Shannon knew there were many memories. She was the proverbial bad girl and she was certain her last week at MHA had become a legend.
“Shannon Roberts.” Shannon watched as the woman with hair too dark to be natural recognized her name. She looked her up and down as if searching for any sign that the scandal that had forced her out of Mount Holyfield was still clinging to her. The other woman squinted as if she couldn’t see Shannon clearly without the glasses she probably refused to wear.
“Here you are. Shannon Roberts. My, you haven’t changed a bit,”
she said looking between Shannon and the picture on her name tag. She finally handed it to her.
“Thanks.” Shannon glanced at the picture and cringed. God, she hoped she didn’t still look like that.
“We’re in the room to the right. Dinner is at seven, the program starts at eight, and dancing after that. Did you bring a guest?”
Shannon barely recognized there was a question in the high-pitched chatter from the woman. “No,” she replied and stepped toward the door to her past.
Ten years, she repeated to herself. She hadn’t given MHA anything more than a passing thought since the day she left. Now she was expected to mix and mingle with women she had barely spoken
• 176 •
Descent
with in high school and make inane small talk with their husbands. She seriously doubted that any of the other lesbians at MHA would be in attendance with their girlfriends. But then again neither was she.
Snagging a glass of champagne from a passing waiter, Shannon stepped further into the crowded room. Several heads turned her way and she vaguely recognized a few faces. But they knew who she was.
The expressions on their faces told her as much. After the incident with Caroline’s father, a few of her friends had managed to get in touch with her. Her absence hadn’t gone unnoticed and she was the subject of just about every conversation on campus. Rumors were rampant. She had heard they included everything from stories that she ran off with a college coed from Tufts University in Boston to suggestions that she was pregnant. Shannon had had a good laugh over that one.
Shannon expected this when she had RSVP’d to the reunion committee chairman that she would be attending. She had checked the box, licked the envelope, and dropped it in the corner mailbox the week after she’d returned from Australia. In the weeks since, she had hashed and rehashed her decision and at the last minute almost didn’t come.
She was getting dressed when a case of second thoughts crashed in on her. Why was she going? Did she have something to prove? To whom?
Herself? Dean Phillips? The other members of her senior class? She was a graduate just like they were, even if she didn’t walk down the aisle to the tune of “Pomp and Circumstance.” She deserved to be here.
Shannon had asked herself those questions plus a few hundred more in the days leading up to tonight. She was no closer to an answer now that she was here than when she was sitting on her deck last week in Big Bear. She was as much alone then as she was right now.
Before she had a chance to contemplate her state of mind any further she was grabbed from behind and spun around and ended up face-to-face with Marci McMillan. Marci with an i, as she always said when she introduced herself, was at least thirty pounds lighter and had much larger breasts than the last time Shannon had seen her.
“Oh my God, Shannon!” she exclaimed causing several people to look their way. “Is it really you?”
“Marci, how are you? You look great,” Shannon managed to say when her ex-roommate finally turned her loose.
“I’m fine, and thanks. After three trips to the fat farm, I finally got
• 177 •
JuliE CaNNoN
it right. Bernard promised me if I lost the weight and kept it off for two years he’d buy me a new pair of boobs.” It was obvious that Marci had accomplished her long-term weight loss and was proud of it.
“Very nice.”
“Shannon, you look great too. What’s your secret?” Marci asked in a co-conspirator tone.
“Nothing as exciting as you, Marci.” Shannon knew she looked like hell. She wasn’t sleeping, the circles under her eyes were darker on her now pale skin. She had lost weight, her naturally lean body was painfully thin. A glass of Chivas more often than not was her evening meal. When she first returned from Australia it was her lunch and sometimes her breakfast as well. She looked for the passing tray of alcohol. Marci grabbed her arm and practically dragged her across the room. Marci’s voice was far more animated than Shannon remembered.
“You have got to come see Beth and Courtney. They are going to crap when they see you.”
Approaching the women in question, Shannon steeled herself to face two of the biggest snobby, self-righteous, bigoted, girly girls at MHA. One look at them and Shannon knew they had only refined those traits as the years passed.
“Girls, look who’s here! Shannon Roberts. We were just talking about whether or not she’d be here tonight and I looked up and there she was. Can you believe it?”
Taking the high road, Shannon held out her hand first to Beth Hardel. “Hello, Beth.” Beth took one look at her outstretched hand, then back to Shannon. She saw the look of disapproval Beth didn’t even bother to hide as she passed judgment on Shannon’s choice of wardrobe for the evening. More out of politeness and good breeding, Beth finally took her hand. Shannon repeated the same greeting to Courtney.
Marci filled the awkward silence. “Shannon, what are you doing with yourself? I didn’t see your profile on Facebook.” The reunion committee had encouraged all alumni to create a Facebook page so that they all could reconnect even if they weren’t able to attend the event.
“I didn’t know until the last minute I was coming. What about you, Marci?” Shannon switched the topic without answering the question posed to her.
• 178 •
Descent
Shannon listened with half an ear to Marci drone on about her husband and kids and when the talk between the women turned to the trials of braces and puberty, she tuned out all but the essentials and merely nodded when she thought it appropriate. Her name brought her attention back to the women in front of her.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” She hadn’t heard whether she was asked a question or simply was supposed to respond to a statement.
“I asked if you were married or had any children?” Beth said too sweetly.
Shannon knew Beth was intentionally trying to embarrass her with the question. Beth had hated her in high school and obviously still did. She thought Shannon unworthy of a school like Mount Holyfield and had told her so on more than one occasion.
“No, I’m not. They don’t allow lesbians to get married in the state I live in.” Shannon let the statement hang in the air. She had nothing to hide, especially from these people. She didn’t care what they thought.
Never had and never would. That same apathy clouded her judgment more and more every day. She knew she was depressed, but like everything else lately she didn’t seem to have the energy to face it, let alone tackle it. With a wicked sense of perverted pleasure, she watched the color drain from Beth’s perfectly made up face to be replaced by an unattractive shade of green disgust. Shannon continued looking her straight in the eye while she waited for what would come next.
“That’s disgusting. You’re disgusting, Shannon Roberts. I always knew you were a pervert. You were always looking at me that way.”
Beth emphasized her last two words.