Chapter Text
Franklin Delano Roosevelt High School
Class of 2005
10 Year Reunion
Saturday, June 27th, 2015
7:30 pm to 11:30 pm
Cougars Gymnasium
F.D.R High School
Brooklyn, NY
$25 per person
R.S.V.P by June 1st, 2015
[email protected]
“Are you gonna go?” It was the first thing Sharon, Steve’s girlfriend asked when she saw the red and white invitation tacked to his fridge by a magnet with the information for the local Veteran’s hospital on it. It was a good question, one he hadn’t put much thought into since the card came in the mail a week earlier.
Steve shrugged, “Not sure yet. I haven’t decided if I want to drive up to New York just to spend a few hours mingling with people I’ve barely thought about in nearly a decade or not.”
A lot had changed in Steve Rogers life since he graduated high school, it seemed like a life time ago. It was hard to reconcile the skinny, angry teenager he had been with the grown man he had become. Sure he still stuck to his guns when it came to doing what he thought was right, and yeah at heart he was still a New Yorker through and through but he wasn’t some naive kid from Brooklyn who thought he could change the world anymore.
At the age of fifteen Steve had a habit of getting into fist fights and his heart was set on staying in his home town to study fine arts at the Pratt Institute. The blonde teenager loved to draw and could spend hours painting the view of his favorite New York borough offered by his building’s rooftop. By the age of sixteen the United States had declared war on Iraq and Steve’s dreams of art school were replaced by a determination to join the Army. Who was he to sit back while others were laying down their lives in the name of American Freedom?
Steve’s mother stood firmly against the idea of her son signing up to risk life and limb for his country. The last time Sarah kissed a Rogers off to war in the Middle East he never returned. Steve was only four years old when his father died in “Operation Desert Storm,” of the First Gulf War. Although she claimed he shouldn't waist his potential as an artist he knew she feared her son would face the same fate as her husband. Eventually, after a tense junior year spent arguing over Steve’s future they came to an agreement.
Sarah would let him join the Army under one condition; he had to apply to the military academy at West Point and the Fine Arts program at Pratt. If he got into West Point he could get an undergraduate education and when he graduated he would be commissioned as a Second Lieutenant ready for Active Duty. If he didn’t get into West Point but did get in to Pratt he agreed to go to school for at least a year and if he still wanted to enlist she would give him her blessing.
He pretended not to notice her red rimmed eyes and blotchy cheeks when she handed him an opened envelope addressed to him from The United States Military Academy at West Point. It contained a letter congratulating him on his acceptance, they were eager to see him on campus in the fall.
The summer after high school graduation was the last time he really saw Brooklyn as home. Sarah Rogers died that winter, she contracted Bacterial Meningitis from a patient during a shift in the emergency room. She went to bed with a head ache, stiff neck and a slight fever, symptoms that were not all that uncommon after hours on her feet, especially during Cold and Flu season. When Steve went to check on her in the morning she was cold to the touch.
After that his whole life in Brooklyn felt like salt poured into the wound sustained by her loss. Her funeral was the last time he saw any of his friends from high school in person. The angry eighteen year old who returned to West Point that January, determined to serve his nation set set his sights on earning a gold Second Lieutenant's bar and never looked back.
Ten years later Army Captain Steve Rogers wasn’t an angry kid with a cause and bruised knuckles anymore. He was a man with a medal pinned to his chest who was disillusioned with his nation’s cause, the war for freedom had long since turned into a war of supremacy that he wanted no part of. When his active duty service contract expired he opted for a desk job position at the Pentagon. It wasn’t all that exciting but in fourteen years he could retire with a great benefit package and an Army pension plus there was plenty of opportunities for promotion.
Going to his ten year high school reunion would open a lot of wounds that he let close up a long time ago.
“What if we make a weekend out of it?” Sharon asked. He turned away from the potatoes he was mashing for dinner to look at her curiously. “Your reunion isn’t for another two and a half months, that gives us both plenty of time to request a few days off.”
Sharon abandoned the bowl she was washing, used for breading the chicken cutlets that were cooking in the oven. She dried her hands on a dish towel before coming to press herself up behind her boyfriend and wrap her arms around his waist. He turned so they were face to face.
“What if we leave D.C. on Friday morning, I could book us a room somewhere nice in Manhattan? We’d get there by mid afternoon just in time for check-in, rest for a little while, and then we could go out to dinner. Saturday morning we can do some silly tourist thing or you could show me where you grew up and complain how Brooklyn has become land of the hipsters.” She offered with a smile.
This elicited a chuckle from Steve who complained for a month after the atmosphere of their favorite bar was ruined by college kids in flannel shirts and beanies who only drank craft beers.
“What about the rest of the weekend?” Steve asked because honestly a weekend away from D.C. was starting to sound pretty good.
“Well, we could visit your mother but only if you think we are at that point. If not its okay or if you want to go alone I understandable. I know its not something you like sharing with people.” The playful tone was gone from her voice and Steve couldn’t help but notice the hopefulness in her voice. She knew visiting Sarah was a serious request that would mark a big step in their relationship. In the two years since they started dating he only mentioned his mothers death once or twice.
Although she was the first serious relationship he had since he was eighteen sometimes he felt like he could see himself spending the rest of his life with Sharon. She was funny, beautiful, intelligent, and didn’t mind his occasionally abrasive, closed off personality. She worked for the CIA and they had a mutual understanding that, “Just another day at the office,” was code for “what I do is highly classified.” They met through her cousin Peggy, who Steve had served and became close friends with. Other times the voice in the back of his head that often told him he should have just gone to art school said he wasn’t the kind of guy who settled down with a wife. Some days it felt like he left his heart behind with the people he used to love a lifetime ago. Not that he ever voiced any of this to her.
When he didn’t answer her right away Sharon added, “One of my friends, Carol, from college lives out on Long Island. I can take the train out to visit her. I’ll catch up with my old friends while you catch up with yours.”
Steve said it sounded like a nice weekend and asked her to let him sleep on it. She agreed and left him to mull it over while he finished mashing the potatoes.
Maybe, he mused, it was time for him to reconcile with that skinny kid he used to be and make peace with the way his life turned out.