Reunion
The Past
1.
Avery Morgan sighed and slammed her locker door. She'd just finished her last final of the year, and the school had seen fit to save the worst for last. Honors calculus. She was sure she had passed but it was her weakest subject, and the test had given her a headache trying to keep all the rules straight.
Traffic in the hallway was conspicuously missing. The seniors finished their finals the day before and were partaking in a school tradition known as senior skip day. Most of them had driven a few hours to the nearest amusement park to spend the day blowing off steam and celebrating. Others had gone south a few hours to the beach. Technically, Avery could had joined them. Even though she was sixteen, and technically a sophomore, she was taking senior classes and would be graduating early.
She smirked to herself. Who was she kidding? Even if the dreaded calc final had been Monday instead of Friday, she would have still showed up at school. A tragic downside of being the daughter of the principal. That and she wouldn't have been able to enjoy it. She would have felt guilty.
Besides that, who would she have gone with? Her group of friends were mostly sophomores. She was tutoring a couple of seniors to make a little money, but she wouldn't necessarily consider them friends. Well. Except for maybe Mark Calaway.
Avery grabbed her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. She was seriously trying not to think too hard about Mark. She had a crush on him. Except she was pretty sure it was more than just a crush at this point. Just thinking about him could put butterflies in her belly.
He was one of the jock-types at school. Tall, muscular. He played baseball and basketball. Had in fact been approached about possibly getting a basketball scholarship. His grades hadn't been quite there though. Schools overlooked some grades, but he was carrying a low C-average and while he was a solid player, he wasn't exactly a star. So to get a full ride, he had to get his GPA up. Right before Christmas he had approached Avery in the hall and had asked, almost shyly, if she would be willing to help him out.
The shyness was what got her. He was one of the popular kids in school, and had no shortage of girls drooling after him. She'd seen him around town, courting a different girl every other week. The bashfulness took her by surprise. So Avery had agreed. He needed help with English, Lit, and history; he had a pretty decent grip on his science class. Ironically he had no problem with math, for which she was forever grateful. The rest was just practice and memorization, which Avery found easy to teach. So they had met every Tuesday and Thursday after school in the library for 2 hours. It wasn't all work either. They actually got to talking. Mark was reluctant to talk about himself at first, it seemed to make him uncomfortable. She did learn that his real father had passed away when he was five, and that his mother had remarried. And he did not get along with his stepfather, which was why the scholarship was so important. Rob Williams wasn't going to put up a dime more than he had to when it came to his stepson, and since he controlled the bank accounts Mark's mother Elizabeth couldn't help him either.
He wouldn't say much more on the subject of his family. Sore subject. Obviously there was resentment and other issues. On a few occasions Avery was almost sure she had seen faded bruises on Mark that weren't caused by overzealous basketball players. She learned not to bring it up, because he would just shut down. And then he'd cut their sessions short and wander off.
At that point, Avery was hooked on him. She looked forward to their sessions the way some girls looked forward to Saturday night dates. Unlike some girls her age, with their head in the clouds, Avery was well aware that Mark was out of her league. He was older, she wasn't the cheerleader type, and she was pretty sure he viewed her strictly as a resource to help get him the hell out of town. It didn't stop her from cultivating a butterfly garden every time she was around him though.
It wasn't like she was a slug or something. Avery knew she had to stop putting herself down whenever she thought about boys. While she wasn't a bubbly blond cheerleader, she wasn't that horrible looking. Long chestnut hair, dark blue eyes. She had been taking dance classes since the age of 6, which she loved even though she was told by her mother that she lacked any real talent to be a dancer. The dancing kept her on the slim side. She would classify everything else about her as average. Height. Build.
So she had no illusion that Mark could ever be interested in her. Not only was she a plain-jane; she was the principal's daughter. It was worse than being a leper in high school dating circles. Every single boy in school avoided her like the plague, including the ones she'd gone to elementary and middle school with. Avery knew her dad could be intimidating but that was just for show at the school. At home he was a teddy bear, often spending time with Avery and her brother Joe, trying to build them up when her perfectionist of a mother, Suzanne, tried to tear them down. She understood that her mother was just trying to make sure her children were living up to their potential, but Avery thought there had to be a better way to do it.
She looked around, realizing that while she'd been lost in thought, she had wandered most of the way home. Her guardian angel must have been with her. She couldn't remember crossing a single road. Shaking her head, Avery made a beeline for her house, a large 2-story Victorian set back from the road. No cars were in the driveway. Her father was still at the school. That meant that her mother was not home. She breathed a sigh of relief. Avery loved her mother to pieces but it was always nice to get a break from all the questions that she asked. Not only about school but about her grades, the dancing, even her tutoring.
Suzanne made no secret of the fact that she didn't think Avery should be tutoring boys, and especially not Mark. While he was popular at school, he didn't come from one of the 'good' families, in Suzanne's estimation. She would turn her nose up at the mention of of the Williams family, hinting in a roundabout way that the family was full of alcoholics, and that she had heard rumors about what Mark did with girls when he was alone with them. Even the fact that Mark didn't use his stepfather's name was a point of contention with Suzanne.
Avery thought that was bullshit. She went to school with him and there were no rumors about Mark. About some of the other guys, sure. Jon Ashton was one. He had the womanizing reputation that Suzanne often tried to pin on Mark. But his family was rich, so Suzanne never brought it up.
Avery had discovered a long time ago that her mother was a complete snob.
She stopped in the kitchen and grabbed an apple to snack on, reading over the note hanging on the fridge. Avery cocked an eyebrow. Her mother and Joe were going to drive a few counties away and visit Janette, Suzanne's sister, for the weekend. Grateful she hadn't been dragged into that road trip, Avery bit into her apple and headed upstairs to her room.
She had dance class that afternoon, so she quickly got into her usual gear; shorts and a tank top. Usually her mother would drive her to class, grumbling about how Avery could be better if she applied herself more, but she would never be truly great because it just didn't come to her naturally. Avery just liked to dance. She liked to get lost in the music. She wasn't trying to make a career out of it. She figured she'd probably end up being a teacher. She was good at tutoring and didn't mind the work. It didn't necessarily spark a great passion in her, but she figured that sort of thing really only happened to a handful of people. She picked up her gym bag, tucked in her dance shoes and a towel as well as a few bottles of water, and headed out again, enjoying the feel of the warm May sunshine on her shoulders as she walked toward town. It was a bit over half a mile from her house, and she knew that after class the walk home would not be nearly as peppy. She'd be tired. But it would be worth it for the break from her mother's odd form of affection.