The first thing Vanessa Vale did when she spotted me was laugh with food in her mouth.
The second thing she did was scrape a pile of cold leftovers onto a flimsy paper plate and shove it toward my chest like she was sixteen again and I was still the scholarship girl who ate lunch alone behind the gym.
“Here,” she announced, loud enough for the entire reunion hall to catch it. “For old times’ sake.”
Potato salad slid over the edge. A chicken bone knocked against my black dress. Around us, thirty former classmates turned to look, and their smiles had the same quality I remembered — weak and hungry and relieved, the way people smile when they’re grateful the cruelty isn’t pointed at them.
Ten years collapsed in an instant.
I was sixteen again, standing in the cafeteria at Westbridge High with milk dripping from my hair while Vanessa Vale held my private journal open in one hand and read from it into a microphone she had borrowed from the drama club without asking.
“She thinks she’ll matter someday,” Vanessa had read aloud, performing for the room the way she had always performed for rooms. “Poor little Nora Bell. She actually believes people like us will answer to her.”
