The Twenty-Year Reunion

Henrietta almost stays home. She has been standing outside the school gym for ten minutes. In her hand is a name tag she does not want to wear. A banner above the door says "Twenty Years Later". She smooths her jacket and tells herself that it is only one evening.

Inside, the music is from the year they all left school, and the lights are too bright. People are hugging and holding up phones to show photos of their children. Henrietta finds a table of old friends and listens to news about jobs, houses and divorces. Everyone seems to have changed, and she isn't sure what to say about herself.

Then she sees him by the snack table. He still wears glasses, and he still has the same crooked smile. It is Santiago, the boy she competed with in every class for six years. If she got ninety-four in a math test, he got ninety-five. In their last year, she beat him by one point in the chemistry exam. He did not speak to her for a month.

"Henrietta," he says, as if he has just found a lost key. "I was hoping you would come."

"You were? I thought you would be the person who avoided me."

"I have been avoiding you for twenty years," he says. "But I am running out of reasons."

They both laugh. Then they take two paper cups of lemonade and sit at the end of the bleachers. They talk about the teachers who are gone and the teachers who are somehow still here. Henrietta tells him she designs bridges. He is a doctor for animals, and he shows her a photo of a very fat dog.

"Can I tell you something embarrassing?" she says after a while. "I studied until two in the morning every night in our last year. Not because I loved chemistry. Because I could not stand the thought of you getting a better grade."

Santiago stares at her. Then he puts his hand over his face. "Henrietta, I used to walk past the library every evening," he says. "If your light was still on, I went home and studied too. I thought I was the only one."

"So I was your night light."

"You were the reason I got into university."

"And you were mine," she says quietly.

They sit in silence for a moment, watching people dance badly. "We wasted a lot of energy being enemies," he says. "Imagine what we could have done if we had studied together."

"We could both have got a hundred." She takes his phone from his hand and types her number into it. "There is a restaurant near my office. Next Thursday, seven o'clock. I am choosing the place."

"Of course you are," he says. "You always have to win."