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“You are,” she says.
“Everyone else has better things to do on Friday eve.” I grin at her.
“Apparently.” She doesn’t smile back. In fact, she looks a little annoyed, though whether that’s directed at me or because she doesn’t have better things to do other than study, I’m not sure.
“Do I know you?” I finally ask. “You look familiar.”
She gives me a look, and I realize what I said sounds like a lame pick-up line.
“Maybe I?
??ve just seen you here before.” I shrug. I still sound like I’m hitting on her, and maybe I am, so I’m not going to worry about it. It’s been three months since I’ve had a date, and Michelle moved on before she even told me she had.
“Maybe.” The blonde puts a hand on her hip. “I’ve seen you in here before, Credence.”
I try to keep myself from looking too surprised that she knows my actual name, not just the shortened version I always use. I’m obviously not successful because she snickers at me.
“We did share a class.”
“Oh yeah?” I take a step forward as if I need to be closer to get a good look at her. I knew she looked familiar. “Which one?”
“AP Modern Europe.”
I was expecting to hear we’d had freshman English together or maybe some alternative class just to rack up easy credits. Though in the back of my head I know I took Modern Euro, it’s so far removed from my present life that I can’t even place it.
“Huh?” I shake my head a little.
She laughs again as it dawns on me that AP anything isn’t a college class at all.
“We went to high school together?”
“We did.”
This time, I step forward to actually get a better look at her. Her mannerisms are familiar, but I can’t place her face at all.
The librarian had called her Kas, but I don’t remember a Kas from high school. I try to remember the classroom in my AP Modern Euro class during junior year of high school. I sat near the front, so I can remember those who were in the first row but not the people behind me.
At the end of the year, we all had to present a final project. A chubby sophomore with short, mousy hair and bad skin completely blew the curve for the rest of us with her digitally enhanced, animated claymation of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.
My eyes widen.
“Kasinda? Kasinda Rhea?”
“Good job.” She smiles. “It’s just Kas now, though.”
The person before me looks nothing like the high school version of herself. She doesn’t even behave like the Kasinda I remember, who stayed in the back of the class and walked through the hallways in oversized, androgynous clothes while staring at the ground. She wasn’t one to attend parties or sporting events and would barely look anyone in the eye.
“Wow! You look different.”
She gives me a hard stare.
Oh, shit. I should not have said that.
“Oh, wow! I mean…you just…” I feel my face heat up, and I can’t backpedal fast enough. “I’m sorry. You caught me off guard. I really haven’t thought about high school for a while.”
“I try to block it out myself.”
“Don’t we all.” We both chuckle, but it feels awkward and strained.
