Epilogue

Bette On It: Weird Adolescence

Continued from Senior Year June 1, 2004 The evening of graduation and Bette had taken a nap in the afternoon before she got her cap and gown ready. The school used to rent nice ones, but in the last few years, they switched to ones that were basically disposable. That night Bette wore a sleeveless teal V-neck blouse, a denim knee skirt with her black leather belt, and Mary Jane shoes. She stuck a white-out pen in her pocket before she left her bedroom that day. She prepped her backpack with a change of clothes for the all night graduation party that would immediately follow the graduation ceremony. All the students would board buses and go to the event center and get locked in and have food and sodas and get to enjoy the place all night with games, fun, and entertainment. The same event center Bette and Ozzy went on for their first date. Before leaving, Bette and her family had dinner at the house. It was a simple dinner of tacos, fruit salad, and flan for dessert. Bette's grandmothers and grandfather came from out of town for the dinner and ceremony. There were lots of pictures taken in the yard of the house. When John and Lorna took Bette to the ceremony, they let her know that they would leave Lorna's car at the event center for after the all night graduation party and Bette could take it home. John and Lorna volunteered to do clean up at the party and hadn't told Bette about it until the drive to graduation. She wouldn't have talked them out of it, she wouldn't have been embarrassed by them, but she was surprised all the same. She just thought she was going to get picked up by John in the morning. The car was a last minute surprise if she wanted to go out and get breakfast with her friends or anything like that. They gave her the car keys and she stuck them in her backpack. They dropped her off at the local college gymnasium where the graduation was held before parking the car. Public North's auditorium didn't have big enough accommodations for the graduating class, families, faculty, and band; weather was always too iffy to have it outside. As soon as Bette was dropped off, she took out the white out pen from her pocket and got to work on her cap. She wrote on the black cap "❤ MOM & DAD." Where her parents were up on the gymnasium bleachers, she knew they would see it.