18th August 2011

I got my results. Three As. The actual letters, printed on real paper, handed to me by Mrs Patterson in a brown envelope that somehow contained my entire future and also smelled faintly of the school photocopier. She smiled in a way that said, “I always knew,” which, respectfully, she did not. Mrs Patterson teaches Geography and has never taught me anything. But she looked genuinely pleased, and I decided that counted for something.

Mae got hers too. Two As and a B - she screamed in the corridor, properly screamed you know, the kind that makes everyone turn around and then start clapping because the joy is so obviously real it becomes contagious. I hugged her and we jumped up and down like children, which we technically still are, even though we’re supposedly adults now because we have A-levels and university places and a vague understanding of what fiscal policy is.

We stood there bouncing in the corridor and for about thirty seconds I didn’t think about what comes next. I was just there, with my best friend, and the numbers on the paper matched the numbers in my head and everything felt solved. Then I walked home, and this is the part I really want to write about, because it was strange and I don’t want to forget it.

There’s a crack in the pavement about halfway between school and home, that I’ve stepped over probably five thousand times. It looks like a river if you catch it at the right angle, or a lightning bolt if you’re feeling dramatic, which I’ve never really noticed it before. It’s just a crack. Part of the background. Part of the walk your feet know even when your brain is somewhere else.

But today, walking home with three As folded into an envelope that was already getting creased in my pocket, I stopped. I actually stopped and looked at it. I stood there on the road like I’d lost something - except I hadn’t lost anything. I’d gained everything.

And the crack was exactly the same.

The same as yesterday. The same as last week. The same as the day I was born. It didn’t care about my results. It didn’t know I existed and just sat there, cracked and ordinary, while people stepped over it on their way to and from the things they think will change their lives.

It is strange that a single piece of paper can change your life, open doors quietly close others make your mum cry before you have even got through the door while the pavement stays the same. The world does not care about your achievements. That is either the most depressing thing or the most freeing thing that exists.

Today it felt like both things, like two weather fronts pushing against each other making the air feel electric and at the same time. I think I will remember that feeling longer than I remember the grades themselves. The feeling of standing on a pavement crack. The feeling that the world does not care and that is okay. The feeling that you are not as important as you think and that is actually a relief.

I got home. My mum cried, although she pretended she was not crying and then stopped pretending because the tissue box was already on the table, which meant she had been crying before I even arrived. This is like my mum that it made me laugh, which made my mum cry more. My mum and her paper tissue box it is something that she does and it is funny. The grades on the piece of paper they are not as important as my mum and her feelings and the world and its indifference, to my achievements that is what I will remember. The piece of paper changed my life. My mum and the world they are what make my life worth living.

Dad shook my hand. This is his version of a full emotional monologue, and said, “Well done, kid,” and then went to mow the lawn, because in his world, processing feelings and grass maintenance happen at the same time. I could hear the mower for the next hour. The prouder he was, the more symmetrical the stripes.

Mae came over later. We sat in the garden with Biscuit, ate crisps, and talked about university like we knew what we were talking about. She’s going to Leeds. I’m going further away. We didn’t talk about that bit. The distance. What happens to a friendship built on proximity and telepathic disapproval and shared library tables when you put three hundred miles of motorway through the middle of it.

Instead, we talked about what we’d buy for our rooms, and whether you actually need a toastie maker or if that’s just very convincing marketing. Underneath all of it was the quiet understanding that this is ending. Not us. Just this version of us. The library table. The silent Oliver evictions. The study sessions, the grapes, the wordless looks.

All of it.

I stepped over the crack again later on the way to the shop. Still there. Still indifferent. Still shaped like a river going nowhere.

Good. Some things should stay.