The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth - Alexandra Robbins [180]
In the cheers that followed, students nearby turned to Blue in amazement. “Oh my God, that was so good,” a girl said. “Holy shit, breh, you wrote that?” a guy asked. Blue was smiling too hard to answer. He had been surprised when the valedictorians had asked him to write the commencement address. He was floored to hear the line they had added about him. In front of thousands of people, some of the smartest kids at school had validated his intelligence.
The rest of the ceremony moved quickly. Spectators threw fresh flowers and leis from the stands when students’ names were announced. When Blue walked across the platform, one of the administrators cracked, “I guess you didn’t drop out after all.” Blue smiled, met another graduate in the middle of the stage, stopped short, and gave her an emphatic fist bump, which the jumbotron broadcast to massive cheers.
Afterward, the arena emptied onto the fields. At first, Blue looked around, feeling bare and sheepish, lost amidst reunions of families and friends adorning graduates’ necks with homemade leis. Finally, Michael appeared and hugged him. Then one of their SCH teammates gave Blue a lei that she had made of pink and yellow plumeria, his favorite flower. Within minutes, streams of people sought him out—sophomores, juniors, friends from other schools—to give him leis made of fresh flowers, nuts, beads, or candy. Ty’s mother gave him leis made of forty $1 bills. Even Jackson found him. “Let’s forget the past,” Jackson said sarcastically, but still hugged him and gave him a lei.
Two hard-core gamers approached Blue, congratulated him on the speech, and gave him leis. As they left, one of them called out, “Oh, did you get the Starcraft II beta key? Dude, you have to play with us. RED TEAM!”
Blue was gratified, knowing that so many people of various backgrounds went out of their way to find him. By the time he saw his family, he wore so many leis that his neck resembled a lion’s mane. “Oh, my baby!” Blue’s mother exclaimed and hugged him. “Did you really write that speech?”
“Yes,” Blue said.
“No you didn’t. Oh my God. No way.” Blue’s mother and brother, who had flown in from France, placed plumeria leis around his neck.
That night, Blue skateboarded around town with Jess and Leilani, weaving in and out of hotel lobbies, laughing and talking through the early morning hours. As the sun rose, they returned to Blue’s house, giddy with possibility. “We were so happy that we wanted to throw up,” Blue explained. “It was that feeling that you get right before you’re about to do something crazy, right before you go into intense competition or something, that butterfly feeling. We were about to jump into our new ‘adult lives.’ ”
Much of Blue’s future was uncertain. He had not yet told Michael that he wanted to stay together even though Michael would attend college thousands of miles away. Blue’s brother and his wife were moving back to Hawaii in August, but they did not yet know whether they would rent their own home, where Blue could live with them.
All that Blue knew in this moment was that he was going to work hard at community college so that he could transfer to the University of Hawaii and reunite with the best friends he ever had. The UH futurology professor had agreed to allow him in his graduate-level course for college credit. And for now, that was enough for Blue. “I always thought that surrounding myself with people who brought me up in life was good. I just never thought that it would happen so naturally, or to me, like that stuff that happens in movies,” he said. “I feel a lot more secure with myself. Like I can be myself and there are people out there that will like me for it.” And there was something a little fantastic about that.
DANIELLE, ILLINOIS | THE LONER
Danielle began her summer working at Dairy Queen and as an assistant to her tae kwon do instructor. At Dairy Queen, the managers gave her additional hours because they were impressed