To Avery and Nat,

Everything is coming to an end—this school year specifically. 

And while endings are typically comparable to large, cavernous places plagued in darkness, I think of this ending as a neon blue variant.

This ending is dingy gas stations lit with fluorescent lighting somewhere downtown. We’ll pour different combinations of their four flavors, and my tongue will be dyed a blue hue. We’ll be carted around in Nat’s red minivan as I race to meet curfews and as the playlist she always has on completes the ambiance of the night. And we’ll get in petty fights about who hogs the passenger seat and who gets pushed to the backseat.

A backseat that will be full of blankets and snacks for the long drives around town we enjoy embarking on rather spontaneously.

We’ll spend our summer redesigning and redefining what room 139 will mean as we discuss the copious strands of Christmas lights that will twinkle and glow around the whiteboards’ perimeters. We’ll purchase plants that are good for rooms with no windows and make sure to water them with love and supportive words. 

And the brown couch in that very room will support our tired bodies just as it did for editors before us. The mismatched blue pillows will catch us as we fall, and an exasperated sigh will leave our lips, just as they will continue to do for the editors that come after us. 

After all, by the end of this summer, I’ll be a pro at turning around in Avery’s driveway without letting either of her dogs get in the way. And I’ll slowly learn to tune out the noise of the seemingly never-ending ping pong games that happen in Nat’s basement.

We’ll consume our fair share of Concrete Mixers on one of our many adventures as we attempt to find a drive-thru that will let us place three separate orders. 

And like the chilled slushies, the sky will be a similar shade of blue, the color of this ending, because it was never really an ending, but a beautiful beginning.

A blue-infused beginning that mirrors the color of room 139, the room that we will make our home. The blue room paint that will touch the edges of the bricks we will soon paint on top of Abby and Lynlee’s.

Thank you for living through this ending with me, thank you for making it our beginning, and thank you for dyeing it a brilliant blue shade. 

Love,

Emma.