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A high school junior faces her future without her biggest ally

 
Hillsborough High School junior Annie Aguiar of Tampa, center, tours the University of Florida in July with her best friend, Meghana Bhimreddy, left. Aguiar had planned to tour UF with her grandfather, who was her biggest ally.
Hillsborough High School junior Annie Aguiar of Tampa, center, tours the University of Florida in July with her best friend, Meghana Bhimreddy, left. Aguiar had planned to tour UF with her grandfather, who was her biggest ally.
Published Sept. 2, 2015

It's so quiet in the van, rain is all we hear on the two-hour drive to Gainesville. My friend has let me tag along with her family to tour the University of Florida. No one is doing much to break the awkward silence.

"Cheetos?" my friend asks at one point.

A half-hour passes.

"We have granola bars, too."

The summer wasn't supposed to end this way. Before starting my junior year, my toughest yet in Hillsborough High School's International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, I was supposed to go on this trip with my grandfather.

We would have headed north in his pickup truck, talking about science and Seinfeld and his pit bull mix, Bucky, about my school newspaper and what it might be like to write for UF's paper, the Alligator.

But Poppy died in April.

And I've spent the summer trying to figure out my future without him.

• • •

Though my parents have always been supportive, I had an important bond with Poppy when it came to school.

He never missed one of my middle school mathlete competitions. And thanks to him, I was the only kid at my eighth-grade awards ceremony with a bouquet of flowers.

After I took a practice SAT test on his iPad last year, he scrolled with me through lists of potential colleges. Whenever I expressed interest in any liberal arts programs, he brought up MIT.

Then in February, I learned Poppy had late-stage cancer, adenocarcinoma of the small intestine.

I thought we'd have more time together, but the last time I saw him was a month later, skinny and tired, in a bed in the room in my grandparents' house where they always put the Christmas tree.

"Look," I said, stretching out the Columbia University sweatshirt I had gotten on a recent trip to New York City.

"You know everyone there is a criminal, right?" he asked in a voice slightly above a whisper, smiling weakly.

I laughed, but I had to excuse myself so he wouldn't see me cry.

My mom later told me he had wanted to make sure I knew that not all New Yorkers were criminals.

He knew how important his opinion was to me.

• • •

At the UF welcome center, my friend and I check in for the tour.

Her name has a number 3 next to it, for her mom, her dad and herself. My dad is at work, and my mom is out of town. So my name is 1.

This sucks, I think to myself when my friend runs out of the auditorium to find her parents and I wait alone in the seats.

This is the Big Bad Future, I tell myself. You're going to have to do this without Poppy.

But something happens once we step out into the rain in orange and blue ponchos. The brick buildings remind me so much of my historic high school that entire corners of the campus look like they've been cut and pasted from home.

UF is like Hillsborough squared, I think to myself.

Except instead of bleachers, there's a gigantic football stadium.

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And the bell tower plays Lady Gaga.

And you can rent a puppy during finals week.

This, I thought, is 100 percent my jam.

On our way back to the car, I persuade my friend and her family to walk with me past the journalism classes so I can pick up copies of the school newspaper.

Poppy would have tried to steer me to the physics building. He would've balked at the price of Frappuccinos, but I would have offered to buy.

I would have wanted to know his opinion about the school.

But in the end, he would have been more interested in mine.

Hillsborough High School junior Annie Aguiar was a co-winner of the Florida Scholastic Press Association's 2015 Tampa Bay Times Fund Emerging Young Journalist Award.