Page 8 of Most Likely to Match
Hey Don Head Class of ’09!
You’re invited to an evening of memories and merriment with old classmates, because you’ve been voted most likely to reunite.
The Don Head Alumni Organization hopes to see you this summer to celebrate how far we’ve come in the last fifteen years!
“Fuck,” I say, as two women push strollers past me and glare. “Sorry.” I grimace.
The robotic voice continues reading the details of the reunion scheduled for a month and a half from now.
The “Don Head Alumni Organization” hasn’t even bothered to book the event on neutral territory; we’ll be going back to the scene of multiple crimes and traumas, including the worst thing I ever did: our high school’s combined cafeteria and auditorium.
This whole thing reeks of the LKs.
Lauren S., and Lauren G., and Kaylie, Kayleigh, and Kali. Myformerfriends and the girls who orchestrated Dean’s public humiliation. The one I didn’t actively participate in but didn’t do much to stop once I realized what was happening. The one in which I failed to defend him in the aftermath.
Because I’m a coward. As undeserving of his forgiveness now as I was then.
Our school was large, with a few hundred students in each graduating class. We grew up in the suburbs and lived our lives divided into all the traditional groups: jocks, geeks, music nerds, art nerds, theater nerds, stoners. There were student council try-hards, the ones who always volunteered to help the teachers and handed out hall passes, and, of course, the popular kids.
I was never actually that popular. With aCname, I couldn’t officially join the LKs, a group named for the first letters of their names. Once Lauren G. suggested I change my name to Khloe.
I declined.
I wasn’t an original member of their group anyway. They’d all been best friends since elementary school. I’d been a girl destined for geek-hood, except I’d been blessed with genes deemed good enough to attract the attention of one of the jocks— the only group of boys the LKs would ever consider dating. And though I never ended up dating that sweet hockey playing jock boy— Lauren S. had longed for him for years— the LKs adopted me as one of their own.
The robotic voice continues, drawing me out of my memory spiral.
From: [email protected]
Subject: Membership Cancellation
“No,” I shout, stopping in the middle of the path as Torontonians and tourists mill around me. Most don’t even blink at my outburst.
Panic bubbles up inside me, and I clap my hands over my mouth to keep it inside, to keep myself under control. This can’t be happening. Not again.
I have an interview with a Toronto business journal in a few weeks about the definition of success. What am I supposed to tell them now?
Hi Chloe,
I signed up because my friend Beth signed up, but Beth told me that she canceled her Core Cupid membership, and when I asked why, I have to say, I was shocked at her reason.
The virtual assistant’s voice is far too detached to be narrating my vocational demise like this.
I’m sorry, but I just can’t justify paying so much to get dating advice…
Inaccurate. I don’t provide advice at all.
From someone who can’t even get a date herself. How can I trust that I’ve found my perfect match if you haven’t found yours?
The virtual assistant pauses, as if it has somehow intuited that I need this moment to breathe, to panic, to process.
Please send the contract termination paperwork as soon as possible.
Jillian Jenkins
I find myself on a bench. I’m not sure when I took this seat. An elderly white woman sits on the other end of the bench, recognizably rich from the gold on her hands, her coiffed white hair, and her well-tailored designer walking clothes. Though her status is mostobviously highlighted by the seven-hundred-dollar dog stroller next to her and the purebred King Charles Spaniel sitting prettily inside it.
