“School Reunion”

His eyes moved rapidly in and out of focus like an automatic camera being turned on for the first time. He had come to refer to it as ‘emotional vertigo’. Though she forgot the flashlight and, though it was dark, he knew the hallways which had once—for four years—been his world, like he knew the house where he grew up and like he knew the trip from New York to New Jersey: he could’ve navigated any of them with his eyes closed. She too knew the halls of Wilson High School. She had owned them once, with benevolence, and had even been nice to her young adoring masses (of which he was one), but always kept her distance from the lower castes (of which he also belonged).

The only thing that scared him about this affected dizziness was what to do if the cops were alerted to their little breaking and entering outing. He could barely walk straight, much less run—something he had agreed to do so that she would agree to come. As she herself said “The last thing I need is for my husband to be able to hold a felony against me in court and definitely not for breaking into a school. At midnight”.

But she did come. She came with him, the man who had been the boy she spoke to…once. One time. That one moment being just another for her, but for him it was the sun around which his informative years had revolved. Everything he had done since, in the twelve years since he had graduated, in the ten years since he had moved far away from New Jersey, everything, every moment had been measured against that one. Every reluctant trip ‘home’ had been accompanied by a tiny hope that he might run into her. And this time, over a decade later, he had.

“This was a great idea.” She whispered in the dark to him as they approached the lunchroom where her throne had once been. She smiled with a look of mischief and nostalgia. He just nodded, shocked at how beautiful her smile still was.

They were
here
to quickly
relive memories before
resuming there
lives, though, neither
knew how far apart
the other’s memories were on the emotional spectrum.They were here to quickly relive memories before resuming there lives, though, neither knew how far apart the other’s memories were on the emotional spectrum.

As they stepped nervously into the dark, empty cafeteria, a loud ring sounded out.

“Shit!” she yelled, her face turning white, “It’s the alarm, there’s an alarm!”

“No” he said, sadly, even her much older, much less confident face being a work of suburban art, “it’s just…. my phone.”

The call came in as it was supposed to. His girlfriend, the magazine editor- brilliant, beautiful, kind, funny, smarter than her, smarter than either of them- calling from their beautiful SoHo Loft to ask him about tomorrow’s “dinner reservation’s” and she, who had unknowingly tormented him for so long, with her divorce papers in her old car, with that ugly New Jersey voice, and with bags under her eyes, was supposed to hear it and know who he was now and who she wasn’t.

But whoever had invented the uniquely human idea of ‘revenge’ had never seen those eyes or saw the way she tugged at her decade old sweater when she got cold. He quickly hit ‘cancel’ on the phone.

“Sorry. About. That.” He whispered gently.

They stood in the school cafeteria as they had done so many times before only now alone, in the dark, and together.