The Reunion

“Are you coming tonight?” Michelle’s voice sounded tinny over the speaker phone.

“Coming where?” Kim asked as she poured herself a glass of ice-cold water. She was parched after a long day of work.

 “Our twenty-year reunion, silly! Did you forget? It’s tonight!”

Oh, yeah. That. Actually, Kim had been trying to forget about the reunion for months, with little success. She hated big groups, and the reunion committee had informed everyone that around 90 people had responded yes to the invitation. That was enough people to make Kim break out into a nervous sweat.

“I don’t know, Michelle. I’m really tired. I had to go to work at six-thirty this morning,” Kim said. “The reunion goes until ten, and I have to work early tomorrow, too.”

She could practically hear Michelle rolling her eyes. “You don’t have to stay the entire time, you know. You could just come for two hours or so.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“Dude, just come with me! Please?” Michelle begged. “You might end up having fun.”

“Why do you want to go so badly?” Kim asked, finishing her water and refilling the glass. “You hated high school as much as I did.”

Michelle laughed. “Because I want to see who’s fat and bald now,” she replied. “And I’m just nosy enough that I want to know what they’ve all been up to the last twenty years. So I’ll see you there? I gotta get my kids settled before I go.” Michelle hung up.

Kim sighed as she slipped her cell phone into her back pocket. If Michelle wants to see who’s fat and bald, all she has to do is go to their social media profiles and look at their pictures, she thought. And who cares what these people have been doing the last twenty years? We weren’t friends then and we’re not friends now.

Kim would much rather curl up with a good book or watch a movie than go see a bunch of people who had never liked her or spoke to her during school. A few girls who had been her friends in high school were going to the reunion, but they were more BFFs with each other, and Kim had always felt like the third wheel. Or rather, the fourth wheel, since there were three of them.

“Besides,” she muttered to herself as she put her water glass in the dishwasher, “I don’t have anything in common with these people. They’ve never understood me, and I don’t understand them.”

Unlike most of her classmates, Kim didn’t have any kids. She only knew that many of them had children because of social media. In fact, she didn’t even like kids. One of her classmates had even gone so far as to unfriend her on Facebook when Kim had stated her feelings about children. That was a great example of a classmate who didn’t understand her.

Also, like most of her classmates, Kim had no clue what she wanted to do with her life. She had thought she wanted to be a teacher until she realized she didn’t like children of any age. Now she was doing UberEats and a summer job until she could figure herself out and find something more permanent.

Kim got in the shower and was done in record time. If she was going to go to this reunion, she might as well try to show up on time. If there was anything she hated, it was being late. Michelle was constantly late, and she always blamed it on her kids.

She stared into her closet. The dress code was casual. She snorted derisively. Casual to her meant sweatpants or yoga pants combined with her favorite, very well-worn Jurassic Park t-shirt. She was positive no wanted to see her in that. At least, not on purpose.

She finally settled on a pair of flattering skinny capris and a casual black and blue sleeveless blouse. She smiled. The colors of the blouse were an homage to her favorite music group of all time, the Backstreet Boys. Their album, Black and Blue, came out in November of her senior year. Very appropriate, she thought.

Kim applied a touch of makeup that brought out her blue eyes, then pulled her thick brown hair up into a messy bun on top of her head. She eyed herself in the mirror. That was about as casual as she was going to get.

Her phone dinged. It was a message from one of the coordinators.

“Are you coming tonight?” she had written.

Kim gazed longingly at the newest Vince Flynn thriller sitting next to her bed. She kept two stacks of books on her nightstand: her “read” pile and her “to be read” pile. Topping her “read” pile, for the hundredth time, was her favorite book, Jurassic Park. Three other books graced the “to be read” pile, along with Vince Flynn’s book.

A little grudgingly, she typed back, “Yes, I’m coming. See you soon.” Then she shoved her phone into her pocket.

Kim slipped into a pair of sandals, grabbed a clutch that contained all she needed for the night, found her keys, and walked out the door before she could change her mind.

The entire drive to the reunion was nerve-wracking. Kim chewed nervously on her lip until her jaw ached. She tapped her fingers on her thigh, but not in tune to the music playing on the CD. She finally pulled into the parking lot of the venue and just sat there for a few minutes. The reunion committee had rented a large room from a local community center. Someone had hung a large banner across the front entrance that read, “Welcome, Class of 2001!” The banner had been decorated in green, black, and white, the school colors. The school mascot was even featured on the banner.

Kim sighed, texted Michelle and the coordinator that she had arrived, and said to herself, “Well, here goes nothing. Let’s try to have some fun.”

She dropped her keys into her clutch and headed inside.