In the ninth grade, I brought a strand of red tinsel for our pumpkin carving contest, as my business class was making a KISS pumpkin. It remained all year. The next year, I hung up a strand of gold garland. In grade eleven, it was a pink feather boa. People would ask about the chaos inside my locker, and I would smile and explain my system – every year I was at the school, I would hang up another strand of what I called locker garland. And every year I did just that.

What I didn't realize was how much could change from one strand to another. I thought it was a fun milestone marker, a fun tradition to call my own. I didn't realize how symbolic they would be of the in-between times, of the year which would follow each of them. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

In ninth grade, I hung up the red tinsel proudly inside my little locker in the tech hallway. It followed me to the business hallway a few weeks later, where I moved my locker to support a friend who had been bullied in the former nest. It saw my first boyfriend, a nice-enough boy from my English class who only survived two months of what that tinsel went through every day – me. It watched as I began to explore my academics – I got the highest mark on an essay in English class, and the tinsel was there to celebrate. It watched as I went from a cripplingly shy introvert with but one friend to someone with somewhere to go. That year was far from red – it was a dusty blue, a colour of introversion and loneliness – but the red meant hope. It was a promise that someday I would be more than just another name. I would be more than the word new, which was everything to me that year.

Tenth grade saw the introduction of the gold strand. Tenth grade brought me a young man and I fell in love. It was vain, young love, but love nonetheless. It brought a best friend to me – then another, and another. At lunch, I would sit at the base of that locker with Alisha and Nicole and Nick, extravagance bursting from the slots above me. We would talk about English class, which I had come to adore. We would make outlandish plans for crazy projects – the Project of the Day – and never follow through with them further than a rough sketch. It was a golden year, a year of happiness that was entirely new to me. I was intelligent, and confident, and loved. That year, the word on my lips was nonconformity. I was who I was, and I enjoyed it.

Eleventh grade was as pink as the feather boa that represented it. I joined every team I could that didn't involve athletics. I helped to produce a television show, my partner and I debated our opponents into the ground, and I attended trivia team competitions and taught the geniuses to relax a little. I loved Drama, and French, and had a co-op placement as a teacher librarian. I was extroverted, a happy, bubbly girl who was liked by some, ignored by some, but not hated by any. And like all glamourous things, my year was full of hidden darkness. I would sit alone at the base of the locker bursting with extravagance most days, my friends off writing tests or finishing their lab experiments at lunch hour. I would pick through my massive anthology of the works of H.G. Wells and hope I didn't appear too much of a loner, unwilling to change regardless. I was struggling with a mentally ill mother no one believed was ill. I was fighting the battle of a lifetime trying not to let her break my heart – she didn't mean to, deep down – and trying to find how to get her help she didn't believe she needed. My young vain love had cheated on me, and I was resentful. I had never felt hatred like I did for him or for the other girl before. I shut down the advances of other guys, no longer interested in young, vain love. My word for the year was strong. I truly felt strong, however stiff my resolve made me. I was as tough and troubled and beautiful as any star of old. I was glamourous, no matter the price.

I have one more year of locker garland to witness. I have one year before I must take down each strand of glittery, feathery joy for the last time. Then, I must say goodbye to the girl with a red promise, the girl with golden happiness, and the girl with such pink elegance and such black trial beneath the surface. I must say goodbye even to the girl who knew that fourth strand of locker garland, whether she's dark or light, bright or grey. My locker garland has represented each period of change in my high school life, but I won't be in high school forever. The red, the gold, and the pink is all inside me now, and I can take them with me on to university, through life as a whole. I can be new and a nonconformist and strong on my own now. I can be bursting with extravagance anywhere I go. And every year, I will do just that.