Rose sat on the bleachers of the high school football field, watching her nephew run around the track with the other football players. Dimitri walked over to her. "Nice to have you back at school, Rose."

"Thank you, Coach Belikov." She smiled. "It's good to be back."

"Hey, you don't have to call me Coach Belikov anymore." He extended his hand to her. "It's Dimitri."

"Dimitri." She shook his hand. "So, do you really remember me?"

He sat on the bleacher in front of her, took off his cap, and swept his hair back with his fingers. Then he looked at her. "I have to admit I do."

"Why? Because you stayed in touch with Adrian?"

"I always thought you were kind of cute, but you were too young for me."

"Who said so?"

He grinned. "The law."

She felt her heart begin to beat faster. She was afraid but she knew that she had to ask. "So do you have a family now?"

He shook his head. "I'm divorced. You?"

She laughed. "Oh, sure!"

"Well, I was just checking." He shrugged. "In case some night I want to... invite you for dinner?"

Janine put the present she'd just finished wrapping underneath the Christmas tree. "Honey, are you ready to go?" she called up the stairs to her daughter. "Honey?"

Rose appeared, dressed in sage green slacks and a matching turtleneck shirt. "Oh, Rose, you look wonderful!" Janine exclaimed.

"I don't want to go to Lissa's party, Mom," said Rose. "It'll just be so awkward!"

"Oh, honey, it'll be the same as if you'd moved out of town after graduation and are coming back for your twenty-year reunion!"

"It won't be the same, and you know it!" Rose cried.

Arriving at her former teacher's front door, she felt her heart beat faster in anticipation. What would it be like to see Lissa again for the first time after twenty years? How much had she changed?

"Rose!" Lissa cried as she opened the door. "It's so good to see you again!"

"It's good to see you again too, Miss Drag...Lissa!" Suddenly near tears, Rose embraced her former teacher.

Rose met many of her former classmates at the party, but strangely, she had the urge to cling to Lissa as a drowning man would to a lifesaver. Previously they'd been teacher and student, but now the boundaries somehow seemed to have been swept away, and they could simply be friends.

"This is my husband, Christian Ozera," Lissa said proudly. Rose gasped in surprise.

"Christian Ozera? But you used to hate him!" Rose said to Lissa when the two of them were alone.

Lissa chuckled. "Well, he sort of grew on me." The two moved to a table in the corner, where they sat sipping their drinks and chatting.

"The music sure is different," Rose remarked as Lady Gaga belted out 'Bad Romance.'

Lissa smiled. "That it is."

"Whatever happened to Nirvana? Did they break up after Kurt Cobain killed himself?"

"They're still around, but they call themselves the Foo Fighters now."

"The Foo Fighters?" Rose giggled.

Although she felt comfortable chatting with Lissa, Rose soon began to feel just as awkward as she'd predicted she'd feel amongst her former classmates. After all, they'd all experienced twenty years worth of memories she hadn't. Soon she found herself upstairs with Lissa's daughter Skylar and her friends, regaling them with stories of her own high school days before she'd slipped into the coma.

Suddenly Lissa and Dimitri appeared. "Come on, Rose," Dimitri said kindly but firmly as he took her hand. "Let's go downstairs. That's where the party is."

"I didn't know what anyone was talking about!" Rose complained as the two of them walked together.

"I know," Dimitri sympathized.

"I don't even remember who most of them were. I'm almost forty years old and I've never had a job, never graduated high school. What do I do now?" she sobbed.

One morning soon afterwards, Rose was upstairs moping in her bedroom when she heard someone calling to her from outside her open window. "Rose! Oh, Miss Rose! Better hurry up or you're going to be late!"

Rose looked out the window and, to her surprise, she saw Dimitri standing on her front lawn and calling up to her. "Dimitri! What on earth are you doing here?"

"What's the matter? Haven't you ever had a boy walk you to school before?" he replied.

Rose hurried downstairs to meet him. "Where are you going?" Janine asked her.

"I haven't the vaguest idea," she replied with a smile.

Dimitri led her to the school library. "I've arranged for you to come here five days a week to study," he told her. "At the end of the semester, you'll have enough credits to receive your high school diploma."

"You're sending me back to school?" Rose couldn't believe it.

"And then on to college, if you want."