A chilly spring breeze creeps down our backs. The sun is about to set before we get the chance to say goodbye. Goosebumps peek through our skin as we try to hide them for the picture about to be taken. It is April 26, the day of our supposed prom. Hiding our tears, we got all dressed up as if we were going to be walking into our first-ever high school prom. The red dress that I have tried on every week for the past couple of months fits as I remembered, but the occasion is no longer in sight. Six of us walk out to the street, set up with balloons, couches, and signs saying, Prom!!. Even in the disappointing time, pure smiles of joy on our faces show how happy we are to be all together. 

A photographer takes us one by one over to a tree where we act like models for five minutes. Posing and making faces that felt so unnatural but pleased the picture. All my friends stand behind the flash of the camera, laughing and smiling, trying to break my concentration and make me fold with them; it works. The best pictures are the ones in the moment of the laughs exploding out of me when to this day I do not remember what was so funny. 

We assemble into a line. I was wearing the brightest dress so I was placed in the middle. The height difference was unreal so we had to stand up taller or squat down to get in the frame of the pictures. From all the standing on my tippy toes, my feet were in horrific pain. I turned to my friend in a white and gold dress complaining to her about how my feet were about to fall off. My toes were throbbing all the way to my ankles. The pressure was making my toes purple and red looking like I had just gotten run over by a major semi-truck. She turns back to me and says “Greta… just don’t fall over!” and everyone else laughs around me. 

Instantly as she says that, the strap on my heels gets caught under my foot and I lean to her for protection. At that same moment, the flash of the camera gets closer and closer. I reach for my friend in the white and gold dress and wrap my arms around her as the photographer says “SMILE” and so we obey. Three seconds later, I am on the ground still holding on to my friend who I had pulled down with me. 

We laugh until we cry thinking about how I did not follow through with one simple task I had. 

Looking at the pictures from the cold spring day we all remember that one specific photo. A photo that has seen the light of social media and is framed in each and every room of all six girls. The photo may be imperfect, but it is the perfect example of what true friendship looks like. A photo that will live as a perfect memory-- forever.