Summer

I am lucky to live on an island that has a visible population imbalance. In the winter, only the native kids are out at night, and during the day the streets are usually desolate. Then comes Memorial Day, when everyone surges in from the south in order to keep their balance of environment temperature and thus occupy the mansions homes that have been bought to serve as a temporary residence. It started only today that the volleyball courts were set up on the sand and square sections were cordoned off as an inconvenience to sunbathers that park right by the sea and about ten metres away from the pickets. The Great Summer Migration has officially begon, although tomorrow is Memorial Day and summer doesn't officially start until 21 June.

I personally am scared. When school started, I had been bogged down by long lines of $300-plus food orders at the supermarket and I'd turned away from the beach to avoid the masses that had collaborated down there. I also had expected to be in a relationship and found out what I wanted to major in when I attended college. Neither prediction was correct, and this day marks the resumption of the long orders and the likelihood of being ambushed by the girls on the beach and being struck head-on by a discus. Well, it's not fair to be that damning about the beach; after all, I went down there today and walked from the store to the edge of the wildlife preserve as one of my customers had prescribed, and I did notice a few pretty girls as well as territorial marks in the sand that showed that the groups of co-eds were coming to invade the town. Yet, seeing as I'm still in high school and I'll be there for another year, there were no girls my age without men to be seen on the whole of my walk — but that's not to say I was exactly on the prowl; I was checking to see who would stop me as I walked to the preserve and then home to moderate for the Pokémon Community.

It's amazing that the school year has gone so fast. Throughout the year, a lot of notable things happened in a timeframe that seemed so small. In the beginning I took my PSATs and subsequently received information from many venerable colleges, including West Point. Later, TPL fell apart and I returned to PUK. After that, I attended a youth summit and fell in love, but due to distances I can't consider that a relationship. Later still, I became an administrator at Super Cheats and was required to watch over a mechanical baby for a weekend (it died on Saturday, after a friend of my brother's punched it and my little sister removed the battery — that had to be the luckiest day of my life). Now we have until 14 June to get out of school, a few weeks before my friend gives birth (she left school in April, ironically in the middle of our birth control course!), and one more year of high school to go through before I hit college and the fun really begins for me — provided I stay celibate (especially to Ms Abarno, that!).

For me as a native of an island with such a population imbalance, it surprisingly dawned on me that I've got a lot of new faces to meet over the summer. I had gone to youth summits to meet new faces, but my walk on the beach and the glimpse of things to come has made me rethink my assumption that the island was a boring place to be in.