Today Hallie pulled me all the way to her car by my wrist. Our bookbags were causing us to hunch, and our laughter spilled onto the air like water that splashes and falls out of a toddler's cup the first time he tries to drink all by himself. I'm realizing that right now we are stuck in the most beautiful eras of our lives - the time between adulthood and childhood; we're skeptics, but not so much that beauty is impossible to see, and we are still free to be as silly and chirpy as we please.

Sometimes I try to imagine what my life would be like if I'd had never chosen to attend the Early College. The thing that always scares me the most is that one tiny, wrong (well, I never would've known how wrong it was) decision could've kept me from my "twin soul" and my best friend in the whole world.