Chapter Text
Graduation Week, Senior Year
"Hey, Vince, will you sign my yearbook?"
I turn from one yearbook to the next, already beginning to lose track of whose pages I've signed and what I said. I don't even know where mine is; Randall of all people was the first to snatch it up (probably hoping to find some cryptic dirt on me before time runs out), and now it could be in anyone's hands. Not that I'm complaining. That's the whole point of a yearbook signing party, right? To see just how many friends you've made this year? Or, in my case, in high school?
And I have made a lot! Joining the basketball team my freshman year was the best choice I ever made. Team captains get all the perks: hot dates, hot lunches, teachers hot with admiration. Yup, high school has been good to me. It really has.
I finish signing my name with a flourish and look up to remind myself whose yearbook I've graced with my autograph. Oh, no. I should have paid more attention. Standing in front of me with that stupid blue cap still stuck to his head is Erwin Lawson. And if I'm reading that expression right, he's prepping himself for one of his cheesy you-shouldn't-have-done-that speeches. Damn righteous peer counselors!
I hand back his yearbook, barely suppressing the urge to scratch my signature out of it.
"Thanks, Vince," he says casually. "I'll cherish this when you really become famous." I grit my teeth as he turns away, but he's not done. Looking back at me over his shoulder, he speaks in a quieter voice that only I can hear. "By the way, my girlfriend says hi. So do all my other new friends. Have a nice life."
Oh, shit! I wasn't expecting that. What happened to the pitying I'm-trying-to-understand comments I used to get from him? I gape at my rival as he walks away, and because I'm a glutton for punishment all of a sudden, I keep watching him until he reaches his "new friends".
TJ Detweiler is the first of their little circle to greet him. I can see them talking like old buds, even from here. But neither one of them looks my way. Then comes the real kick in the gut when Gretchen Grundler takes his hand and smiles at him with _that smile. ... The one she used to give me. ... The one I lost.
I can almost feel my head deflating as I gaze at my old, happy group. Though every instinct in my body is screaming to go give Lawson a piece of my mind, what could I say? The damned truth of the matter is that Lawson had every reason to say what he did to me. It's funny how maturity comes too late to matter. Even if I did go over there right now and begged them to take me back, things would never be like they were in fourth, sixth, even eighth grade again. I made sure of that back in freshman year.