Page 64 of Given Our History

She gave me a grateful smile and squeezed my arm. “You taught yourself.”

Reagan hung back, toeing the ground with a sneaker and looking bored. “Thank you for the poster. And the awesome cap,” I said. She was in a crafting phase, and Mom had suggested I ask her to decorate my graduation cap for me. Considering I didn’t really have the time to decorate it myself, nor did I have any ideas, I was more than willing to give my eleven-year-old sister free rein. She’d lined the edges with red and gold stick-on gems and used scrapbooking letters to spell out AND I DIDN’T EVEN NEED A TUDOR! I didn’t know when she’d gotten so witty, but then again, we hadn’t seen a lot of each other the past few years.

“You’re welcome,” she mumbled with a surly expression that suggested she’d rather be anywhere else.

“How about we get some food?” I asked.

“Hold on,” Mom said. “Aren’t there some friends hanging around that you want to take pictures with?”

With a twinge of embarrassment, I glanced over my shoulder, pretended like I was searching for someone in the crowd. In truth, I hadn’t made many friends in college. “Not sure where they’ve gotten to. They’re probably busy with their families.” I shrugged and turned back to face my parents. “But it’s fine. I have their phone numbers, we’ll keep in touch.”

“Will you?” a familiar voice said in my ear.

I spun around, my stole whirling. Teddy was standing there. His hair was cropped short and he looked a bit tired, but he was smiling. “Oh my god!” I squealed, so surprised that I threw my arms around his neck, the past momentarily forgotten.

He crushed me against him, so tight I thought my ribs might crack. “Hi, stranger.” His voice hummed in his chest, our bodies flush. “It’s good to see you.”

It had been months since the last time we met up for coffee. We’d never quite gone back to normal—the chemical makeup of our friendship had been irrevocably altered—but he was still the closest thing to a best friend that I had. And he had shown up here. For me. There were a million things I wanted to tell him, but for some reason the first thing out of my mouth was, “You cut your hair.”

“Figured I was due for a change.”

After what felt like an eternity, we drew back, and it was like the world suddenly remembered to keep spinning. People milled around us in a sea of black and red. Reagan watched us with a kind of reluctant curiosity and Dad had tucked the poster board under an arm, like he was ready to leave. “Teddy wanted to surprise you,” Mom explained. “Found our number in the white pages, believe it or not.”

Teddy laughed under his breath, his gaze fixed on my face. “She means the website. I haven’t seen an actual phone book since I was sixteen.”

I grinned. “My family mostly just used them as doorstops.”

We briefly discussed where we all wanted to eat dinner, which sparked a joke from my dad about how we could use the yellow pages right about now. After a couple suggestions, we settled on a restaurant and navigated the crowd toward the nearest exit. I led the way, sidestepping families and stopping for a crowd of classmates so that we didn’t get in the way of their picture, but I was a little lost in thought—wondering what Teddy was doing here, whether he had some ulterior motive in showing up like this unannounced. Distracted, I shouldered my way past a group blocking the aisle, accidentally knocking a bouquet of daisies out of someone’s arms.

“Shit, I’m sorry,” I said, stooping to collect the flowers. The bouquet was thankfully still in one piece, protected by the cellophane wrapping.

“It’s no problem, really, you don’t have to—”

Her voice was familiar and I glanced up. Mindy, my old roommate. “Clara,” she said, recognizing me. Then, seeming like she didn’t know what else to say, she gestured at my graduation garb. “Congratulations.”

I handed her the flowers back. “You, too.” Teddy caught up with me, followed by the others. My mom was giving me a polite but expectant look, her eyebrows raised. “Oh, this is, um—” I stumbled over my words, feeling a little awkward.

“Mindy Schooner,” she said, taking over and reaching to shake my parents’ hands in turn, but she was looking over at Teddy. He had his hands stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans, looking as awkward as I felt. I wondered whether he remembered his last run-in with her—in the midst of the argument that pushed us apart.

“We were roommates, freshman year,” I explained to my parents. It felt like I should say more, but we didn’t know each other all that well. After spending my sophomore year abroad, I’d been reassigned to a different dorm, though I’d seen her around campus now and again.

“How about a picture of the two of you?” Mom asked, pulling out her phone.

We looked at each other.

“Oh, um—”

“Sure, why not—”

We scooted in close. Mindy put an arm around my shoulder, but it was feather-light, staged for the camera, like a celebrity posing at a meet-and-greet with a fan. I put on a tight-lipped smile and my mom said something to the effect of big smiles, come on now, say cheese. There was a flash and then we put some distance between ourselves before my mom had even lowered the camera.

Mindy looked at Teddy. “I recognize you,” she said. “Your hair. It’s shorter.”

He ran a hand over the hair in question, looking sheepish. “I wanted to change it up.”

“It looks better this way,” she said decisively. “Cleaner.”

There was an awkward pause, and then I said, “We’re just on our way to dinner, but I’ll see you around, maybe?”