I Found Out About Our 20-Year High School Reunion from an Old Friend Because Nobody Had Bothered to Invite Me – But the Moment I Walked Through Those Doors, I Realized Why
“I do belong.”
“No, you don’t.” Her voice trembled with something uglier than anger. “You were the girl I sat next to. The one I defended. That was the deal.”
“The deal?” I repeated.
“You heard me,” Alison said. “I made you feel human when nobody else would. And what did you do? You got skinny. You got rich. You opened that stupid studio.”
“You think you can just walk in here like you belong?”
“So this whole reunion,” I said slowly, “the memory board, the captions, leaving me off the list, that was all you trying to put me back where you wanted me?”
“You were easier to love when you needed me.”
The silence that followed felt enormous.
Several people stared at Alison in disbelief.
A woman near the bar crossed her arms. “That’s actually really cruel.”
“That was all you trying to put me back where you wanted me?”
Another classmate stepped toward the display.
“I thought those captions were from some old yearbook joke,” someone said.
The room shifted.
You could feel it happening.
For the first time all night, people weren’t looking at me.
They were looking at her.
