"Emma, let's go! C'mon, Grandma was expecting us an hour ago!" Marissa Cooper yelled at her nearly ten-year-old daughter.
"Fine, I'm coming!" Emma Cooper hollered back. The girl ran out the front door of the apartment she shared with her mother, and into the car. Emma was small for her age, but always had an opinion, like her mother. She was rebellious in her own way, even at her young age. Her eyes were as blue as saphires, and her hair was as blonde, like the sand. She was a beautiful girl. Emma was completely innocent to everything that happened prior to her birth. She did not know who her father was, or any real comprehension of what had happened previously that fateful year.
Marissa closed her door, and got into the front seat of the car. It was not a nice car. Nothing like she had when she was young. In fact, her car was an old Toyota Corolla. She sighed before turning the car on, for she knew she was about to open a window to the past. Marissa backed out of her driveway, and began to head to her mother's home in a wealthier part of Newport.
After what happened with Caleb's death, and Jimmy leaving again, the Cooper family was never able to entirely recover financially, even after Marissa's mother remarried again to a fairly affluent doctor. Julie lived in a well-to-do area of town with her husband. Kaitlin had graduated from college three years ago, and was living in the town of Laguna Beach with her husband. She did not work, and did not care to. Her husband was a wealthy lawyer. The couple did not have any children yet.
Meanwhile, Marissa's daughter looked at her and said, "Mom, what are you doing today?"
"I'm going to my class reunion," Marissa explained.
"Class reunion?" Emma looked confused.
Yeah. You know how you're in elementary school now, and in a couple of years you'll go to middle school, and then to high school, at Newport Union?" Marissa began.
"Uh-huh," Emma replied.
"Well, when you graduate from high school, you graduate with your class. That means that everyone in your grade is in your class, and every ten years, after you graduate from high school, you have a reunion with those people," Marissa explained.
"How come?" Emma wondered.
Marissa shrugged, "So you can see how everyone is, I guess..."
"Where did you graduate from high school, Mommy?" Emma asked.
"The Harbor School. It's a private school. Grandma paid for me to go there," Marissa replied.
"Oh," Emma replied. The two remained silent for the remainder of the drive after that.
When Marissa got to her mother's house, she turned off the car, turned around to her daughter, and reminded her to be on her best behavior because no one liked rude children - especially Julie Cooper, although Marissa had not always been good about teaching her daughter good manners. Once she had done that, the two girls got out of the car, and began to approach the front of the Newport Beach home. Marissa thought it to be ironic that ten or eleven years ago, she would not have found it odd to walk up to someone's mansion that she knew. Now she felt odd about it.
Since her senior year in high school, she began to feel less comfortable around the Newport elite, which her mother and sister were apart of. Everyone looked at her as if she were a criminal. After the shooting of Trey Atwood, the accidental death of Johnny Harper, and the birth of her daughter, people looked down on Marissa Cooper. Her relationship with her childhood best friend, Summer Roberts, had become rather strained. Most of the time, they talked through Christmas cards. The same happened with her mother and sister. Although things had been going well for quite awhile, once Marissa became pregnant, things changed. Julie began to look down on her because of her "mistake".
Marissa knocked on her mother's door. Emma and Marissa waited hesitantly. Emma liked her grandmother. She found her fun to be around, but Emma always became tense when her mother was there. Although she did not know why, she knew that Marissa's relationship was strained with her Julie.
Julie answered and said, "Hi, Honey! Hi, Emma!"
"Hey, Mom, listen I'm sorry to do this, but I just thought it might be nice to go," Marissa said.
"It's okay. Just give me some more notice next time, okay, Sweetie? I had to cancel a cardiobar class," Julie replied.
Marissa rolled her eyes and sighed.
"Grandma, did you ever go to your high school class reunions?" Emma asked.
"No, Honey, I didn't," Julie replied. Marissa and Julie both knew it was because she had dropped out of high school, for she had Marissa when she was only eighteen; however, Emma did not know that. "Although, I talked to Kirsten Cohen the other day, and she said that Ryan and Seth planned to go."
"Who are they?" Emma wondered.
"Oh, just people I went to high school with," Marissa said. Julie looked at her. She knew Ryan and Seth were more than that. "Anyway, I should get going. I don't want to be late."
Julie and Emma waved goodbye from inside the house, as Marissa drove off, about to drive into the past.