And sometimes you close your eyes
And see the place where you used to live
When you were young
Cody Myers sighs, tapping the bitten down nails of her left hand against the dashboard as she expertly steers her small car with her right one.
Two years was a really long time.
Maybe not to some. Maybe not to everyone else. But it had been long enough for her to give up journalism for a much lower profile teaching career (rather than tell them that the date they'd picked coincided with her first session of student teaching, she'd simply bumped her first class back three days). It was long enough for her wardrobe to be toned down and for her music tastes to mellow out and for her realize that who you are seventeen is not who you'll always be.
She doesn't know what's going to happens today, but she hopes it won't be awkward. There's a whole slew of people who weren't invited- Tanis, Cameron, Nate, Rick, Sunny, Cassidy, Jesse- but Cody agrees that it wouldn't really have been right because inviting all those people was not the deal.
She pulls into the familiar parking lot and just sits for a moment, hoping they've changed as much as she has, because her hair is down to her shoulders and a dark brown colour, and you can't tell that she's French anymore. She listens to the roar of the crowd that used to mean nothing to her. She wasn't the one with anyone to impress, sitting in a locker room with her head in her hands and praying that she doesn't screw up. She just sat in the bleachers and waited for a few good shots.
Now she knows what it must have felt like for everyone around her.
The grounds are more or less the same- she hasn't been gone that long, really- and she easily finds her way to the court. Some tall kid who looks kind of cocky and reminds her of Squib is paying against a scowling girl who reminds her of Tanis.
She sees a head of curly hair bobbing animatedly, chatting with her companion, and hopes she isn't late.
She stops just once more, standing right behind them, and decides whether or not she wants to do this, because a lot can change in two years.
And with one more deep breath, in her perfectly non-French accents, with her nervously bitten nails and dark hair, she says, "Hey, guys…"
I'm not even going to say what this is about. Points if you can get it (it's not that hard). This won't be long. Five, six chapters, maybe.