The Reunion

The Reunion

The wine shivered in the plastic cup, a single concentric ripple trembling against the white polystyrene. I froze with the rim an inch from my lower lip. The vibration had not come from my grip. I stood on the polished hardwood of the old gymnasium, ringed by the low electric hum of conversation and the clink of glass, but the floor under my soles had shuddered, a deep subsonic thrum that buzzed in the marrow of my shins and rattled the teeth in my skull. My gaze dropped to the parquet, expecting a scuff mark or a loose tile, and found the wood pristine, gleaming like black ice under the track light. The trembling stopped as abruptly as it had begun, leaving only the taste of cheap Merlot, sour and tannic, and the sharp chemical bite of floor wax.

I took a sip. The wine sat cold against my teeth. I lowered the cup without swallowing, and the alcohol pooled on my tongue, doing nothing for me.

Something was wrong with the geometry of the room. The far wall, the one hung with the championship banners from 1998 through 2003, kept receding by inches each time I blinked, stretching the distance between the refreshment table and the exit sign until the exit read like a keyhole in a cavern wall. I turned away from it, back to the reason I had not yet fled toward the coat check. The twelve-foot composite photograph of the Class of 2004 loomed on its velvet easel, drowned in the glare of a track light. I stepped closer. My rubber soles made no sound on the vibration-less floor. I found the third row, second from the left.

The face was mine.

It wore the varsity jacket I had never purchased, the wool collar turned up against a wind I did not feel, and it smiled a smile I had never given. The boy stood beside Sarah Jenks, the head cheerleader, one hand resting on her shoulder in a way that looked practiced and proprietary. My own hand, pale and clutching the plastic cup, hung at my side. I studied the difference between the two of us. The boy in the photograph was anchored, at ease in his own skin, a fixed point in a room full of drift. I felt the air thinning around me, the way it thinned in the elevator at work when somebody stood too close.

The glossy finish caught the track light and held it, obscuring the eyes for a moment. When the glare slid away, the smile seemed wider than it had been a moment before, the skin of the cheeks pulled tighter over the bone. A drop of condensation rolled down the side of the cup and hit the floor with a sound too small to matter.

I had parked the Corolla three rows back in the lot, under a light that buzzed like a dying insect. The walk to the entrance had been a performance, the studied neutrality of the mid-level data analyst I had spent a decade perfecting. Beige slacks. A blue button-down. The uniform of the invisible man, chosen to blend into the drywall of the banquet hall. I remembered the drive in fragments, the way you remember a route you have driven so often it has worn itself smooth: the steady hum of the interstate, the rhythmic swipe of the wipers against a light drizzle, the worn leather of the wheel cool under my palms.

I had come to the reunion for one reason: to leave early. Walk in. Nod at three people. Exit before anyone could ask about my marital status or my career trajectory. Attendance without intimacy. That was the plan, and I had rehearsed it the way I rehearsed everything, quietly, alone, in the dark of my apartment, with the television off so I could hear myself think.

The double doors of the high school opened into the transformed gymnasium. The air was warm, heavy with catering trays and perfume, and the noise arrived like a physical weight, a wall of laughter and reacquaintance and scraping chairs. I took a name tag from the folding table, the adhesive catching on my thumb, and pinned it to my chest. Elias Thorne. I smoothed it down, felt the edges catch on the cotton of my shirt, and moved toward the refreshments with my head down, scanning the perimeter for an emergency exit that wasn't blocked by a knot of former students.

I grabbed a cup of wine. I turned. The floor shook.

I had spent senior year the way I had spent every year: as furniture. The library was my real classroom, the far table under the clock that never kept the right time, where I read through the paperback shelf in