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“Great,” Nathan groaned as the realization of Graduation suddenly occurred to him.
“What?”
“We are graduating,” he moaned.
Laughing, Robin asked, “What’s so wrong with that. It’ll get us away from our domineering parents.
“Robin...” Nathan started to say before Charlie interrupted him by laughing.
“How could I possibly forget?” he continued to chuckle.
“Forget what?” Robin asked, completely confused at this point. “Anne, do you have a clue what they are talking about?”
Shrugging a shoulder, Anne looked back down at the notes in front of her that she was studying. “I just know that I have to pass Chemistry. I got behind when...” she hesitated, “and Mrs. Bransfield was a bitch about it even though the front office told her that I had to make up the test I had missed when I was out. She didn’t give me the study guide out of spite and everybody else had already turned theirs in. Even Rick Pratt, the shy guy everybody knows is failing.”
Charlie leaned towards Anne and grinned, “Then you need a laugh and you will laugh when you find out Nathan’s full name.”
“You know his full name?” Robin exclaimed questioningly. “I don’t even know his full name. How do you know it?”
“I’ve known Nathan here since the second grade. I was staying over one time when he got in trouble with his mama. You know how moms are when you are in trouble.”
“Actually,” Anne drawled, still not looking up, “I don’t. I was never in trouble.”
“Never?” Charlie asked, disbelief coloring his tone.
“And my sisters weren’t either,” she added. “Granted, Beth... sorry, Elizabeth,” she corrected herself more to get in the habit of calling her sister by her full first name, “and Mary both knew to go to my father and he’d let them get away with murder.”
“Guys!” Nathan interrupted. “My life as we all know it is about to be over as soon as they call out my name during graduation rehearsal and then graduation itself.”
“It’s a name,” Anne reasoned. “And you’ll be going to Florida and will forget all about us up here where you can have all four seasons in a week and a massive sinus headache on top of it.”
“And this one is coming with me and you know she’ll never let me live it down,” Nathan countered, bumping Robin with his shoulder.
“Oh please,” Robin rolled her eyes. “My parents named me Robin Rainbow Brite Moore. How bad can it really be?”
Drawing in a deep breath, Nathan answered her, “Nathanial Jeremiah Warren Peter Parker Smith.”
“Peter Parker?” Charlie laughed. “Like Spiderman?” He hadn’t made the connection in the second grade.
Shrugging. “My dad liked comics and my mom’s maiden name is Parker.”
“That’s my uncle’s name,” Anne looked up, not paying attention to what Charlie had said.
“Peter Parker?”
“Warren.”
“Oh.”
“You have six names!” Robin exclaimed. “Who has six names?”
“David had eight,” Anne countered.
“Who is David?”
“The soccer player,” she explained. At their blank expressions, she added, “He was my lab partner for Biology when we dissected that frog.” With a shrug, she continued, “Besides, Robin has a better chance at getting teased for her middle name. Yours are all mostly normal. Lengthy, but normal.”
“That’s right!” Robin grinned. “I’m named after a doll.”
“I thought it was a cartoon.”
“Maybe it was both?” Robin pulled out her phone to look it up. Moments later, she sighed, “It was both. At least, a doll was made because of the show.” Turning towards Anne, she pleaded, “Please tell me you also have an awkward middle name.”
Raising her head away from her notes, she stared at her best friend for a long moment. “We’ve been best friends for years and you don’t remember my middle name.”
“I don’t think we’ve ever discussed it.”
“We did. That’s how I knew your middle name.”
Narrowing her eyes, Robin studied her friend. “How do I know that you already knew my middle name?”
“What did I get you as a joke for your fourteenth birthday?”
Robin thought about it for a moment before remembering the Rainbow Brite doll Anne had managed to find and give her, along with a more practical gift card to her favorite store. “Oh. Right.”
“Well,” Charlie leaned forward. “What it is?”
“Hey!” Nathan interjected. “You haven’t told us yours, either.”
“Henry. After my father.”
“Katarina,” Anne replied. “After my mother’s mother.”
“That sounds...” Charlie trailed off.
“Italian, I know. Where else do you think Beth... Elizabeth gets her complexion and both of us get this crazy curly, dark hair? Of course, there is some Greek and Spanish in there as well.”
“But you are pasty white,” Nathan protested.
Nudging him, Robin hissed, “Rude much.”
Ignoring the exchange, and realizing that Nathan didn’t mean anything by it, Anne explained, “My father has either an Irish or Scottish background. I think there might be some French in there as well, somewhere, but Father never has paid that much attention to his ancestry. I think my Uncle Warren might know, but I don’t have a clue how to contact him.”
They were silent for a long moment as Anne went back to studying for her Chemistry final, the only final where her grades weren’t good enough to be exempt because of one single test.
Breaking the silence, Nathan nudged Robin, “So, Rainbow Brite?”
“Jeremiah was a bullfrog,” she countered.
“What?” he asked, confused.
Rolling her eyes, “It’s a song my dad likes to sing. Three Dog Night sang it. Dad likes to keep their songs on repeat.”
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Years later Anne would remember her Graduation Rehearsal more than her actual Graduation. It lacked the noise and boring speeches from the Valedictorian who thought he knew everything but, in reality, he had only studied hard enough to beat the Salutatorian by less than a fifth of a point.
She would remember seeing some of her friends, a few of them for the last time despite promises that they would see each other over vacations.
She would remember the excitement that her graduating class felt as they left the school grounds as students for the last time. The next time they stepped foot in that building they would be wearing caps and gowns, getting ready to walk across a stage and receiving a placeholder diploma and a handshake.
It would be years before Anne could look back at her actual graduation ceremony and celebration without thinking about Derek.
