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“Have fun, darling,” my mother said as I changed into my outfit for the reunion. “I’ll have the bed made up for you by the time you get home.”
The reunion was already buzzing when I walked in. There were familiar faces, some more worn than others, greeting me with half-smiles and awkward hugs. The gym smelled of polished wood and nostalgia, but other than that, it didn’t look like anything had changed.
A woman holding a glass of champagne
For some reason, people spoke in hushed tones, eyes darting around like they were searching for someone… or avoiding someone?
“Guess we don’t invite the missing, huh? Penelope, anyone?” said a voice from behind me.
I turned around to see an old classmate, slightly buzzed, smirking as he sipped whiskey.
My grip on my glass of champagne tightened. I forced a smile, but inside, my mind was spinning.
Penelope.
A man holding a glass of whiskey
Her name hadn’t been spoken in years, at least not to my face. It hung in the air, heavy with unsaid things.
“Some jokes don’t age well, Malcolm,” I said, turning away before the conversation could dig deeper into my carefully constructed façade.
I didn’t want to be here.
Later that night, back in my childhood room, sleep felt… distant. The house was too quiet, the kind of quiet that amplifies every creak. I remembered how difficult it used to be when I wanted to sneak out at night in my teens. This house held no secrets.
A woman sitting in her bed
Instead of trying to sleep, I found myself rummaging through my old bookshelf, chasing ghosts.
One ghost in particular: Penelope.
Then, I found it—my yearbook. The leather cover was cracked, the pages yellowed with time. And as I flipped through, I stopped at Penelope’s page.
There, scribbled in handwriting I didn’t recognize, was a note.
Meet me where it all began.
A woman standing in front of a bookshelf
I stared at the words, my pulse racing.
Had I written this? Had she? The memories came flooding back—the last time I saw Penelope, the fight, the betrayal, and the unanswered questions that had haunted me since I was eighteen. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember who had written that note. I closed the book and looked at it, uneasy.
The next morning, the weight of those six words pulled me out of the house and into the heart of town. I needed answers. Why else was I here?
My first stop was the school, where an old teacher, Mrs. Harper, still worked. My shoes loudly announced my arrival as I walked into her classroom.
Mrs. Harper’s face lit up when she saw me, but the light dimmed as soon as I mentioned Penelope.
“Oh, Marissa,” she said. “You’re still on that? It’s been years, honey… Haven’t you moved on?”
“Tell me what you know, please,” I pleaded.
“She was troubled,” Mrs. Harper said, her eyes darting away. “But back then… people didn’t talk about these things. It was easier to pretend it was just teenage drama.”
“So, you knew?” I asked, leaning in. “You knew she was struggling, and no one did anything?”
“Penelope always seemed like she was carrying the weight of the world. She’d have these moments where she’d zone out completely, like she was somewhere else. I suggested she talk to the school counselor.”
I had a flashback of Penelope hunched over the bathroom sink. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her hair was wild, like she had been pulling at her hair, finally at her wits’ end.
“Pen,” I said, walking closer to her. “Talk to me?”
Penelope glanced at her reflection, her eyes hollow.
“Do you ever feel like… like you’re drowning, even when nothing’s wrong? Like you can’t breathe, but everyone around you just sees you smiling?”
“Pen, maybe you need to talk to someone. Someone who can help.”
Penelope scoffed, a bitter laugh escaping her lips.
“Help? They’ll just say I’m overreacting. That I’m fine, just a little stressed. But it’s more than that, Marissa. It’s like… I don’t belong anywhere. Not in this town, not in my own head.”
Mrs. Harper sighed, bringing me back to the present. Her hands were trembling slightly as she adjusted the paper on her desk.
“We all should have done more. But you have to understand, Marissa. This town thrives on looking the other way.”
Her words stung, but they were true. This town had always been a master of denial from the time I was a child.
As I left the school, I bumped into an old friend, Jackson. He looked worse for wear, the years marked on his face with age.
