by Melissa Fajardo ’13

I know that once high school ends, it’ll become harder and harder to keep in touch with the people I’m used to seeing every day. But I have the feeling that me and Julianne “Jules” Maxwell, my best friend since elementary school, will wind up being each other’s maids of honor. She’s a real piece of work, that Julianne, but she’s been with me from the start. And when I say from the start, I mean when she still had a gap in-between her two front teeth and a middle part.

One of the first vivid, embarrassing memories I have of Julianne was from the second grade.  I took her to Six Flags with my family and after a big lunch she threw up on a wooden roller coaster. Besties ever since.

Graduation is basically tomorrow, and just the idea of wearing a cap and gown and walking across the stage seems like something I’m not old enough to do yet. I really feel like I’ve made almost all of my “big” memories with Julianne and graduation will be another one of them. We both made poms our freshman year and thank goodness for that, because from then on we saw each other every day after school, which was great for us. We were on poms together for four years and that’s a lot of memories in itself. We laughed when we didn’t place at Counties freshman year and we cried when we won first place as sophomores. We knew how to keep each other laughing at a dull practice and that’s what we do best.

Jules has always been with me when something funny, gross or shocking happens. It’s strange to think that won’t always be the case in a couple months. I remember when Julianne told me once that she wanted to be a pilot. Why she wanted to be a pilot I don’t know. But every time we would see an airplane in the sky, we would joke that it was her flying the plane. I don’t know what she’ll be doing in five or ten years, but I hope we’ve still got it.