Escaping Nebraska

Chapter 2

Manuel

As everybody made their way out of the school gym, I heard Julia squeal as she ran towards me. I chuckled. I couldn’t help but give her a big bear hug. She was especially excited that this meant we were finally about to move to California, and I squeezed her a little tighter, glad that I would still have her as my best friend in college. I still didn’t know what I wanted to major in, but Julia had her heart set on the engineering program at UCLA, and palm trees sounded good enough for me.

“Help… you’re… squishing… me…” Julia said, her voice muffled, as I realized I was hugging her maybe a little too hard. 

“Sorry, Jules. I just know how much this means to you”, I responded. Squealing, again. 

“Manuel! Julia!” I heard my dad’s voice, and as I scanned the crowd, I saw my dad waving us over where my mom and Julia’s mom was too. Julia jumped, still squealing, into her mom’s arms for another big hug. 

“Pictures! I need pictures of you and Manuel, you and me, Manuel with his parents, you with Manuel’s parents…” Julia’s mom started. I saw my dad roll his eyes, but he was still happy that we were all together and that we had finally graduated. 

As we posed for every picture combination possible, Julia leaned over and whispered, “how much longer do you think we’ll have to be here? We have some packing to do!”