• “Surprise Reunion”

    “We go in on the 2nd count of 8 now Christine gosh, why can’t you just grasp that concept?” fussed an exasperated Mrs. Heather. You see, it was dress rehearsal, the last chance to get everything perfect before the recital, make up, lighting, EVERYTHING and, I was screwing up as usual. This time it really made a difference. In order for this dance to not look totally stupid everyone had to be synchronized. For some strange reason counting music today was a challenge. My mind was elsewhere, day dreaming about summer and, what I would do when I blew this popsicle stand and flew to West Palm for the summer. “Sorry Mrs. Heather I’ll get it next time, believe me.” She rolled her eyes and said, “You better be right, Christine you can do this, you’ve done it MANY TIMES BEFORE. Now don’t you embarrass me!!! “She cued the music. I cleared my mind once and for all and counted in my head, “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8, GO!” I started to jazzwalk when suddenly I wasn’t there anymore.



    I was in a familiar algae green room, with a rose covered bed, and a robe with bunnies in skis on it hung from the closet door………………………..my bedroom. “How in the world did I get from the Performing Arts Center in downtown Tampa, to Westchase in a split second?” I thought. But the most disturbing, surprising, out of place thing was that they were here. All 22 of them, but the weird thing was that they were just as surprised to see me. My entire fifth grade class was in my bedroom. Friends and enemies were present, so were the memories. We all stood there looking at each other for a split second until Lorenzo broke the silence. “How nice to see you all, it’s been awhile.” He walked over to Josh and said, “Hey Chu Chu”. Josh was so stunned he could only wave hello, obviously still in shock. All of a sudden I felt familiar eyes boring into my back like lasers. I spun around on a dime. “Hello, Rayne” I said with a disgusted look on my face. “Hello, Forbes” she said. Rayne had on a pair of dull gray dress pants with a plaid vest on top of a creamy white shirt. I remembered that Jessica Nguyen was in my class. “Oh no” I thought. You see Jessica and I had this fight with Rayne and Ersoy in 6th grade that basically screwed things up with us forever. Luckily, I was good at controlling my anger most of the time, Jessica on the other hand, wasn’t. “I’m leaving” bellowed a fuming Jessica. “I don’t want to associate with that traitor of a girl”. She stormed out the door, or attempted to. Problem was there wasn’t a door. “Where did my door go?” I exclaimed. All heads turned.


    ~Author’s Note: In real life my friend Jessica and I had a dispute with Rayne and Ersoy, and to this day we still don’t talk. In the next chapter, I’ll try to capture the demeanor of my classmates I haven’t seen in years, and morph it into my writing.