The room got hot and the whole area where senior class sat was alight from the overhead lights. Deborah tried to look behind her for Lia, but couldn’t see. She gave up and looked up in the stands for her parents and grandparents. They were not around either. The announcer called the gym to order and Cindy Ericson got up and did her valedictorian speech. It was really good. At the close of her speech the teachers motioned the front row to stand up and walk to the stage.
Cindy left the podium and took her place at the front of the line and the names were given as they walked the stage. “Cindy Ericson”, “James Duane”, “Peter Schuster”, and then finally they called her name: “Alison Murphy.” She walked the stage, shook the principal’s hand, took her diploma, and stood beside Peter. When the first ten names were called the principal put yellow cords on the shoulders of the top ten students. Then they went and sat down as the other students names were called and they got their diplomas. Deborah smiled to herself. At least the high school portion of her new life was over. Three and a half weeks of high school was too much to relive, especially if the first day that time started with a stinky poop in her panties. At least she didn’t have to take finals. She sat and watched the rest of the students graduate and was glad the whole thing was over. Her next step was college.
After the ceremony Grandma wanted to take them all out to eat so they went to have dinner. Grandma was happy about the dress that Deborah had chose. It was the dress she wore to church that first Sunday. They ate at a nice steakhouse and Deborah ordered the New York strip. It tasted much better than her last meal in prison had tasted. Tonight was great and she would be closer to her goal of finding the terrorist. Not here in the steakhouse: she doubted the terrorist would set foot in a steakhouse unless he were attacking it. She would be going to college and could get the terrorist through Flower.
The evening ended and Deborah got undressed to go to bed. She had to put a new diaper on because she had to pee and the tapes tore the plastic of the diaper when she took it off to use the bathroom before bed. She went to sleep and her dreams were almost peaceful.
She had the dream again, so that interrupted her sleep, and of course she had wet the bed in her sleep. She tried to be upset about it, but she had gotten used to waking up wet. She’d never like it, but it wasn’t too bad.