1
THE DREADED REUNION
Do you remember your first crush? Or the first time you really wanted someone to be your friend?
I sit in my car facing the lakeside restaurant, listening to Indochine’s “2033,” staring through the windshield at the faint glow of the moon on this hot summer evening. “What am I doing here?”
I hated high school. Yet here I am, at our ten-year reunion. Thinking about times past and all the people I used to know makes my hands sweat and my eyes itch. It makes me think back on a period in my life when I wanted time to stop. When I wanted the world to pause so I could breathe. Have you ever felt like that?
His name runs through my mind again. A name that has lingered in the back of my head for all eternity. My eternity, at least.
I text my childhood best friend before pulling the keys out of the ignition.Going in. See you inside.
She immediately replies.K.
K?I look down at the screen, brows furrowed. I think too much about context and clarity. When replying to text messages, I usealrightyinstead ofK. That one-letter response just gives me mixed signals. I might think you’re angry with me or something. Am I crazy?
As I walk through the parking lot of the restaurant, I’m reminded of the days where I walked through the lot to the side of the school entrance. I used to be able to pick out the cars that belonged to my friends and acquaintances: Dana and her nearly new Escape, Kayla and her dad’s always new BMW, Samantha with her old Ford Focus—a car many people in my school drove. It’s a different story here today in front of this restaurant. I can’t tell who owns what. Most of these people have been blank from my mind for the last decade.
I enter the private room to the right of the restaurant entrance and am signaled by a small group of girls huddled over a table close to the bar. Should I have said women? We’re in our late twenties now. Funny, isn’t it? I still don’t see myself as an adult. Whenever I think of people my age, I think of them as girls and boys. Anyway, I instantly recognize them, a few former school friends who sat with me during lunch almost every day.
A sinking feeling seizes my stomach as regret falls over me. I ditched everyone after graduation. High school made me feel trapped, and in order for me to free myself, I had to create a new life without all of them. I could have tried to keep in touch. Instead, I did nothing. These girls treated me kindly at school, something I needed then. I know everything about them and their adult lives now thanks to social media. And yet here I am, a stranger reemerging from the shadows after a decade of silence.
“Hey! It’s been too long. How’ve you been?” asks Kayla, looking for something in the purse hanging from Samantha’s seat, her hair still strawberry blonde and wavy like I remembered.
“Yeah. We haven’t seen you since the bonfire at Michelle’s house the weekend after graduation,” Samantha says, pointing to Michelle, who’s pulling back her dark curls.
“It’s been a long time. Hey, have any of you been in touch with Dana?” I nervously ask, gesturing to the empty chair across the table.
“No,” replies Nicole, sipping on something like a vodka cranberry.
Who still drinks those?
“She told me she wasn’t coming.” Kayla pulls an e-reader from the hanging purse.
The table looks at me in confusion. Am I ruining a surprise for them? A feeling of uncertainty falls over me as I realize that Dana could be ditching me.Dana wouldn’t do that again though, I think.At least I don’t think she would.
The senior class vice president approaches the podium at the end of the room; the class president no longer lives in the country from what I gathered after stalking her on Facebook. The VP begins recounting times past, and a knot in the pit of my stomach starts to form. So instead of taking a seat, I walk over to the bar. I need a drink if we’re going to talk about those days. I don’t understand how people speak of the past in fondness. The past is the past, leave it there. Then again, I did show up. There must be a reason, though truth be told, I couldn’t have named it.
Have a good time honey. Send me pictures of your friends,my mom texts as I’m about to order a drink. I roll my eyes.
I stand, annoyed, at the bar with a Canadian rye whisky in hand since the wine selection is overpriced. I would have paid more for the ticket if it were open bar.
Looking across at the top of the room where the podium stands, our class vice president still speaking, I notice the entrance door slowly closing.Dana?I straighten my back, eyes wide open dissecting the room trying to find the new face. I make awkward eye contact with several of my ex-classmates, but there’s no one new in sight.
I tip the bartender after shooting the drink in my hand, then order another. Trust me, you’d also want another.
“Hey. Give me that,” the vice president says, grabbing my attention.
Before I can turn around to see what’s going on, someone else begins to speak. A voice I haven’t heard in eleven years. The voice I hoped I wouldn’t hear today.It’s him.
It’s Thad.
Where’d he come from?I gulp, stomach churning. I haven’t seen him yet tonight. Trust me, my eyes ran a marathon examining this entire place before I even sat down. I’m always on the lookout for someone who might know me. If I ever tell you that I didn’t see you, but you saw me, I’m lying. I see everything.
“I wanted to say something,” he states as the vice president attempts to reclaim the mic from his grip, but Thad manages to yank the mic back. “Please, just give me a couple minutes.”
He has the attention of the entire room. And while everyone looks back and forth in confusion between Thad and the vice president, he starts speaking.Where is this going?I look around the room again. He had his own group of friends in high school, so why does he need everyone’s attention when he can just talk to them?