"Nailed it." She opened the passenger door with a flourish. "Now get in before you lose your nerve."
I slid into the seat, my stomach doing a slow, anxious roll. "Is it too late to go watch comedy dramas?"
"Yes." Beth started the car and exclaimed with the determination of a general heading into battle. "Okay, here's the plan. We stick together, we make sarcastic comments about everyone's questionable life choices, and we leave the moment it stops being fun. Deal?"
"What if it's never fun?"
"Then we leave immediately and go get tacos. Either way, we win." She glanced at me as she pulled onto the road. “Just sit and relax, we’ll run as soon as it turns bad, if that happens.”
I stared out the window at the familiar streets sliding past, the diner where we used to study, the park where I'd had my first kiss, with a boy named Derek who had braces and too much enthusiasm. The turn toward the high school felt like driving back in time.
"He's going to be there," I said quietly. "Miles."
"I know." Beth's voice was carefully neutral. "I saw his name on the list."
"I don't know what to say to him. It's been fifteen years. What do you even say to someone after fifteen years?"
"'Hello' is traditional. Maybe 'how have you been' if you're feeling adventurous."
"Beth."
"Charlotte." She reached over and squeezed my hand briefly. "It's going to be fine. As I said, if it gets bad, we’ll turn tail, alright?"
"Okay," I said, not believing it for a second.
The Riverside High gymnasium had aged about as gracefully as I felt. The same scuffed floors, the same bleachers emanating a faint aroma of old sweat and industrial cleaner, the same water-stained ceiling tiles that had probably been there since the building was constructed.
But someone had made an effort to disguise the essential grimness of the place, draping silver and blue streamers from the basketball hoops and tacking clusters of twinkle lights around the scoreboard with what I could only describe as aggressive optimism.
"It's like prom," Beth observed, surveying the scene with barely concealed horror. "But sadder. Because we're old now and we know how life turns out."
"That's very poetic."
"I'm a bookseller. The lyrical happens to be my thing." She grabbed two cups of suspicious-looking red punch from a folding table and handed me one. "Okay, let's do this. Remember: sarcastic comments, then tacos."
The awkwardness hit immediately.
A man with a receding hairline and a polo shirt that had clearly fit better ten years ago descended on us with alarming enthusiasm, arms spread wide.
"Charlotte Huston! Oh my God, look at you! You look exactly the same!"
I did not. Neither did he. I had no idea who he was.
"Hi!" I said with manufactured warmth. "So great to see you!"
"It's me! Kevin! Kevin Marsh! We had bio together sophomore year!"
"Kevin! Of course!" I had absolutely no memory of Kevin Marsh. "How have you been?"
That was a mistake. Kevin Marsh had been doing a lot, apparently, and he wanted to tell me about every single momentof it in excruciating detail. His job in pharmaceutical sales. His divorce. His new girlfriend, who was"really spiritual, like she does yoga and everything."His boat. His plans for the boat. The maintenance requirements of the boat.
Beth caught my eye over Kevin's shoulder and mouthed "pivot?"
I shook my head slightly. We'd survive Kevin Marsh. We had to.
Fifteen minutes later, I'd escaped Kevin only to be captured by Lisa Chen… Lisa From Bio, my brain supplied helpfully. She had three children and approximately nine hundred photographs of them on her phone.
"And this is Brayden at his soccer game, and this is Brayden at his other soccer game, and this is Kayleigh at her dance recital, she's gifted, her teacher says she's reading at a fourth-grade level already?—"
