Putting the Years Behind Me

Well, that's it, then. I'm finally eighteen years old. Finally an adult, in the eyes of the law. Finally heading off to university, leaving the country, forging my own life. I can leave my childhood, my school, my parents, all of it behind. It's about damn time, too. Not that I have anything against my family, or the people whom I call friends. That being said, hopefully, you'll understand when I say that I am bloody sick and tired of seeing the exact same things in the exact same city with the exact same people for 17 years, without a single break. Now, I take what I've learned, and leave the rest behind me. A clean slate.

Unfortunately, it also means that I'd be leaving the gang behind, which I'll admit, is a real tough pill to swallow. There were 9 of us, and we'd been friends since... well, since the beginning of school. We all stuck together, out of fear of isolation at first, I suppose. Every group project, we would be together. Every sports team, we were together. We are always there for one-another, and whenever one of us has a problem, there are 8 others right there to give advice. Most of them protested my departure, which is understandable. I'm the first one to leave the group in eight years. Ever since Rafy's parents had to move. Those were dark times.

They threw me a going-away party, and it was just like old times. All nine of us together in Cameron's basement, playing whatever games we wanted and eating/drinking whatever we felt like. It was awesome. We just did whatever the hell we wanted, which, on good nights, ended up turning into illegal/disgusting shit. Like that one time Carley and Kevin got drunk and decided to "sneak away" from the rest of us. But don't worry, that didn't go unpunished. I won't go into details, but let's just say it involved the mental scarring of both Carley and Cameron's pet snake.

They even decided to get me some gifts, which was nice. Most of it was money. I got a book by one of my favourite comedians, which I was very thankful for. The strangest gift, though, was from Cameron. He handed me this sketchy-ass blank DVD case, and inside was a disc. The distinctive smaller size told me it was a Gamecube game of some sort, but it was completely blank, on both sides. I frowned and looked up at Cameron, grinning ear to ear.

"It's Paper Mario," he said cheerfully. "The second one, remember?"

I gave him a look. "You sure? This disc looks like it once had 'StabbyMcFuckFace.exe' on it, to me."

He laughed. "Yeah, sorry about that. The guy at GameStop said this was the only copy they had. It's used, but it should work perfectly fine."

I looked at him like he was insane. "Holy shit, a used game on a completely blank disc? Yeah, no, whatever gory screamer crap you put on here, I ain't playing it. I'd prefer not to be forcefully sucked into my computer screen.

It was his turn to look at me like I was insane. "Whatever, dude. Tell me when you decide to stop being crazy."

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