NOW
To: “Ambrosia Wellington” a.wellington@wesleyan.edu
From: “Wesleyan Alumni Committee” reunion.classof2007@gmail.com
Subject: Class of 2007 Reunion
Dear Ambrosia Wellington,
Join us at Russell House for a picnic lunch and games on the lawn. It’s the first official gathering to kick off the weekend, so come hungry—and armed with your best campus stories. We all have them, so don’t hold back!
Sincerely,
Your Alumni Committee
Sully stands on our balcony, staring into the trees separating us from Vine Street. “Did you see the girls?”
“Not yet. Just Lauren. She got fat.” It’s mean, but maybe I never stopped being mean. Sully just draws it out of me like poison.
Sully laughs and lights a cigarette. “She was always fat. But no, I mean the girls. The grads. They look so young. I can’t believe it used to be us.”
But it wasn’t us. By then, our friendship was long over.
“I was sure you sent the note,” I say. “But if it wasn’t you and wasn’t me, there’s someone else it could have been. Felty.”
She taps her finger on her cigarette. “Felty. He had a hard-on for solving crimes. Do you think he’s still a cop?”
“Yeah, he’s still a cop in Middletown. He got promoted to captain a few years ago.”
“He put on a tough front,” Sully says. “But he’s, like, a big teddy bear.”
I shake my head, the breeze rippling my hair. There was nothing remotely cuddly about Felty. “He hated me. I could see him snapping.”
I’ve had the same nightmare ever since I googled Felty, the one where he comes for me. I wake up rigid, arms at my sides like a corpse, not sweating or thrashing in my sheets, and it makes me wonder if that’s how it would be if he did come for me. If I’d be all out of fight.
“I don’t think he hated you,” Sully says. “He wanted to fuck you.”
“You thought every guy wanted to fuck me.”
“Well, most of them did.” She holds my gaze. “I forgot how much fun you used to be.” I need to look away—I should look away—but I’m transfixed by the version of myself I see in her glass-green eyes.
There’s a knock at the door and even though it’s Adrian, I jump, and so does Sully. Just for a second, her hand grazes mine, and we’re eighteen again.
“I couldn’t find the charger. It must be in your bag,” Adrian says when I let him in. “I got a text from Monty. They’re going to the picnic now, so we should head over too.”
Suddenly I want to get out of this room, away from Sully and her magnetic pull and this looming threat, this black cloud. Hadley and Heather are safe. They knew the girl I became after Sully. They know who I am now.
“I’ll walk over with you,” Sully says, putting a hand on my back. “I’m starving. And this way we can catch up some more.”
“Sure,” I say, even though there’s no catching up to do. The notes are all we have in common. Two pieces of card stock tying us back together.
“Sounds great,” Adrian says. “I bet you guys have some good stories. I’m dying to know what Amb was like.”
Adrian carries the conversation on our walk to Russell House, keeping us from plummeting into dead silence. He wants to know everything about teenage me, and even though there’s so much Sully could say, she doesn’t give my truth away. “Amb was the only girl who could keep up with me,” she tells him. “The best kind of friend.”
I would have given anything to hear her say that back then. Sully didn’t show affection like most people. There were no mugs, no Best or Friend, no declarations.
To get to Russell House from the Nics, we have to walk past Jackson Field through the Center for the Arts, a series of haphazard concrete trolls punctuated by green space where we would sometimes sit at night, drunk or high, and stare at the sky. Tour guides loved to tell prospective students that the buildings were constructed in their strange configurations to avoid cutting down the trees that were there first. That was Wesleyan, always wanting to save the world but filled with girls who couldn’t save themselves from it.
We see Flora, behind a bunch of grads in front of the CFA Theater. She stares at us over the sea of heads. Sully doesn’t look. Part of me wants to stop and say something to her, but I don’t have the words. In an alternate reality, where Flora wasn’t so nice, I might believe the notes were her doing, a modern-day take on the Post-its—the ones I always assumed were passive-aggressive—that colored our doors. But I know she isn’t capable of something like that.
Russell House is beautiful, all pillars and class. Big white tents are set up on the green space. People are sitting on the lawn in knots, talking and laughing, relaxed and happy. I don’t fit in here, and I never did.
“Do you want to eat with us?” Adrian asks Sully. “We’re meeting some other friends. You’re welcome to join.”
“Thanks,” Sully says. “But I’m supposed to meet some of the theater crew. I haven’t seen them since the last time I was in LA. I’ll see you guys back at the room later, okay?” She’s wearing sunglasses so I can’t see her eyes, but I wonder if she said that to hurt me, because she still knows how to cut. The theater crew. I’m not one of them.
But I don’t have time to analyze it, because Hadley and Justin are suddenly in front of us holding paper plates bearing cheeseburgers. “You guys made it!” Hads says, her freckled snub nose crinkling up. “No surprise, but the food is just as bad as it always was. Nice to know MoCon lives on.”
I’m relieved to see Hads. She’s easy to breathe around, with her go-with-the-flow attitude, her presence a welcome relaxation. That’s what drew me to her, after Dorm Doom, and she came with Heather, so I managed to make two friends without much effort. The hungry need to impress them was never there. I can see Heather now, her curls enviously glossy against her deep brown skin, laughing and taking to some other girls. Adrian is already throwing a Frisbee with Justin—good. I let myself breathe. There isn’t any danger here.
“We’re sitting over there.” Hads points to a red picnic blanket. “Justin and Monty have already started pregaming. They don’t want to admit that we can’t drink like we used to.”
I laugh obligingly, grateful but annoyed to be lumped into her we. Hads acted like she was so drunk every time she exceeded two beers. She and Heather used to get up for early-morning tennis practice almost every day, tiptoeing out the door while I slept. I never saw either of them do drugs or even talk about them. I never tried to corrupt them. I had learned my lesson by then.
When Hadley heads back, I make my way over to the white tents and grab a paper plate. It’s a buffet, with burgers and hot dogs under silver domes, heaping bowls of pasta salad and potato salad protected from bugs by mosquito netting. I take a burger that looks more like a hockey puck.
“Ambrosia Wellington.” Hearing my name like that, so slow and deliberate, makes me think of the envelope, the careful lettering. I turn around and don’t recognize this woman at first, and she must know it, because mercifully she introduces herself.
“Ella. I know, I look really different.”
I try not to show her my shock. Ella, the girl I saw my pre-Wesleyan self in but pretended not to. Ella is the one who witnessed what Sully and I did, even though she didn’t know we did it.
I help myself to putty-colored pasta salad that I won’t actually eat. “Ella. Wow, great to see you. You look amazing.”
It’s not a lie. Gone are the baby fat, the chubby trim around her face, the softness of her arms, the tacky clothes. She’s all wires and sinew, and her hair is blond where it used to be dark.
“Thanks.” She touches her bangs. I’m not the first to give her the compliment. Her fingernails are perfect ovals, dark red polish. Somebody that precise pays attention to detail.
Ella disappeared from my life after freshman year. I stopped seeing her on campus and stopped thinking about her altogether. She faded away, a ghost in jeans that never fit right and those god-awful clogs she used to wear, the ones I could perpetually hear clomping down the halls of Butts C.
“What have you been up to?” she says. “God, can you believe we’re in our thirties now? I’m an environmental lawyer. A partner now, actually. How about you?”
Lauren became a child psychologist. Ella is an environmental lawyer. I picture them having lunch with Flora, each of them committed to saving the world.
“That’s great.” I shuffle down the line, grabbing a Diet Coke from a cooler. “I’m in PR. In Manhattan.” I’m not sure why I add in Manhattan, or why I’m trying to impress Ella at all.
“We’re not far away, then. I’m in Tribeca.”
“Oh, cool,” I say dumbly. I assumed Ella would have moved back to Jersey and settled there permanently, boring and predictable. But I should know that people change.
“I’ve seen most of the Butts girls here already,” Ella says. “Even Sloane. I figured she wouldn’t show up. Have you seen her yet? She’s right over there. Typical Sloane, she’s with a hot guy.”
I follow Ella’s pointed finger and my chest constricts. Adrian isn’t throwing a Frisbee anymore. He’s talking to Sully, their heads bent too close together.
“It’s not like that,” I snap, already on the defensive. “That’s my husband. He talks to everyone.”
“Oh,” she says. “I see.”
Ella could have a reason. She tried to befriend me and I chose instead to pick her apart with Sully. If she found out what we did, she could have easily written the notes to summon us here.
And if she did, I’m afraid to find out why.
“Well, I should get going,” she says. “But let’s catch up some more this weekend, okay? I’m sure we have a lot to talk about.” And then she’s gone, with a wave and a flick of her perfect hair, virtually the same white blond as Flora’s.