by Angela Henry
Always dressed to perfection in the most up-to-date styles, Ms. Flack was the woman many of my female peers tried to emulate back in high school. She also had political aspirations and was running for mayor of Willow in the fall. She’d initially volunteered to help the reunion committee temporarily when she saw how few people we had. But since none of us wanted to be in charge, Ms. Flack became the head of the committee, by default, though I suspect in exchange for helping us, she was going to expect us all to volunteer for her campaign. Judging by the success of the meeting we’d just had, I’d say we needed all the help we could get.
“We need to keep it simple, guys. I doubt the reunion budget will allow for much more than a catered dinner and a DJ. I’m afraid if we get too fancy we’ll have to charge a high price for tickets and we won’t get a big turnout. We’ll talk more about it next week. Be thinking about some affordable venues that we can rent,” continued Ms. Flack.
We all murmured our half-hearted agreements and got up to leave. Cherisse quickly jumped up, grabbed her purse, and rushed off without a word. Gerald, Audrey, and Dennis watched her go and I saw a look pass among them that took me straight back to high school and sent a chill down my spine. It was a look I’d been on the receiving end of on more than one occasion. It was a condescending smirk accompanied by a raised eyebrow and a slight shake of the head. It was a look that screamed loser.
This was not going to be fun.
Chapter Two
WORK THE NEXT DAY wasn’t much better, though for a different reason. I thought spending time with my former classmates was a nightmare. Little did I know I was about to become a student again myself.
“There’s just no way around this, Kendra,” said Dorothy Burgess my boss at Clark Literacy Center. “I told you that you needed to take care of this last year and you never did. If your teaching certificate isn’t renewed by the time classes start in September, you won’t be able to teach and I’ll have to hire someone to take your place.”
We were sitting in her office with the door closed. Dorothy was seated behind her big pine desk strewn with folders, barely organized piles of paper, empty Styrofoam cups, an ancient PC with a kitty screen saver, and pictures of grandchildren that looked like miniature clones of her with their strawberry blonde helmet hair and round chubby faces. Dorothy was a robust size fourteen who managed to stuff herself into size twelve clothing with frightening results. I knew I should have been concentrating on what she was saying but all I could do was stare at the center button of her very tight blue blouse that was in danger of popping and putting out my eye.
“Are you listening to me?” she asked, visibly annoyed. I wasn’t in a much better mood myself but managed to suppress a smart-assed reply.
“Sorry. I have to take a class to renew my certificate. Got it.” I was still eyeing the button.
“Well, since it’s already the middle of the summer, you only have two choices. You can take a six week creative teaching methods workshop meeting on Saturday mornings at the community college, or you can take a six week education theory class meeting two evenings a week at Kingford. It’s your choice. Just make sure you pick one of them, okay?”
Neither choice sounded especially appealing, but I nodded my agreement and she turned her attention back to her paperwork indicating that our meeting was over. I wasn’t about to give up a second of my Saturdays for something that wasn’t going to put extra money in my pocket. So the education theory class that met twice a week at Kingford would just have to do. Since today was the last day to register for it, I happily walked out the door early to head over to the registrar’s office at Kingford College.
It was mid July and hot outside, too hot, in my opinion, to walk the four blocks from the literacy center to Kingford’s campus. I hopped into my silver Toyota Celica, popped in a Luther Vandross CD, cranked up the AC, and headed out. Luther’s melodic voice started skipping halfway through “The Power of Love” making me desperately miss my old raggedy blue Nova with its outdated cassette player. A crazy woman, who thought I was after the object of her affection, had trashed the Nova back in the spring. It now resided at Boo Boo’s junkyard on the outskirts of town. My new car was the nicest one I’d ever owned and everything on it worked, most of the time. But I still missed the little blue piece of crap that I’d driven since graduating from college, like a long lost love.
Kingford College was a small liberal arts college with an enrollment of about fifteen hundred students. The records office, where I was headed, was located in Tyler Hall, a gray three-story stone building that used to be the college president’s house back in the thirties. It now housed the records, counseling, and cashier’s offices. I found a parking spot with no problem and was headed towards the building’s wide front steps when I heard someone call my name. It was Ms. Flack.
I watched as she approached and forced a smile. It wasn’t that I was unhappy to see her, but she was carrying what I suspected was a bundle of flyers for her campaign under one arm. I also suspected that offering to help her hand them out would be a nonverbal commitment to helping with her campaign. Ordinarily, I’d be happy to help. But I wasn’t going to have much free time once I signed up for my class and didn’t want to tie up what little bit I had left.
“Hey, girl, what brings you here?” she said with such a friendly smile that I felt bad. She looked cool in a sleeveless white blouse that showed off her golden tan, a pencil slim denim skirt, black leather wedge heeled sandals, and a silver ankle bracelet. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail that hung down her back. She didn’t look much older than the college students playing Frisbee and lounging around the college green on blankets.
“Guess who’s about to be a student again?” I rolled my eyes melodramatically.
“Not little Miss I’m-never-going-back-to-school? Are you finally going to get that Master’s degree I’ve been bugging you about?” She shifted the bundle of flyers to her other arm. I noticed two of her fingertips were bandaged.
“Not a chance. I was told today that if I didn’t take a class I need to have my teaching certificate renewed by fall, I’d be out of a job.”
“Well, I knew some kind of threat had to be involved.” We both laughed.
“What happened to your fingers?” I asked, nodding towards her hand.
“Oh, it’s nothing. My cat, Tamsin, knocked a big can of peas off the shelf onto my fingers and broke two of my nails off to the quick. I won’t be able to see my manicurist until next week.”
“You’re lucky your fingers didn’t get broken. What brings you to campus?”
“I just picked up some flyers I had copied at the student center,” she said when she noticed me looking at the bundle. “I get a discount since I’m an alumni and I need all the help I can get. This campaign is going to cost a fortune and I’m broke. I had to have a new roof put on my house this summer, and I had to by a new car. I make good money but I don’t know where it goes.” She gave me a sulky look, confirming my suspicion that she was expecting me to volunteer to save her the cost of paying campaign workers. Instead of pointing out that maybe all her expensive clothes, shoes, and that new Mercedes might be the cause of her money problems, I changed the subject.
“Hey, what was up with everyone’s weird reaction to Cherisse’s suggestion for a tribute to Julian Spicer. I’d have thought they’d have been all over that, especially Audrey. I mean Julian was tight with all of them back in high school. Did they all have some kind of falling out?”
“You mean you don’t know?” she asked, suddenly somber.
“Know what?”
“Cherisse used to be Julian’s secretary. He fired her the morning of his death.”
“Why?” I’d completely forgotten that Julian had started his own accounting business about a year before he died.
“Apparently, Cherisse either forgot or misplaced an important phone message for Julian from some big company looking for a new accounting firm to oversee their client accounts. By the time Julian
found out, it was too late and he lost out on the job to another, larger firm.”
“Ouch.” I finally understood why everyone had acted so strangely at the meeting.
“Ouch, is right. All of Julian’s friends think that if he hadn’t been so upset over missing out on that account, he wouldn’t have been distracted, lost his footing, and fallen off the roof.”
I shook my head at the thought of Julian’s life cut so short. But for some strange reason, I felt just as bad if not worse for Cherisse. Julian’s fall could have been caused by his being distracted over the missed message, or it could have been caused by something as simple as losing his balance after swatting a fly. Either way, it was unfair of them to blame poor Cherisse for his death. But I wasn’t really surprised Julian’s round table buddies would act the way they did. Back in high school if one of them was mad at you, all of them were mad at you, and they didn’t hesitate to retaliate against anyone who crossed them. I ought to know because I’d been on the receiving end of it once myself. Surely, Cherisse hadn’t forgotten how they were, which made me wonder why in the world she’d volunteered to be on the reunion committee in the first place.
After a few more minutes of small talk with Ms. Flack, and registering for my class, I headed over to Estelle’s, my uncle Alex’s restaurant that I hostess at part-time. All the parking spots in front of the restaurant were taken. So I circled the block once more and finally found a spot about a block down the street. As I approached the restaurant, I spotted my sweetie, Carl Brumfield, standing in front of Estelle’s looking good enough to eat in a dark brown suit and gold tie. Assuming he was waiting for me, I quickened my step but stopped short when I saw that he wasn’t alone. He was with a woman, and not just any woman. Carl was talking and laughing with his ex-wife, Vanessa Brumfield-Carver. Not only was Vanessa Carl’s ex-wife but she’d also graduated from Springmont High School with me and had been a member of the infamous round table gang. In fact, she was Audrey Grant’s best friend. I did not need this.
As I approached I could see that Vanessa looked like she’d put on a little weight since the last time I’d seen her, which shouldn’t have made me happy but did. She was laughing so hard at something Carl was saying that she was in danger of having a seizure. I rolled my eyes. I knew my man had a wicked sense of humor on occasion but he was hardly Eddie Murphy. I couldn’t think of a single thing he’d ever said to me to elicit such a response. Phony cow. But, Carl, being a typical man and enjoying having his ego stroked, grinned goofily, making me put an extra pep in my step. Before I could even open my mouth to call out a greeting, they turned and headed off together down the street in the opposite direction. They hadn’t even noticed me. They appeared to be in their own little world and were practically skipping down the street. Okay, I’m exaggerating about the skipping…a lot. But did I mention I didn’t need this?
I ended up at my grandmother’s for dinner that night. That hadn’t been my plan but I was so annoyed about seeing Carl and Vanessa together I drove around trying to clear my head. It’s not that I don’t trust Carl; I do, mostly. And it’s not as if I’ve been one hundred percent true blue myself. It was Vanessa that I didn’t trust. Plus, I couldn’t understand how Carl could be so chummy with a woman who’d left him high and dry after her father offered her money to end her marriage to Carl, whose skin color didn’t agree with him. It didn’t take a psychology degree to figure out she never loved him.
Even though Vanessa had recently remarried a bank manager named Drew Carver, who I’d had a disastrous blind date with last year, I fully believed that Vanessa was out for anything and anybody who could improve her standard of living. In other words, she was a gold digging ho. I went to Frisch’s Big Boy for a Chocolate therapy session a.k.a hot fudge cake but realized I used the last little bit of cash I had to pay for my class. I ended up at Mama’s, instead.
“Is something wrong with you or the meatloaf?” Mama nodded towards my barely touched dinner plate.
“Sorry, I’m just lost in space.” I put a forkful of Mama’s heavenly meatloaf in my mouth. I’m not being heavy-handed with the adjectives, either. Estelle’s was named after Mama, and she gave my uncle Alex many of her recipes to use when he started his restaurant. Mama’s Heavenly Meatloaf was one of the most popular items on the menu.
“Are you worried about the trial?” she asked softly. “You know that trial may never see the light of day, baby.” She squeezed my hand.
The trial she was referring to was the upcoming trial of Stephanie Preston, a woman who murdered a popular former actress, and in an attempt to cover her tracks, had kidnapped my best friend, Lynette, and me and tried to kill us both as well. The trial had been scheduled for fall. But Stephanie Preston had been badly burned during her attempted murder of Lynette and me and was in and out of the hospital due to her injuries. Last I’d heard she wasn’t doing well at all. It had been a while since I’d even thought about the trial but I didn’t want to talk about Carl to Mama. So, I nodded my head pitifully.
“Don’t worry. It’ll all be okay. I’ve got cheesecake for dessert,” she said like food was the answer to all my problems. Ah, how well she knew me. Over dessert I told her about my upcoming class and how badly the reunion committee meeting had gone.
“Oh, it couldn’t have been that bad.”
“No, a root canal isn’t that bad. That meeting was brutal.”
“Oh, quit exaggerating,” she said, chuckling.
“You weren’t there. It was déjà vu. Nerdy Kendra up against the popular kids.”
“But you’re all grown folks now,” she reasoned.
“Grown, yes. Mature, hardly.”
“And since when is being a nerd a crime. You don’t see Bill Gates whining about it do you?”
“Bad example. I wouldn’t be whining, either, if I had his billions. And technically, he’s a geek not a nerd.” I noticed that even my own grandmother couldn’t deny that I was a nerd.
“Oh, hush. You may not have run around with those popular kids but you had lots of friends and you were in all those clubs.”
I nodded my head to show I was paying attention to her vigorous defense of my high school credentials, like being in the library and science clubs was proof of how cool I really was deep, deep down inside. But I’d drifted off into outer space again. Thinking about science club reminded me of how I’d been madly in love with Mr. Fields, my science teacher.
Mr. Fields had been in his early twenties and a serious geek but he was cute and funny and pretty cool as far as teachers went. He let me work for him during my study hall hour and I and ran copies and errands and helped him clean the science lab. We were friends and I could talk to him and about music and movies because we weren’t that far apart in age and had similar tastes. I think he knew I had a crush on him and thought it was cute.
Then towards the end of that year, before finals and graduation, I made a huge mistake. Audrey Grant, or Fry as she’d been back then, cornered me in the bathroom one day and asked me to get her a copy of Mr. Fields’ science final. She dangled an invitation to her graduation party in front of my face. As much as I wanted to go that party, I just couldn’t do that to Mr. Fields or the rest of the kids in the class, like me, who’d actually studied for the test. I lied and told Audrey I didn’t have access to the test. She was not happy, and if she wasn’t happy, neither was the rest of the round table gang.
Suddenly, I was a girl with a target on her back. Someone spray painted the word bitch on my locker in neon pink paint. A week after that, someone filled my backpack with dog shit. I found cigarette butts in my food at lunch and I couldn’t walk the halls or sit in class without a member of the round table spitting hockers or flipping rubber bands at me or trying to trip me. There were prank calls to my house. And I won’t even discuss the vicious rumor that circulated that I’d had a secret abortion over Spring Break and didn’t know who the baby’s father was. If it had just been Audrey, I could have ended the abuse by way of my fist to her f
ace. But I didn’t stand a chance against the whole gang. There were about a dozen of them. They were like the mafia, powerful, all knowing, and all seeing. The dweebs willing to do anything they asked to get into their good graces were legion. Me not cooperating wasn’t something they were used to.
At age 29 I can think of ways I could have handled the situation differently, but at 17, I just wanted to curl up and die. Finally, after a few weeks of torture, I gave in and gave Audrey a copy of the test. The abuse ended immediately and so did my job with Mr. Fields. He never confronted me but he sent me back to study hall confirming to me that he knew or at least suspected what I’d done. I felt lower than crap. As for Audrey and her crew, they acted like nothing ever happened and that I no longer existed. I wasn’t invited to her party, not that I’d have gone. I would bet money that even today if I asked any of them about it, they’d act like they didn’t know what the hell I was talking about.
After eating two pieces of cheesecake, I headed home to my duplex on Dorset. Usually my elderly landlady, Mrs. Carson, would be sitting regally on her front porch with her Siamese cat, Mahalia. But Mrs. Carson had been dragged, kicking and screaming, on a Caribbean cruise for her birthday by her kids and would be gone for ten days. I had no idea who was watching Mahalia. And since the cat didn’t like me, and had almost killed me once already, I didn’t care. I pulled up the same time as Carl. He smiled his panty-melting smile when he spotted me and I had to suppress the urge to scowl at him. After all, I’d only seen Vanessa stroking his ego, not the part of him that she’d given up rights to when they’d split up.
“Don’t I even get a kiss?” he asked, interrupting my thoughts and following me to my front door. I turned and gave him a quick peck on the lips. Once inside, he pulled me close.