I laugh as Jake slides his arm around me and the six of us head down the semi-lit street toward Silverlight. Jake, Gavin, and Davis debate how much the school did, or didn’t, spend on catering, as Betty and Cece chat about her baby boy. I let their voices wash over me, struck by how bizarrely natural it feels that we’re together. The rugby player, the flautist, the nurse-turned-bar owner, the financier bouncer, the goth-queen, and her strait-laced husband.
“The Breakfast Club,” I whisper. “Betty is Ally Sheedy, Cece is Molly Ringwald, Jake is Emilio Estevez, and I’m… Holy shit, I’m Judd Nelson.”
“What, baby?” Jake asks.
I shake my head, keeping my revelation to myself. Davis would probably argue he’s the real Judd Nelson, and we’re close enough to the Silverlight Hotel that the bass from Pitbull’s ‘Fireball’isvibrating my feet. Strobe lights pulse through the ballroom windows and onto the floodlit lawn, flashing every colour of the rainbow. The grass is so thick and dark that it could be the ocean. An emerald expanse in which a careless stranger could drown.
I look down at my feet, willing my brain not to freeze the way it does when things are too bright and loud.
“Here we are,” Betty says, and I force myself to glance up. Silverlight Estate Hotel looms above us like a ghost ship. By day, it’s the epitome of cheesy corporate blandness, but tonight it feels haunted. The kind of place fairytales tell you to avoid.
The white walls and columns gleam like polished bone, and a red-and-gold banner stretches high above the entrance:
One Hundred Years of Pukekohe High!
The six of us fall into a silent line as we take it all in. The roar of voices, the sight of hundreds of bodies pressed together. People I know, people who know me, strangers, and the worst kind of associates.
“Ready?” Betty asks.
I’m not. Not even close.
I imagined walking into this reunion alone, verbally slashing my way through my former classmates until I either got kicked out or arrested. I planned every possible attack down to the second, rehearsing my opening lines before bed:‘I came here to vape in the bathroom and pick fights. And my vape’s almost dead.’
I was ready forthatreunion.
This reunion? The one where I walk in with four friends and one lover, knowing we’re about to send Pukekohe’s economy crashing to the ground? Where I’m painfully aware of my flaws, and desperate to begin a future with purpose? I’m not ready for this reunion at all.
Thrasher might throttle me. Jenny might feed me more excrement. Will Sharpe might lob a nostalgia apple at my head.
And even if they leave me alone, any number of bodies currently shaking the dancefloor might find a bone to pick with me tonight.
I look to my left. To the spot Rhys might have stood if the world was a better place. Although really, he’d never have come. He’d be at home smoking a cigarette and texting to say we should playHALOuntil we fall asleep. I miss him with a fierceness that feels both selfish and overwhelming. I want to talk to Betty, but she’s already linked her arm through Gavin’s and is marching them under the cursed banner.
“C’mon, team,” she calls over her shoulder.
“Fuck yeah,” Cece says, taking Davis’s hand and following suit.
I stay frozen, air squeezing into my lungs through ametal straw. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“Of course you can.” Jake leans his weight against me. “All you gotta do is walk around looking like a million bucks, and that’s a Tuesday for you, Renaldo.”
I smile despite my thumping heart. “Simp.”
“Pussy.”
“Easy for you to say. You’re the fun-times local hero. I’m the mean flute weirdo.”
“I can be mean, too.”
“Yeah. In bed. Everywhere else you’re like… Elmo? Is that mean? Still, you are kind of Elmo…”
Jake tips his head skyward. “You’ve never watched me play rugby, have you?”
“Um…?”
“We’ll deal with that later. For now, look.”
He strikes a pose, arms folded, jaw hard, eyes narrowed. “See?”
