Here we are on the cracked blacktop, kicking around a half-deflated soccer ball smudged with dirt, using potholes as goals like we have since we were ten. Our smiles are bright, but we can’t help thinking about how we are closer now to twenty-two than twelve, and how after today, we’ll never see each other again.

The innocence all schoolchildren know is slipping like sand through our fingers; through our clumsy game, we try to savor every last fleeting grain. We’ve stopped keeping score for a while now—being on the winning or losing team doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

A lot of things don’t seem to matter anymore.

“Pass it to me!” Meara yells, eyes glinting in the orange glow of the setting sun. Her face is angled and pronounced, all sharp jawline and defined forehead, nothing like the soft, rounded cheeks I remember from our kindergarten days. It’s strange, growing up alongside others, never noticing the rapid passing of years until you really look into their faces and realize just how much has changed.

“Alright, alright!” I send the ball to her. She grins, dribbling it between her toes in the same deft fashion she always has, before shooting it into the ditch. We all cheer, and I start to wish this moment could last forever. Just me, my friends, and the orange sky. No future, no past, just this immortal present.

But tomorrow, our little lives will move on from this small town school and scatter throughout the world, and none of us will ever be as close, or as young, as we are now. It’s exciting. It’s terrifying. It’s inevitable.

It is a beginning and an ending all at once.