Or Shiloh could stay here. She could drag a chair over to her old friends’ table and try to catch up with everyone...
Was there any point in catching up if she was just going to lose them again?
If Shiloh had learned anything about herself, it was that she couldn’t hold on to people. She could only really deal with the people directly in front of her. Her children. Her mom. Her boss. Her assistant. The teachers who worked for her. The kids in the theater programs. Their parents. The board... Christ, that was already too many.
The maid of honor was at the mic now, toasting Janine. She was telling a raunchy story about their trip to Mexico. Shiloh felt sorry for her. There was no good way to follow Cary. He was a forensics champion. He’d played Scrooge in their senior-year production ofA Christmas Carolwith a flawless English accent. (Shiloh had played the Ghost of Christmas Present, with a wreath of holly and icicles.)
Shiloh lifted her glass again when everyone else did. “Cheers!”
There hadn’t been toasts at Shiloh’s wedding. She hadn’t wanted to do anything traditional.
She and Ryan got married in the university theater, just before Shiloh graduated from college. Shiloh had worn a dress from the costume shop. (Lady Macbeth’s—was that bad luck? It was the only pretty dress in the shop that had fit her.)
It was a small wedding. Mikey had flown back for it.
Apparently the toasts were over. Mikey and Janine were going to cut the cake now. Cary was still standing near the dance floor, talking to Bobby.
All the little kids had gathered around the cake table, with the photographer.
Shiloh hadn’t had a professional photographer at her wedding. Or a cake. What had they had instead? She couldn’t remember...
No, wait—fancy cream puffs. They’d spent all their money on upscale Lithuanian food and a band.
It wasn’t so bad. As weddings go.
Ryan had also worn something from the costume shop—one of the Lost Boy costumes fromPeter Pan. There was a photo of the two of them dancing at the reception. Ryan’s mother had taken it. Ryan was wearing fox ears, and Shiloh was displaying a shocking amount of cleavage.
“I’m not going to make you keep your promise,” Mikey’s uncle said.
Shiloh looked over at him. “I’m sorry?”
“You can eat your cake.”
One of the caterers was standing there with a trolley of cake slices.
“There are six people sitting at this table,” the uncle told the waitress. (There were not.)
“No,” Shiloh said to him, “I am honoring my commitment. The cake is all yours.”
She got up and headed for her original table. She looked around for Cary. He was standing in a crowd at the bar. She recognized his stiff shoulders, the way he held his head. She’d wanted to see him tonight, and she’d seen him. She’d wanted to know if he was still himself, and he was.
“Shiloh!” everyone at her assigned table called.
She’d give herself an hour of reminiscing and catching up. That would still leave plenty of time to sleep.
Eight
before
The darkroom was set off from the journalism room by a revolving door. You stepped through the doorway, then spun the opening around to the other side and walked out into a closetlike room.
There was only space for two or three people back there, and one of them was always Mikey. The other two were usually Cary and Shiloh.
Today when Shiloh spun the door around, the red lights were on, which meant that Mikey was developing something. Probably something totally unrelated to school.
He was leaning over the chemical bath, prodding at a photo with plastic tongs. Cary was sitting on a stool, working on homework. Shiloh climbed onto the stool next to Cary’s and poked him with a pencil.
He smacked her pencil away.
