“First off, guys…guys, listen!” Niedz tries to yell over us, but we’re too excited and nervous to settle down. It takes a few sharp whistles from Chris to bring our noise level down a few notches, but Niedz still isn’t satisfied.

“Hey! Shut up, guys!” Travis yells over all of us, and we’re quiet.

“Thanks, Travis.”

“Any time, Niedzy.”

Niedz shoots Travis a look, but he can’t help smirking anyway. “Okay, guys, gum check. No gum allowed; you can live without it for a couple hours, right? Right. Second, Mr. Handfield left books on your chairs. I’m just letting you know now so that you don’t start flipping through them when you get in there. Leave ‘em there, and before you have to sit down, grab them and put ‘em under your chairs.

“There are water bottles under each of your chairs, too, and tissues are all over the place, so if you don’t have a pack, someone near you does, so share, guys.”

He smiles as he looks at all of us in our caps and gowns, standing together in the library for the last time. “You guys ready for this?”

We all start screaming and cheering; some of us already have tears running down our cheeks. Niedz tells us that we’ve just got to wait a few more minutes, then he’ll lead us down, as the Class of 2009.

Those few minutes take an eternity to go by, but when they finally roll around, most of us are in some form of disbelief.

As we parade down the third floor hallway, Alex and a few other kids begin reaching out and whipping open every single locker we pass. If the owners left things in there, we messed them up; if they had mirrors glued to the inside of the door, we jokingly checked ourselves out. On the way, we accidentally open the old lockers of our classmates, and we reverently go back and close those select few. We pass the small window overlooking the gym and are barraged with camera flashes as the ocean of family members and friends catches a glimpse of us, but we’re gone before they can get a good shot.

Our two lines—one of boys, one of girls—snake down the stairwell and stop right before the gym doors. We’re all anxious now, cracking our knuckles, chatting with each other, worrying about whether or not we’re going to trip or mess up everything we’ve rehearsed. We’ve almost got our minds off of what we’re about to do when bagpipes resonate through the air, and we know. We all begin cheering, clapping, and chanting “09!” over and over. Doyle and Doug are banging one of the doors as hard as they can; others are slapping the walls with their palms; we’re all just trying to make noise. As we begin to file into the gym, we keep our chants and cheers coming. We’re graduating. This is it. We’ve done it, and we’ve done it together. We’re the Class of ’09; we came, we saw, we kicked ass.

And we’re gonna make sure people know that.