM, exactly. She took a deep breath, and refreshed all her tabs.
Minutes later, her phone buzzed, alerting her to an incoming text. Blinking back tears, she unlocked her phone to find a picture. A simple, color pencilled in draft of a triceratops, with a single tear dripping from his (hers?) dinosaurly eyes. A red balloon floating away, yet that balloon symbolized everything she and her friends had dreamed for, hoped for, believed in. And that red balloon was disappearing off into the sky, taking their dreams and hopes with it. That red balloon, an overly cliched metaphor, would pop. And so would her dreams of college.
|