This Entry Makes me Sound at Least 50

For a reason not yet evident to me, I have been thinking of you lately. Just memories, I assume. You said it doesn't feel like two years, and this is true. I still remember Mr. Swank as though he were leaning over my shoulder yesterday, telling me how to move the brush. I still remember the bond between Claire and I, one with the strength of a triple-ionic bond. I still remember Mr. Austin lurking just beside my conscious thoughts, tinting them with his wisdom and wondrous, exotic tales. I still remember Toby and her obesity and the way my feet would blacken on the dirty floors. I still remember the chaotic, selfish hustle we had, teetering confidently about with stuffed shirts and immortality.
But mostly I remember you, or who you used to be. I realize now how lucky we were. We used to be kindred spirits, off-beat and artistic, both ridiculously moody and tipping over with the weight of our outrageously exaggerated sense of love. I remember the wracking despair in my little hormonal body when I knew you liked her more. It is all laughable now, but it "destroyed my reason for existence" at the time. I was a little girl.
Perhaps all of this is presenting itself to me because, today in history class, alone and maintaining a half-awake conversation with my professor while awaiting the first bell of the day, she told me she had never seen me so talkative. I was barely speaking with her, mind you. I could scarcely fathom the concept of myself as a quiet, reclusive person with long, self-conscious curtains over my face and clad in grey. I felt like a paradox.