Magnolia Hall Reunion

Lauren groaned as she stared at herself in the mirror. 

“Why are we doing this again?” She asked her twin, who was lounging on the bed behind her flipping through Psychology Today.

“I don’t know,” Ellie said as she kicked off her shoes, watching with pleasure as they thudded to the floor one by one. Lauren picked them up and neatly tucked them into the shoe rack by their mother’s closet. “Dad wants us to.”

“Just because he had a swell high school experience doesn’t mean everyone else in the whole world did.” Lauren said as she fiddled with her sweater. 

“Yeah, he didn’t get up in front of the whole school in the sixth grade and meow Jingle Bells.” 

Lauren sighed, “Okay, you MADE me do that, and I distinctly recall you meowing right there next to me.” 

Lauren and Ellie had gone to the same private school for twelve years. Their school was one that encouraged self-expression, and it prided itself on its uniquely smart and sometimes peculiar students. 

Although Magnolia Hall claimed to be a “college preparatory” school, Lauren remembered stepping foot on the Boston University campus ten years ago and feeling like she had arrived on Mars. First of all, she had no idea how to dress herself after wearing a uniform for the last twelve years of her life. She had also never had a sip of beer, and she wasn’t sure how to respond to the massive school spirit when it came to sports. She wasn’t even sure if her high school had a football team. 

Looking in the mirror now, she knew she was completely different from the girl who had left Magnolia Hall in 2010, and she wasn’t sure she really wanted to return. 

“Look, we’ll just go for an hour, get some free food, and then bail and go get some dessert at Nona’s downtown,” Ellie said, although Lauren knew she didn’t want to go either. “It’ll be fine. Besides, I told Tay we would pick her up on the way.”

Tay was their only friend from Magnolia Hall who they were still in touch with. She and Lauren had been best friends since they were seven, and Ellie and Tay had lived together in Astoria, Queens for the last six years. They owned a cat together. 

All three of them had escaped from this tiny North Carolina town as fast as they could after graduation. Both Ellie and Lauren had fled to the North East and Tay had gone all the way to Scotland, where she attended Saint Andrews. None of them were thrilled to be back, but they had decided to brave the reunion together. 

Their dad wandered into the room and looked at his watch. “Ya’ll better get a move on” he said, kicking his running shoes off. Lauren bent down and picked them up, placing them on the shoe rack. 

“We know,” Ellie said, tossing her magazine onto the bookshelf. “We’re just wallowing in our dread.” 

“Oh come on,” their dad said, rolling his eyes. “It’ll be great, I’m sure tons of people are looking forward to seeing you.” 

“Yeah, I can’t wait to see all of our bestest friends who we haven’t spoken to at all in the last ten years,” Ellie said. Lauren tossed her the car keys. 

“Alrighty, we’re out of here,” she said, and they waved goodbye to their dad. 

“Have a good time,” he said, picking up the Psychology Today that Ellie had just abandoned. “Stay away from that Jamie!” 

Ellie and Lauren rolled their eyes at each other. Their dad had been making this good natured joke since they were eight, when Lauren had come home and announced that she was going to marry the new boy in school, Jamie King. She had been painfully shy back then. So shy that when the whole third grade had to put on a play, she had been given the role of “showstopper”, meaning that instead of participating, she sat on the corner of the stage holding up props. She held up a kite when Peter Delia came on, dressed as Albert Einstein, and a tiny plane for Jenny Harris, who was playing Amelia Earheart. Although Lauren had come out of her shell after college, she still often found herself growing quiet around new people. 

After that day in the third grade, she had spent the next ten years silently loving Jamie King while he pointedly ignored her. He wasn’t mean, just completely and totally disinterested. When she left for college, she had moved on, but she still had a special place in her heart for her first crush. She hated to admit it, but he was one of the reasons she hadn’t completely dismissed Ellie when she first brought up the idea of going to the reunion. 

As she climbed into the passenger seat of the twenty year old Toyota Four Runner that she and her sister had shared growing up, Lauren’s heart fluttered at the thought of seeing Jamie again. She wouldn’t talk to him, she was certain of that, but she was wildly curious about his life. What would he look like now? Would he bring a girlfriend or a wife? What did he do for work? Was he still in a band?

She was jolted out of her thoughts at the sound of the back door being thrown open and Tay launching herself into the car. “I brought drugs,” she said, offering Lauren a bag of sour gummy worms. 

“Thank god,” Lauren responded as she shoved a few in her mouth. 

“So how long do we have to subject ourselves to this torture?” Tay said with her mouth full. 

“We have to stay for an hour,” Ellie said. “That’ll be long enough for Laur to finally profess her lengthy and undying love to Jamie King, and then we’ll go get some cake at Nona’s.”

“Sounds good to me,” Tay said, throwing a gummy worm at Lauren. Lauren rolled her eyes and smiled.

Walking into the gym at Magnolia Hall was like an out of body experience. The three girls had spent twelve years growing up in that gym. Tay and Lauren used to spend hours there after school, stocked up on sun chips and fruit snacks from the school store, scribbling games of MASH into a notebook. The gym was decked out in blue and green for the reunion, and tables of food and drinks had been set up under the basketball hoop. 

“Have you ever actually seen anyone play basketball in this gym?” Tay asked as they made their way to the food. 

“Definitely not,” Ellie said. 

Lauren scanned the crowd. She said polite hellos to people as she walked by, but she didn’t stop. Ellie was holding her wrist, dragging her to the food. 

She almost didn’t notice Jamie standing at the drinks table, and when she did she immediately looked away. She busied herself with the food, filling her plate with tiny cakes and baby carrots. She looked up, and almost dropped her plate. Jamie King was standing right in front of her.

“Hey,” he said, nervously shoving his hands in his pockets. “I know you just walked in, but if I don’t say this now, I’m going to lose my nerve. Can I take you to dinner?”