AULD LANG SYNE
I got a few quizzical looks when I signed in. It’s possible some of the women working at the
registration desk remembered me but I doubted it. Back in high school I’d had lank brown hair,
bad skin and had carried an extra 30 pounds.
I’d spent my four miserable years at Woodrow Wilson
High School being invisible
and dreaming of better times to come.
Better times had come. I looked
good for my age.
I spotted Alicia Cooper almost at once. Alicia Womack, now. Everyone had expected her to marry Tommy Womack
ever since they’d been crowned king and queen at our senior prom. I hadn’t gone to the prom. I wasn’t asked. I’d spent that night sobbing in my bedroom
while my poor mother tried desperately to distract me with vanilla milkshakes. I was inconsolable but I drank two of the
milkshakes anyway. I did things like
that in those days.
I never really thought I’d come to a reunion but as the
years slipped by, the notion of making an appearance at my 50th
began to seem attractive. I’d long ago
lost touch with everybody, but the reunion committee had set up a group on
Facebook, so I was able to get all the information I needed. I sent in my reservation, made my travel
plans, and bought a new dress.
The banquet room at the Sheraton was decorated with huge
black and white photographs blown up from our senior yearbook. There wasn’t a picture of me. I’d skipped school the day pictures were
taken.
I drifted around the ballroom to get my bearings. A few people glanced my way and smiled,
inviting me to join their conversations but I kept moving.
I saw Diane Todd and her husband talking to Harvey and Henrietta
Martorelli. I’d liked Diane. She’d been nice to me in a way that hadn’t
felt like charity. She’d aged gracefully
and the way she and her husband stood shoulder to shoulder told me that she was
loved. I was glad.
Harvey and Henrietta looked more like siblings now than
spouses. Both had evolved into sexless,
blocky creatures with the same graying skin and thinning hair. Henrietta had been in my honors history and
English classes. She’d been an earnest
grade-grubber with a GPA and SAT scores that should have earned her admission
to Yale like her brothers, but back then, Yale didn’t accept women, so she’d
settled for Bryn Mawr instead.
As you all know by now, I am part of a boxed set of novels and novellas (Rite to Reign) that's about royal witches. The stories are an eclectic collection--a retelling of the "Little Mermaid," an intriguing take on a familiar Oz figure. The minute i heard the theme of the boxed set, I knew I wanted to write a story about the German princess who became Catherine the Great.
