Elizabeth stopped at the door to Clemmons High School. She was late, perhaps a statement of her emotional inertia, her reluctance, her bone-deep dread. The blunt doors were still painted the school colors, yellow and orange which still clashed with her yellow-blond hair. She left Keller five years ago, not all that long but still it seemed like forever. She took a full breath and let it hiss between her teeth, squeezed her eyes closed for a moment and waited for the resolve to well up in her. When it did, she pulled open the door and walked into the dirty light of the hall. The sound of music, familiar music touched her and all the times she had gone through that door—albeit in the morning and like now, arriving late—flooded into her mind. She turned to the trophy case and found her reflection, smoothed her taffeta dress, puffy and pink. She did not know why she wore the dress. It made her look like a school girl again but it seemed to capture the surreal feeling of returning to her high school. She thought about Tyler Torrance, her old flame. She had heard of the accident that took his sight, a terse email that referenced it in passing from one of the girls, women she still kept contact with.
She began the long walk past the procession of closed lockers standing like stolid soldiers awaiting her arrival at attention. Elizabeth smiled at the old fantasy; one she had developed the first time she got sent to the principal's office and found herself walking through the empty, mute halls of lockers and closed doors. Only then, she dreamed she was going to her execution. It had lifted the mood and the sense of injustice at how Mr. Abernathy treated her in class, like she was a dumb blond. It had made her so angry and finally his smirk when he addressed her as 'your blondness' broke her resolution to keep quiet and endure. Her ire rose and her sharp tongue got her into deep trouble; addressing your teacher as 'your dicklessness' was never going to be acceptable no matter how justified. But he was such a jerk! She wept in Mr. Halas' office and the old man did not know what to do but patiently waited till the tears passed and then reprimanded her for her thoughtlessness and gave her a strategy to deal with men like Abject Abernathy. When he called the English teacher that, she laughed through the tears. Short, balding and skinny as a chicken wing, the man was bitter and contemptuous but, Mr. Halas had said with a cute sigh, 'I just cannot get rid of him—union contracts.' He shrugged.
Elizabeth heard the music change and the door to the gym opened followed by a red-headed shriek as Cheryl saw her. The girl, woman flung herself down the hall, her long, form-fitting green dress dragging behind her and what a form! Cheryl had developed the curves that had been obscured by excess body weight in high school. The transformation was beginning senior year but now it appeared totally complete. The girl was gone and a full-figured woman had emerged, but the girl still shined in Cheryl's excited blue eyes.
"Lizzzzzzzzzy Boooooorrrrrden!" Cheryl shrieked and then they were hugging and dancing around each other. "Everyone is asking about you, wondering if you were coming and no one knew. What a mystery you have been!" Then she sobered. "I am so sorry about your parents. I know," tears appeared in her eyes, "I know it must have been so terrible! When you got into Princeton and they moved to be close to you, we felt the loss here and when we heard they had been killed in the accident . . . oh, Lizzy!" Cheryl pulled her into another embrace. When they broke, she said, "I should have been there, come to New Jersey but things were so, we left things so ugly. I said awful things . . . "
Elizabeth held up a hand, patting the air. "The past is the past, Cheryl. Now is now. I am here to bury the past and move into the shining future." She sounded more even-tempered then she felt. Her ears rang with tension and she shuddered with it.
Behind them the door opened and three more girls, women . . . Lizzy usually thought of herself as a woman but here it was so easy to morph back into the girlness of high school and the constant throb of anticipation about just everything! So far, life after high school was a mixed bag. The three women, ah hell, Elizabeth thought, we are girls here and likely always will be. The three girls boiled out the double doors, banging one hard against the wall, jabbering like hens let out of the hen house first thing in the morning. Bailey, Claryce and Alma joined Lizzy and Cheryl, breathlessly hugging and then each in turn sobering and passing on delayed condolences.
Claryce hugged her the hardest; the black girl was taller and leaner than she had been in high school but more fully a woman, her breasts proudly displayed enviable cleavage in her red dress. Her face had cleared and smoothed to become as beautiful as her luxurious black hair, elegantly coifed. "Girl, no one has heard from you since graduation. You knocked the dust off your sandals and never looked back! Whatchu been doing?"
"I went to Princeton and got a fellowship to the London School of Economics. I will go there to finish my Master's in International Economics next summer." Elizabeth could not keep the pride out of her voice. It was a huge deal to her and she realized she wanted it to be huge to them as well.
"London! You're going to London!" Claryce squealed and hugged her again, nearly lifting Elizabeth off the floor. She rose to her tippy toes to keep from losing all contact with the ground. "You sure showed them, didn't you!" Then the laughing eyes sobered. "You got your diploma all right, after you went on to Princeton?"
"We had to sue but I got it fine. The school buckled when our attorney demonstrated the foolishness of their case against me. I did not cheat and their proof was one teacher's vendetta against me. The shit!" Abel Portnoy had accused her of cheating on her final phyics exam, a test she could have opted out of but wanted to nail it to complete her 4.0. His accusations had prevented her from graduating with her class and celebrating on one hand or on the other, as Claryce said, allowed her to knock the dust of Keller off her sandals and never look back. At the time, she thought it was possible to leave and never look back. She was shattered that the young teacher would be so cruel for no reason. She left town, moving to New Jersey for the summer just to avoid the issue while her parents fought the battle for her. Despite the fact she was eighteen, her father had allowed her to leave to escape not only the scandal of the accusation but the heartbreak she endured that last semester. The next year, just when she was getting her equilibrium back again, things went from bad to worse when her parents were killed in a snowy pile-up on the freeway into Pennsylvania. They were two of seven people killed on the icy roads that day. Since then, she had gradually reconstructed herself and her life. This visit back to Keller would tell her how strong that reconstruction would prove to be by challenging her to deal with a past she would rather forget but simply could not.
Elizabeth realized the four girls were silent and looking at her. She shook her head and smiled. "Let's party!" She did not get the reaction from anyone she expected and sought.
Bailey, a girl with the finest light brown hair and the best skin in their class, put a hand her arm. "Lizzy, Tyler is here." She said softly. "You know what happened, right?"
Elizabeth felt her smile fade, but suddenly the reality of her life suffused her, like a slug of brandy on a cold night. She nodded. Her eyes dropped to the dull tan linoleum floor, heart tapping in her temples. "Yes, I think I heard the story. An accident in the service, with a grenade or something? He was in Iraq, right?"
The four girls nodded together.
It was so unlikely, so campy, Elizabeth could not help but laugh. "You guys, don't worry! That is all in the past. There are worse things than to be left at the alter!" She did not say the rest of the thought in her mind. Worse things like being alone in a strange town and needing to arrange her parent's funeral; keeping her grades up so she could keep her scholarship while haunted by her past, things like that. Telling her boyfriend, Tyler Torrence she had a miscarriage the week before her scheduled wedding and then discovering he was only marrying her because she was pregnant, but not till he failed to show up at the church, those things were difficult to forgive and impossible to forget. Her part in them haunted her.
The memories all crashed into her but the pain, the sting, the slash and burn anger no longer boiled up in her, at herself or at Tyler. Elizabeth Cambray was ready to move on and she was in Keller to prove it. "I am fine. It is horrible what happened to him. I feel terrible. But that is past too. I'll be in London next year and you girls should come visit!"
For a moment, no one responded and Elizabeth feared she had misjudged the situation again but then Bailey screamed and hugged her. "That would be fabulous!" The others joined in and she walked with them through the door. The reunion was in full swing, decorated like the prom, the infamous prom when she had given herself to Tyler. He had already signed up for the Marines and she thought she would never see him again, that he would find someone else. Then she told him the result, that she was pregnant and his face lit with excitement. Then he left her waiting in the room of the church, waiting for him to appear for five hours till finally, she faced that fact that he was not coming. She had thought her world had come to an end, that this was the result of her actions. Never could she have imagined how terrible things could actually get . . . for them both. Her mind shied away from the whole situation.
Cheryl grabbed her by the arm and leaned into her. "What are you going to do with Tyler?" She whispered.
