Ten Years Later

by Lisa Marie Latino

  “The thought of facing everyone tomorrow night with my future hanging in the balance is making me sick, and it’s been making me sick ever since you sent out those save-the-dates.”

  “So, what? It’s my fault now?”

  “No. This has nothing to do with you.”

  “Do you think I wanted to stay up to listen to you and Dante during the overnight shows? Of course not, but I wanted to support my friends because that’s what a good person does. I expect the same respect out of you.”

  “Because I don’t feel like waxing poetic on Mrs. James’ 7th period Home Ec class with my classmates, it makes me disrespectful?”

  “No, but I’m starting to think Dante raised some valid points with you.”

  My rage started to boil over the surface. “Oh, did he?”

  “Guys, stop…” Andrea hushed.

  “I’m stopping,” I hissed.

  Andrea bowed her head in defeat, and Katie looked out the window, tears quietly streaming down her cheek. I said nothing and left the room.

  24

  Day 322

  Thank God I made my executive decision about the reunion because I barely slept a wink. My back felt so stiff, I might as well have been lying on an airport tarmac instead of my normally comfortable bed (not to mention my ankle was still creaky). If I wasn’t tossing and turning, or thinking nightmarish thoughts, I was checking my phone to see if my rapidly-growing list of frenemies tried contacting me. However, my phone was crickets.

  My lowest point of the night came when I decided to do some reminiscing. I sifted through the piles of clothes that had accumulated on my closet floor over the past couple hectic months, and located my high school photo albums.

  I started with senior prom. I cringed at Katie’s pale green frock with embroidered flowers; I shook my head at Andrea’s slinky black dress that had cutouts around her waist and a long slit up the center; I frowned when I saw Dante in his tux, singing on stage with his band; and I slammed the book shut when saw myself in my deep pink ball gown. I grabbed the next photo album—senior prom weekend—and continued to overdose on bittersweet nostalgia. As the sun started peeking through my window, I finally dozed off for a couple hours.

  I bummed around in my room the whole morning and early afternoon. Last night, I told my parents in passing that I was off, but I didn’t dare divulge details of my latest work and personal drama. Instead, I chalked my random day off to the reunion—I was helping Katie set up, and Dante was getting his band ready. But it was already 1 p.m. In a couple of hours, my cover would be blown once my parents got home, and I’d have no choice but to fess up.

  My body started to get the shakes, so I threw on my robe and shuffled downstairs to make some brunch. Usually, depression is a great precursor for weight loss (Lord knows I need it…I’m up three pounds this week!), but I wanted nothing more than to be face-down in a stack of fresh blueberry pancakes, warm butter, and a sea of maple syrup.

  My flapjack dreams flopped at the sight of my mother sprawled on the couch. Oh man, what is she doing home? In her presence, I couldn’t indulge in my craving; I had to settle for an egg white omelet. Worse, my cover had been blown, and I now had to quickly put together a story.

  Except…Mom didn’t notice I was there. And as I walked closer, I saw that she was…crying?

  “What’s wrong, Mom?” I shrilled. Panic swept through my body. Did something happen to Dad? Jimmy? Grandma Teresa? Or did the station make their announcement that I was out of a job, and it hit her Google Alerts?

  “Oh Carla, I’m sorry you had to see me like this,” she cried, shielding her face.

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, I just get down sometimes, since…since…”

  “Since what?”

  “Since I lost my son!” Mom wailed.

  I rubbed my temples. I knew she’s been in a slight depression ever since the wedding, but I hadn’t seen her like this. “Mom, you didn’t lose Jimmy,” I said through rolled eyes.

  She waved me off. “Oh, yes I did. He barely stops by to see me, yet goes to Gwen’s parents every weekend for dinner. It’s always like that…you become closer to the girl’s family, and the boy’s side is forgotten about.”

  “There are always exceptions,” I said pointedly. “Look at Everybody Loves Raymond.”

  “I know you wish you were married and out of the house, but enjoy your youth while you still can,” Mom sniffled. “Believe it or not, one day you are going to get married, have kids…and then see them get married and LEAVE YOU!”

  Through her dramatics, she had a point. Here I was in the prime of my life without the burden of any real responsibilities. Yet instead of enjoying it, I was miserable.

  Instead of being ashamed of my situation, I should consider it a blessing that I was bestowed extra time to sow my oats, figure myself out, and follow my heart’s desires. Who cares if I don’t have a job on Monday? I’ve accomplished just as much as my peers have, just in a non-textbook way. I still get to call my own shots, which is the biggest success of all.

  And what better way to celebrate my freedom tonight, at the reunion?

  “Thanks, Mom,” I said, hugging her.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “For helping me see how lucky I am.”

  My mother smiled through her tears. “I love you, baby. By the way, how is your ankle?”

  “I love you too mom. And it’s perfect.”

  ■ ■ ■

  I dusted off Britney Spears’ In the Zone album (my favorite album from my high school years) and placed it in my stereo, a motion I haven’t done in years. Who would have thought that the CD would become obsolete in less than a decade?

  “Showdown” blasted from my speakers. I laughed as I remembered putting on my old prom dress to this very song ten years earlier. I sang off-key to the lyrics and danced around my room: “Here comes the showdown/What goes around comes around/And the crowds are waiting.” Britney was the epitome of fun, sexiness, and independence. Then she got married, had a couple kids, and things went downhill for a while. See where selling your soul for a “textbook life” can potentially land you?

  Battling Britney for my attention was the New York Yankees game playing on my television screen. The random flashes of Miguel still gave me butterflies, but it was the dreadful, bad kind I wanted nothing to do with. Loser.

  When the clock struck seven, I stepped into my junior prom dress—a deep purple, strapless, A-line gown. It had a sweetheart neckline, a fitted bodice, an asymmetrical waist, rhinestone accents and a laced up back. My hair cascaded down my back in soft, loose curls and my makeup was perfectly applied, thanks to Olga & Co. fitting me in for a last-minute appointment at Mona Lisa Salon. If I had to get ready with a rugrat wrapped around my leg that never would have happened!

  I studied myself closely in the mirror. Ten years later, I didn’t look all that different, and my face still had a smooth, youthful appearance.

  I checked my cell phone. It was now ten after seven, and I imagined the gym quickly filling up with bodies. I shut off my TV and stereo, grabbed my silver clutch, and raced to Honey Crest High School.

  ■ ■ ■

  My heart pounded as I walked through the familiar concrete maze that lead up to the gymnasium. With each step, a million different memories flooded my mind.

  When I entered the old, rundown gym, I gasped. Katie had turned the space into an elegant masterpiece. Brown and gold balloons completely covered the scruffy hardwood floor. Dramatic yellow and purple uplighting decorated the plain brick walls. A huge disco ball, covered with twinkling lights, hung from the high ceiling. The room’s usual musty scent was masked by the sweet smell of flowers that decorated the center of each round, gold cloth-covered table.

  On stage was Dante’s Inferno, and Dante’s singing filled the air. My slideshow looped silently behind them on a jumbo projection screen. As much as I couldn’t stand the sight of him (and cringed at the sound of the very voice that had eff
ectively ruined my career), his stage presence still grabbed me. I closed my eyes to take in his lyrics:

  “She hides behind abstract dreams,

  Nothing she says is what it seems.

  When it gets too real,

  She runs away,

  so she can’t feel,

  And he’s left behind, again.”

  “Thank you,” he said as he finished the song to thunderous applause. He and his bandmates exited the stage, and the DJ immediately threw on some Timbaland song.

  I went by the open bar set up in the back of the gym to locate my girlfriends, specifically Katie. Neither of them had any idea I had decided to come after all. But before I could move, somebody tapped my shoulder. I turned around to see a tall, balding man with glasses hover over me.

  “Carla D’Agostino! I love your show!”

  I jogged my memory to figure out who this guy was, but I came up blank. Before I could answer, I was swarmed by my former classmates while multiple camera flashes attacked my eyes.

  “Can we take a picture?”

  “Can I have your autograph?”

  “How is your ankle?! I saw what happened in the paper!”

  “You look so pretty on those billboards!”

  This was the moment I had wished for, to be the belle of the ball. I humbly accepted my classmates’ adoration, graciously answered everyone’s questions, and happily posed for pictures.

  “Carla!” A familiar voice rose over the crowd. I saw a very concerned Katie pushing everyone out of the way to get to me.

  I broke away from my fan club. “Katie!” I shrieked, engulfing her in a huge hug. “I’m so sorry about yesterday—”

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  That was not the reaction I was expecting. “Would you rather me go home?”

  “We need to talk.” She gripped my arm and led me into the girl’s bathroom, which still had the same stench of disgusting stale cigarettes it had ten years ago.

  “Katie, what is going on?”

  “Hold on.” I watched her pick up her pale green dress past her ankles and swiftly looked under each stall.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I chuckled.

  “I had to make sure we were alone,” Katie breathed.

  “Why? Do you plan on killing me or seducing me?”

  “I don’t know how to tell you this…” Katie said in near tears.

  Now I started to grow worried. “What?”

  Katie took a deep breath. “Mark Falcone is here.”

  I had done such a good job purging myself from that horrific name that at first her words did not compute. “My Mark Falcone?” I repeated, confused.

  “YOUR Mark Falcone.”

  I felt like a thousand knives were stabbing me up and down my body. Instinctively, my right hand gripped the sink to hold myself steady. Katie and everything else around us started to fade away.

  “Are you okay?” Katie worriedly asked.

  I grabbed the other side of the sink with my free hand and faced the mirror. My expression was one of confusion, anger, and fear. I had never seen my face contorted like this.

  I slowly turned to Katie. “He didn’t even go to this school,” I roar.

  “Remember Mary Cochman, one of the people you couldn’t find on Facebook? You couldn’t find her because she now goes by Mare Cox, she is an infomercial model, and that is who Mark left you for. They are now married with a kid.”

  I couldn’t even begin to process the information Katie had thrown at me.

  “How do you know this?” I asked, feeling faint.

  “I was at the bar, and she came up to get a drink. I had no idea who she was, and after we had started talking, he appeared next to her.”

  “You SAW him?! He TALKED to you?! YOU TALKED BACK?!”

  “He acted as if he didn’t know who I was. Carla, I appreciate your wanting to surprise me, but I sure wish you had called so I could have warned—”

  “I’ll be right back,” I interrupted, and ran out of the bathroom.

  25

  I rushed into the dark, vacant trophy room and sat down on the windowsill. Unfortunately, this room was no stranger to many of these moments in my heartbreak history. It was here where I’d flipped out to Katie and Andrea for two hours over John Vargas’s not giving me the time of day at the freshman formal… and where I got dumped by Nick Voss at our sophomore pep rally for “not putting out”… and where I saw my crush, Al Monroe, walk into the basketball state championship game holding hands with some underclassman senior year.

  In other words…ten years later, my story was exactly the same.

  Of all the reunion scenarios I had conjured up the past year, this wasn’t even a blip on my radar. Mark Falcone was dead to me; he ran off with some virtual hooker, and it might as well have been to Mars because I sure as hell wasn’t going to chase him. His actions still hurt me to this day, but I never mourned the loss of him. What was there to be upset over? He was a boy playing in a man’s clothing.

  But now he had risen, and I had a front-row seat to the story of his afterlife—that is, if I wanted to watch.

  Did I?

  Dizzy, I pushed myself off the windowsill and started walking towards the gym so I could say goodbye to Katie. I had no interest in learning about his life after me. I’d had my little fun being the resident celebrity here; now as far as I was concerned, there was nothing left for me and the night was over.

  The gym door swung open, startling me. When I looked up at the culprit, my face probably reflected those who saw Christ floating in the sky three days after he was nailed to the cross—because stumbling towards me was my first love and his wife. They were laughing wildly, clearly drunk, and had no idea they had company.

  Mark stopped laughing and nudged his wife.

  “Carlaaaa, hi! It’s been soooo long! ” “Mare Cox” slurred, throwing her arms around me.

  I didn’t respond. I just stared at Mark with a look that could break rock, and he guiltily looked away.

  Time (or karma) had not been kind to him. The California sun (and who knows what else?) had aged Mark to look more on the wrong side of 40 than 20. Deep wrinkles were etched into his forehead, and even in the limited lighting coming from the security bulbs outside, I could see his light brown hair was peppered with gray. The goatee he sported did little to conceal the wear and tear on his skin. It actually made it worse.

  I had spent many nights immediately after our breakup wondering if I was going to get a chance to get closure on the situation. However, as time passed, so did my yearning for a tidy ending. A breakup of this magnitude didn’t deserve to be packaged in a neat red bow; it just needed to be buried six feet under.

  But here it was, the face-off. What was I supposed to do now?

  I shifted my gaze to Mare. To use my sensitive friend Andrea’s words, Mare was the definition of “genetically-challenged” back in the day. Her mousey brown hair was always a greasy mess she wore bottlenose glasses to match; and she enjoyed the cafeteria lunch buffet a little too much, to put it mildly.

  But I’m guessing she robbed a bank, ordered “the works” from Heidi Montag’s plastic surgeon, and had her entire anatomy orifice nipped, tucked, sucked, and contoured. Her hair was now a brilliant shade of blonde. D-cups sat perkily on her chest, and her legs looked like two toothpicks coming out of her jean jumpsuit (did she read the invitation noting “formal attire”?) She was a Barbie Doll wannabe…that is if Barbie worked as a day-shift stripper at the Bada Bing.

  Mare stumbled around the room before running over to the trophy case. To my shock, horror, and utter amusement, she channeled Miley Cyrus and started humping the display.

  “I can’t wait to do this all night, Mark, uh-huh!” she grunted.

  Classy.

  Mark walked over to me. “I think about you every day,” Mark whispered. (Or at least, I think that’s what he said. It was hard to hear anything over his wife’s guttural moans.)

  I snapped
my neck towards him. “Don’t you even dare.”

  “I miss you so much,” he continued.

  I looked away and saw his wife simulate oral sex on a trophy she grabbed off a shelf.

  “You got everything you deserved,” I sneered, and left Mark to tame his wife, who was now pretending to get penetrated from behind by the trophy while fondling her plastic boobs.

  I decided to not even go back into the gym; I just wanted to go home…NOW. I’d explain everything to my girlfriends tomorrow.

  By the time I closed my car door, my emotions had bubbled to the surface, and I became a hysterical crying mess. Seeing Mark was the straw that broke the camel’s back; this week had been too much to take. I rested my head on the steering wheel and bawled in agony for what seemed like hours.

  After the initial tears had subsided, I opened my glove compartment to grab some tissues. As I rummaged through the mess of receipts, tampons, and PBA cards, I noticed a small box wrapped in silver paper. What the hell was this?

  I tore off the paper to reveal a little jewelry box. I opened it, and inside was a pretty flat silver heart covered with tiny diamonds. I flipped the pendant over to the other side... and my world stopped.

  Inside the heart was a picture of Dante and me from when we were kids, both with huge, toothless grins on our faces, holding each other tightly. We couldn’t have been more than seven years old.

  Where did this come….ohhhhh. Dante had gotten me in the Christmas grab bag, that’s where it came from. I had been so pissed that my friends framed me that day, that I completely disregarded his gift!

  Guilt then washed over me. This was such a beautiful, thoughtful gesture, and I never even said thank you. He probably thought I threw it away.

  I noticed that there was a small folded piece of paper taped to the inside of the box. I carefully removed it, and revealed a letter written in Dante’s chicken scratch handwriting:

  Carla,

  You don’t know how much it has been killing me to not have you in my life. This may not be the best time to tell you this, but I need to finally come clean with the truth...for as long as I could remember, I have been in love with you.