NOW

To: “Ambrosia Wellington” a.wellington@wesleyan.edu

From: “Wesleyan Alumni Committee” reunion.classof2007@gmail.com

Subject: Class of 2007 Reunion

Dear Ambrosia Wellington,

Friday is registration day! Check out the official weekend schedule here so that you don’t miss a thing. When you check in at Usdan, you’ll be able to pick up your meal tickets, itinerary, and key cards to your dorm room.

We look forward to seeing you for the start of what will be an unforgettable weekend.

Sincerely,

Your Alumni Committee

I wanted to drop out of Wesleyan during my first year. I could have started fresh at a different school, or even joined Billie at Miami University. But it would have looked suspicious. So I stayed, and I let my grades plummet until my overall average was in danger of putting me on academic probation. By sophomore year, I refocused and committed to the original reason I applied to Wesleyan—theater, not boys—and felt idiotic for letting myself veer so far off course. It wasn’t too late, I told myself. Except when it was time to declare my major, I didn’t have the requirements I needed or the motivation to follow through.

“I realized acting isn’t for me,” I told Hadley and Heather instead of the truth. They knew about Dorm Doom but either didn’t believe the rumors or were too ensconced in their student-athlete bubble to care.

And there was another reason I stayed. He wasn’t coming back—I knew that—but maybe Sully could.

But now, arriving in Middletown, with Adrian easing our rental car into V Lot off Vine Street, I wish I had transferred anywhere else. I wouldn’t have this rock in my stomach, this heavy thing pressing down on my insides. Why now? I keep wondering. Why ten years?

“Nice,” Adrian says as we enter campus behind the Nics and walk toward the crest of Foss Hill. “This place has a good vibe. If I had gone here, I definitely would have been inspired to finish school.”

I roll my eyes behind my sunglasses. Sometimes he wears his college-dropout status as a badge of honor. If his novel ever gets published—if he ever manages to start it, much less finish it—he’ll tell everyone that he doesn’t even have a college education, implying that he was too gifted to need one.

“Yeah,” I say. “Everything is nice here.”

Campus is teeming with people. Several class reunions are happening this weekend, along with commencement on Sunday. I watch the graduates with their parents, who snap photos of the Van Vleck Observatory and the campus panorama from Foss Hill like tourists. I stare at lazy sprawls of girls and wonder who did the worst thing and who struggled to keep up.

Foss Hill offers an unfettered view of Andrus Field, with the back side of Olin cast in shade. Olin was always my favorite building on campus, stately and proud. I’ve wondered so often what would have happened if I hadn’t been there the day I met Kevin.

“Is that where you watched football games?” Adrian asks. It’s a legitimate question, but I just laugh.

“Football wasn’t a big thing,” I say. We played other games.

“So where were your dorms?” Adrian says. “I’m still bummed we can’t stay there. Justin said they all got rooms. I guess they can’t assign roommates, but they try to put you near people you know.”

“It’s too bad it didn’t work out,” I say. “I’ll give you the full tour later.”

I lead Adrian into Usdan. People are milling everywhere, clustered in knots. I expect them to recognize who I am. Some of them turned on me after it happened, dog-piled on the AW thread on the ACB—the Anonymous Confession Board, where spores of gossip bred into battlefields. Some of them swore it was my fault, somehow, or even me who did it. Others just know I did something.

We wait in line to register. Tara Rollins is across the lobby, her hair twisted into a milkmaid braid she can’t pull off. I grab my phone out of my purse and send a text to Hadley and Heather. Are you guys here?

“Ambrosia.” I whip around. It’s not Sully, of course—she would never call me by my full name. It’s Lauren. In second semester of freshman year, she started a rumor about what I did at the Double Feature party. I never hung out with her again, but here she is, leaning in for a hug.

“Hey. Lauren. Good to see you.” I’m surprised at how easily my voice slips into the fakeness I cultivated here.

She pulls away, her smile wider than it ever was back then. She’s faking too. “I was literally just thinking about you and wondering what you’ve been up to. I thought I sent you an invite to the group I made on Facebook, but maybe you never got it.”

Maybe you never sent it. I shrug, flashing back to the Hamptons weekend and my non-invite. Lauren’s power was always exclusion, her tool a chisel used to shape the group and excise the fat. Speaking of which—she has put on a good deal of weight since I last saw her, a fact I let myself feel smug about.

“This is my husband, Adrian.” He enthusiastically pumps her hand. Adrian is all about first impressions. He must have read somewhere that a strong handshake means everyone will like you.

“Hey,” he says. “It’s so cool to meet more of Amb’s friends.”

Thankfully, Lauren doesn’t correct him.

“Nice to meet you, Adrian. I should go find my husband. I met him here, actually,” she says, turning to me. “We were just friends, though. Do you remember Jonah Belford?”

“I don’t think so. But that’s great.”

I do remember Jonah Belford, or more accurately, I remember the night we spent together sophomore year, both of us wasted at a WestCo naked party. I had expected to see Sully there—she never used to miss any event where the dress code was no clothes—but instead I found Jonah, or he found me, telling me I had a great body. We ended up in his room, where he asked me about Dorm Doom while he was still inside me. “Come on. Is it true?” he grunted. “You can tell me.”

“Yeah, we’re doing well,” Lauren says. “How did you two meet?”

Adrian takes a deep breath, ready to thank the Internet, but I cut him off. “It’s a long story. Maybe we can catch up later.” I can’t handle any more of Lauren’s act—nice suits her as badly as it suited me. Mercifully, it’s almost our turn to register and pick up our itinerary and the name tags I don’t plan on wearing.

“Definitely,” says Lauren. “I’m sure we’ll see lots of each other. Oh, hang on, I have to show you the kids. We have three. And I never used to think I wanted any.” She whips out her phone and swipes through pictures. Three blond heads, each one slightly smaller than the next. “Between these guys and my job, I swear, I solve other people’s problems all day.”

“What do you do for a living?” Adrian asks. He’s playing into what she wants—an excuse to brag. I already know what Lauren does for a living because I creeped her on Facebook years ago. She’s a psychologist in Brooklyn. There’s a Dr. in front of her name. The thought of Lauren inside anybody’s head is enough to serrate my skin.

“I’m a psychologist,” Lauren says. “I work with kids, mostly.”

The kids makes me snap to attention. That was Flora’s dream. Lauren was always so drawn to Flora. Maybe because Flora made her feel special in a way that nobody else did.

“That’s so cool,” Adrian says. “I love kids. I can’t wait to be a dad.” I wish he would stop talking.

“Hopefully soon,” Lauren says pointedly. As if the problem—of course, she sees a problem—lies with me. I want to defend myself, defend us, but she doesn’t give me a chance. “I almost forgot. Guess who’s here?”

Don’t say her name, I want to demand, but I’m not even sure which her I’m referring to. “Who?”

“Ella. I mean, I knew she was coming, but wait till you see her. She looks incredible. And Gemma, apparently she was in an episode of Grey’s Anatomy. Isn’t that amazing?”

I nod. “Amazing.” Lauren is pushing my buttons because she can. Because she knows Gemma graduated as a theater major, and I didn’t.

I turn toward the lady at the folding table in front of us. “Ambrosia and Adrian Turner,” I say.

“Ambrosia. What a lovely name. Oh, there you are. I have you in Nicolson Hall. Here’s your key cards, welcome packet, meal tickets, and an updated schedule for the weekend. Don’t forget to fill out your name tags.”

“No, we’re not in the Nics,” I say. “We’re staying at a hotel.”

She peers at the paper on the table, creases forming near her hairline. “Not according to what’s here, sweetie.”

I rub my hands against my jeans. “There must be some kind of mistake.”

The lady laughs. “With a name like yours, I doubt there are many mistakes.”

Adrian is already reaching for the key cards. “Awesome. We can cancel the hotel, babe. You must have booked this and forgot about it.” That’s the thing about Adrian. He never considered I wasn’t telling the truth when I told him the dorms were full. Just like he doesn’t know I’m lying now.

“I don’t—” I begin, but there’s a line building behind us and Lauren is still lingering, amused. “Fine. Let’s just go.”

The Nics isn’t Dorm Doom. I lived there sophomore year and appreciated the inner door between me and my roommate, a redhead named Veronica who wore only rock T-shirts, Jim Morrison’s face stretched across her boobs, and called everyone “dude.” Nothing especially memorable happened to me there, but suddenly it’s all too much. I turn around, looking for an empty corner, an exit strategy, and that’s when I lock eyes with the person I really didn’t want to see.

Flora Banning doesn’t say anything to me. Her mouth is curved upward, her face porcelain, her hair the same white blond, pushed off her forehead with a headband.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” I murmur, but quietly enough that even Adrian can’t hear it.

“You okay, Amb?” he says. “We should go get our stuff and get unpacked.”

My throat is dry. It’s a staring contest between me and Flora and she won’t look away first, so finally I do.

“I’m fine,” I manage, reaching for his hand. “Let’s get out of here.”

When I turn around, Flora is watching us. Watching me.