'Things are going to get real'

MELROSE -- The morning of the day she'll graduate from Melrose High School, Christina Carucci, clad in red cap and gown, clutching the farewell address she will soon deliver, walks into the gymnasium staging area and groans. "Oh my God," she says. "I forgot to eat breakfast." Jessica Kitchens, future member of a Louisville ballet troupe, her dancer's posture and wedge-heeled sandals stretching her as far as her 5-foot-2 stature allows, ends two years of patronizing the Dunkin' Donuts across the street by arriving with bagel and coffee. Christine Sullivan, Harvard-bound class vice president and covaledictorian, weaves among her classmates, checking the pronunciations of their names in anticipation of announcing them for their diplomas. Greg Guyott, a fifth-year senior who often wondered if he'd ever reach this day, is among the last to place his mortarboard on his head.

The time has come for the class of 2004 to graduate.

Their record of achievement runs from the future computer consultant honored for straight A's who's had his own computer business since age 11 to the future stage manager receiving no academic honors who oversaw school plays and played cello in the city's symphony. They take with them passions as varied as martial arts and Japanese animation.

Of the 235 students who will walk across the stage on this bright, breezy Saturday, 94 percent-- the highest proportion in school history -- plan to continue their education. Three will attend MIT. One is going to Wesleyan, one to Georgetown, three to Boston College, 20 to the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and 14 to North Shore Community College. Most, even those once sure they wanted to study in such places as Florida and Arizona, are staying in the Northeast, but a few head as far as Nashville and California.

Four will receive blank diplomas pending satisfactory completion of summer school, and four who failed the MCAS will get certificates of achievement. Two will play sports at Division I schools. One is joining the Marines, another the National Guard. For all of them, the day is as much about the path ahead as the path behind. They all graduate with youth on their side and the promise of a clean start.

"It didn't really hit me," Guyott says, "until I came around the corner and we were walking two by two and I saw everyone in the stands. Then it hit me. This is graduation. It wasn't rehearsal anymore."

The final day

The beginning of the end of high school comes at 12:28 p.m. on May 24, the moment classes end for seniors. With a loud hoot, they bound through the corridors to the cafeteria for ice cream and the premiere of the senior video. Already Alexandra Zedros, who missed her parents so much when she spent a few weeks playing soccer with the Greek national team, is crying. "It's so sad," she says. "We're not going to see everybody again."

Jessica Kitchens is nothing but smiles. "I am so happy," she says. "I'm out of this school."

The room erupts in laughter at an image on-screen of the library crammed with desks and chairs from throughout the building, a senior prank so elegant that MIT-bound Anthony Teixeira wishes he'd been in on it.

The seniors have weathered the ups and downs of high school. Many leave more confident, and some leave determined not to let the opportunities they let slip by in high school continue to elude them. Most have at least a few friends, sometimes dating to grade school or earlier. They all leave changed, either by the usual vicissitudes of growing up or by extra burdens.

"It's kind of scary," says Michael Binari. "Things are going to get real. It was a safe place, the high school. It's time to do some hard-core thinking about the future. I'm kind of looking forward to it. It's the uncertainty that's best about it. You can do what you want. It's up to me."

Binari, soccer cocaptain, prances around Ronnie Thompson, sometimes giving Thompson's wheelchair a jocular push. Binari and Thompson, who was born with cerebral palsy, are good friends, in part because of a shared love of music. Now something else binds them. Binari broke his foot playing soccer late junior year, reinjured it, and needed surgery. All told, he was on crutches for seven months. He led the soccer team from the sidelines.

"I said, `Ronnie, I don't know how you do it,' " Binari says. "He said, `I admire you. You've had the chance to walk before.' I almost cried."

"The whole not being able to do stuff he wanted to, I understood that," Thompson says. "I guess he understood that a lot more, too."

Binari sometimes went to sleep in tears, railing at the unfairness of life. He left one practice early, only to return. "I said, `Guys, I went home. I bawled my eyes out.' I told them what I was feeling. It was liberating," he says. "There's two types of leader, especially in soccer. There's a leader on the field, and there's a leader off the field. I learned you can be on the sidelines and still be on the field. Eleven people can be doing it for you."

Binari peppers conversation with the word "passion." "Before, I did things with passion, but not the level I have now. I never would have been able to put it into words," he says. "It was my time to grow up."

Now Binari is heading to Merrimack College and Thompson to Northeastern. "I get some feelings of doubt," Thompson says, "but I'll never back off." The skills he needs to live at college and launch a career producing music are probably similar to the skills his able-bodied classmates need to succeed.

"I used to be a lot more silent type," Thompson says. "I never used to take any risks. Not exactly risks, but going after what I want. Like, if I have a problem going to an activity which isn't accessible, I used to sit back and accept that I couldn't go. More now, I fight for what I want and what I think I deserve. Like with college. The college had some problems with the dorms that I sort of made a fuss about."

The prom

Christina Carucci and Alisha Edwards sit in Nicole's hair salon in Stoneham, looking at pictures of possible styles for the June 3 prom. They decide on the same upswept curls -- no surprise because, as Edwards wrote in Carucci's yearbook, "We are so alike it's crazy." The summer after freshman year, when Carucci had foot surgery, Edwards rollerbladed across town with a pizza to visit her. Now each counts the other among the close friends they'll definitely keep after high school.

"We talk about everything," Carucci says. "We're both really outgoing and bubbly. We don't follow people at all."

Carucci graduates with a few good friends and a few lessons about friendship. "I keep my group really small," she says. "I used to call everyone friends. Through the years

I learned that you can only have three or four close friends. Everybody else is acquaintances. I learned that you can't trust everyone. High school shows you who's there for you." The end of freshman year, a friend thought Carucci wasn't being supportive enough of her relationship with a new boyfriend, and soon nobody in their group was talking to her, even when she had surgery. "The only person who came to see me was Alisha," Carucci says. "I didn't know how people could go from being best friends, like sisters, to not wanting to have anything to do with me."

The Danversport Yacht Club fills with young women in gowns and young men in tuxedos, looking so sophisticated it's hard to imagine them as guys who call themselves the Sweathogs or girls who call themselves the Lawn Annihilation Crew because they used to strew discarded chairs in other people's yards.

The DJ plays "I Will Survive" and "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." Merette DeAmato, who wasn't going to come until friends practically forced her, dances atop a box near the DJ. She and her best friend, Melissa MacPhee, are leaving home but not each other. They'll be roommates at Bridgewater State College. "Last year I didn't want to move away," DeAmato says. "Now that I can be with her, it's a relief."

The DJ spins "Time After Time," and Kate Abarbanel briefly rests her head on Larvel Scott's shoulder. Scott, who lives in Dorchester, came to Melrose freshman year under the Metco voluntary desegregation program, not knowing a soul, and graduates as class treasurer. Abarbanel moved here from California in 10th grade.

"A lot of people are scared because they've never left their friends before, but I have, so I know you can do it," Abarbanel says.

"I'll miss my friends. We've had our good times and bad. We have a lot of funny inside jokes. They were really great when I went through the bad breakup," she adds. "We kind of have a dramatic group of friends. Strong opinions. Strong personalities that clash. We do really care about each other."

A week after graduation Carucci, using $1,500 she saved from baby-sitting, leaves with 15 friends for seven days in Cancun. "It will be awesome," she says. Even more awesome is the thought of going to Western New England College. "I'm so ready to meet new people."

Graduation day

Class president Andrew Fried takes the podium the afternoon of June 5, his robe rippling in the wind. His classmates are a rolling expanse of red on the grassy field behind him. He greets Melrose's mayor, Robert Dolan, class of 1989, a former student council member whose election to the city's school board at 21 shows how narrow the gap between high school and adulthood can be. Fried thanks parents and teachers, then turns to address his class.

Sitting in the middle of the alphabet is Brittany Manley, her hair stylishly short after she cut it for Locks of Love, which makes wigs for children suffering hair loss. She'll miss freshman orientation at Saint Anselm College because she'll be in Russia for Operation Smile, which helps children with facial deformities. Mark Beckford, an avid mountain biker, wants to own a bicycle shop or design bike frames. "I hope to be somewhat rich when I grow up," he says. Donald Davis, who moved to Melrose when he was placed in a foster home here, wants to be a probation officer. "I want to give back what I've taken."

Jessica Arsenault, who's planned since second grade to ask Amanda LaBella to be her maid of honor, isn't thinking matrimony any time soon. "I'm going to Bentley for five years, and I'm going to start my own business," she says. "I'm not spending $200,000 on my education to get married." Katie Blais, who considered becoming a pastry chef when becoming a veterinarian seemed too difficult, reclaims her girlhood dream. "It might be hard," she says, "but I've wanted to do it my whole life." Tara Dolan, active in drama and an animal rights club that successfully lobbied the school cafeteria to serve veggie burgers, has no idea what she wants to study. "I'm very proud of that," she says. "I don't want to limit myself."

One by one, young men and women, some in their Sunday best under their gowns and some in shorts and sneakers without socks, accept diplomas from the teacher or staff member they've selected for the honor. Greg Guyott, wearing a tie for the occasion, steps onto the stage, and when Jacqui Bernardi, secretary in the office where he did school service, hands him his diploma, they hug.

The first time Guyott was a senior, school was the rendezvous point to take off with friends with cars. He came back for a fifth year despite pressure from his father to get a job instead. "I don't want to move on to the next step without finishing this one," Guyott said then.

His attendance improved, but he did little work, and third quarter ended with graduation in doubt. Suddenly he took school seriously. He arrived on time, aced his US history exam, got an A in environmental science, and squeaked by in English. "I was like, `Damn, I should have done this a couple of years ago,' " he says. In September he goes to barber school. "I want to own my own shop," he says. "It's the perfect environment for me. I don't have a problem talking to people."

Diploma in hand, Guyott lets out a whoop after the ceremony. He cries. A fellow fifth-year senior who dropped out midyear envelops him. "I [expletive] love you, man," he tells Guyott. "You don't know how proud of you I am."

"Unbelievable," Guyott says. "Absolutely unbelievable."

He finds his guidance counselor, Maura Quinn, and hugs her, too. "It was one of those reasons," Quinn says, "why you do this job."

A graduation party

At one backyard party later that afternoon, the world's troubles feel palpably close. Dan Goodhue is enlisting with the Marines. In September, he moves to Parris Island in South Carolina for basic training, and he could be in Iraq as soon as February. His recruiter stops by the cookout.

The grandson and nephew of military men, Goodhue has wanted to join the service since he was a young boy. By fall, he'd settled on the Marines. "I want to see what I'm all about," he said then. His parents, following news of mounting casualties in Iraq, tried, to no avail, to persuade him to go to college and enter the military as an officer. They talked up other branches: the Navy, the Air Force, even the Army.

"You have to respect what they decide," says his father, Frank, a 39-year-old ironworker.

"I just hope he knows what he's getting into," says his mother, Maura, who is 40 and works as an insurance claims adjuster.

"The thought of going to Iraq scares me. I try not to watch the news. I don't want any second thoughts," their son says. "I'm one of the few and the proud. Not many people do that -- get the chance to do that, I should say."

Goodhue's grandmother Mary Ledoux thumbs through a yearbook that recognizes her grandson as the boy with the "best laugh" in his class. She asks him what specialty he'll pursue in the Marines.

"Groundsman. Infantry," Goodhue replies.

"That," Ledoux says, "is what I didn't want to hear."

The end

The Monday after graduation, Lauren "Captain" Picard, wearing her boyfriend's soccer sweatshirt, walks into the high school to pick up a copy of the senior video.

Back in September, Picard dreamed of going to Wake Forest, where her brother is a student, and of becoming a civil engineer who designs skyscrapers. "I feel bigger," she said then, "because we as human beings were able to do that." In the middle of applying to college she had one of her epiphanies. "Why am I looking forward to getting rid of what means so much to me?" she asked.

Now, a full scholarship to an honors program at Syracuse University has trumped an offer of admission to Wake Forest. Advanced Placement physics has Picard rethinking her career plans. "I'll still do intro to engineering," she says, "but if it's not for me I'll switch into communications and do film writing."

That's not all that's changed in a year that included playing soccer and tennis, singing in school coffeehouses, and cowriting a senior play in which the day she accidentally hit a teacher's car figured prominently.

"What I'm coming to realize is this year I came out of my shell a lot. I'd always be crazy in drama, but I'd always be nervous about being completely myself. Every coffeehouse, my leg would shake so bad. The coffeehouse in March was the first time my leg didn't shake," Picard says. "I wanted to make a good impression on people. I was worried about going off on a tangent and people saying, 'Oh, Lauren is insane.' But that's how people know me, and that's why people like me."

A drama class passes her in the hall. Picard sighs. A student looks back and says, "Bye, Captain." End of series