Autobiographical by: Star Centeno

One child

“Perhaps the greatest magic of the human spirit is the ability to laugh. At ourselves, at each other, at our sometimes helpless situation.”

Laughter. The thing that makes everything wrong disappear for just a few seconds or even a few minutes. It’s kind of like friends; actually it’s exactly like friends, my friends. Sarah and Kimberly, or better known to me as Sarahbuggg and KimmieKat, are my laugher, my happiness. Imagine if you will three friends all piled on one couch with one blanket and one dog on the floor by the couch. We were actually working on summer reading and we were basically getting nothing done. Sarah, who decided that contacts weren’t needed, could only make out blobs; a red blob for Kim and a blue blob for me. I made up my mind to jump over the back out the couch and land on top of them – So I did. Sarah almost let out a scream, cringing on her side of the couch. “All I could see was a little blue blob flying at me,” she laughed, “Y’all might be afraid of the boogieman but I’m afraid of blobs.” “Sarah, wouldn’t the boogieman be a blob to you?” Kim replied. “Not the point Kim,” Sarah sighed and all I could do was laugh. What was I supposed to do about my crazy friends? Laugh. That’s all I could do.

Sarah Brown

Kim White

KimmieKat Sarahbuggg

Warren is teaching me how to shoot football pictures and Lyndsay – like the crazy person she is

– stands behind him and makes faces, or mocks him, or really anything of that nature. Warren laughs

and smiles, then tries to go on, but Lyndsay keeps messing with him – just because Warren is easy to

mess with, everyone does it. Warren gets “upset” and flustered. Lyndsay (the darling and innocent

person she is) feels bad and apologizes. Warren persists with his puppy dog faces and then Lyndsay gets

mad because he won’t accept her apology. Five minutes later they are joking around again.

Eric is somewhere, always somewhere, working, hiding under an umbrella, eating his heart

attack inducing fries, or duct taping Cantwell’s keys to the ceiling, you name it and he has most probably

done it. He is our elbow, our funny bone. Something that doesn’t seem as important, as say maybe the

heart, but really makes an impact when you realize it’s gone. You can’t live without him.

Lashaun is yelling at a computer, or a book, or a pencil, or maybe yet she is comforting you from

tears and singing the “Are you happy and you know it song?” just to make you laugh.

Yearbook is the one place in the world that I love to be. I couldn’t live without my yearbookies.

Warren

Lyns, me, LaLa

Eric

Editors

The only person in the whole world who knows the real me is Daniel Jose Salinas. Everyone holds dark secrets; whether about life, themselves, or family he knows them all – every single one of them. It’s hard to imagine someone possessing so much power over another, but I am not afraid of it. In a way he has tamed me, and let me out of my own shell of emotional destruction. I have a tendency to lose myself in my own madness and he was the one willing to look for me. In many ways, he is my rock, the vault to the real me.

Picture perfect. Snapshot of him in his graduation gown, smiling, happy – not. Everyone behind the camera was crying, including me. He had to leave soon and no one wanted to face that. No one was looking forward to the day they had to let go. Neither was I. I wanted him to stay, go to college here, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. It couldn’t happen. He had decided long ago that he was going into the army and there was nothing I could do about it. Things did not go the way I wanted them, too. Things are not the way I want them to be.

My “best special person”… I shouldn’t have had to say goodbye. He shouldn’t have had to say “I’m sorry.” But it happened. I lost my “best special person.” I lost him. I lost him to the future. To the army. To West Point. He was everything a “best special person” should be, though. Always there, a shoulder to cry on, arms to rest in, and a heart that loved me. “Oscar!” I would yell. “Coco,” he would laugh back. We had dumb little names we called each other. Every Friday afternoon we’d spend time together even if it was just sitting at his house doing nothing; because anytime with him with meant everything, anyway. Then, months turned into weeks and weeks turned into days and days turned into hours and then minutes and then his hand was slipping out of mine and he was saying goodbye. He was gone and with him went me.

1.1.11 <3