Arthur was dismayed to find out that even after eight years, he still remembered how to drive to the school perfectly. He had to admit to being nervous. Even though he had nothing to improve and nobody to impress, he was still a bit excited about seeing how everyone's lives had turned out, as well as a bit anxious about having to explain to everyone how his life had turned out.
After about ten minutes, he pulled into the parking lot for Gage Jason High School, feeling mildly fortunate that he had gotten a good space. He opened the front door, having a brief flashback to when he was ten years younger, telling his friends how he was "totally going to make it big, somehow," and he shuddered when he thought of what 18-year old Arthur would think of 28-year old Arthur. Probably nothing pleasant. Then he thought of where he might be in ten more years. He came very close to having a panic attack.
When he walked inside, turning right to enter the gymnasium where the reunion was being held, almost immediatly someone called his name.
"Arthur!" He turned around. The person who had said his name was wearing red scrubs that had a patch of a panda on the upper right hand pocket, and had long brown hair pulled back with a scrunchie.
"Wang?"
"Hi! How are you doing, aru?" So that habit hadn't gone away. He wasn't sure if it was a speech impediment or just a tic, but he recalled that Wang had almost always ended his sentences with 'aru'.
"I'm doing just fine, thank you. And you?" Wang smiled sunnily.
"I'm a veternarian," he said, gesturing to his scrubs.
"I didn't have time to change out of my clothes before I came here. Things are absolutely perfect, aru!" Arthur grimaced. He couldn't help but be jealous of the fact that his friend had reached his dreams.
"I'm stuck in a dead-end job that I despise," he said casually. Wang's face fell.
"Oh," he said, shuffling his feet. "Ah, that's not very pleasant," he murmured. "Take care, Arthur, aru," he said.
Arthur frowned. He hadn't meant to be rude. It wasn't complaining so much as it was stating a fact. Still, maybe he had been too negative. He resolved to be as sunny as he could to the next person he saw, which happened to be Honda. He hadn't known Honda that well, but they had been in some classes together, and knew each others' names.
"Hello, Arthur," said Honda.
"Hi, Honda!" exclaimed Arthur, making his smile wide. Honda ran off in the opposite direction. Well, that didn't exactly work either. Damn.
He decided to try and find some of his former friends, rather than stand by the door, no doubt looking depressed as hell. Before he could, however, he saw what had to be Feliciano waving at him and running towards him.
"Arthur! Arthur! Oh, gosh, it's been forever since I've seen you!" Arthur smiled weakly.
"Hello, Feliciano," he said, not really knowing what to say beyond that. "How are...things?" he offered, hoping that would suffice. Luckily, Feliciano was a chatterbox.
"Things are great! I'm getting married this spring, I'm sous chef at Fetta Di Sole, everything is just perfect!" Dear God, did everything this man say end with an exclamation point?
"Fetta Di Sole, isn't that local?" Arthur knew for a fact it was. He often drove past it on his way to work. The building was relatively small and dotted the i in "Di" with a grinning sunshine. He had never eaten there.
"Yep! It's Italian," he said. Well, that was no shock.
"What does the name mean?" he asked. If he remembered correctly, "sole" was "sun," but he wasn't sure, and he had been meaning to look it up but had always forgotten.
"It means, 'slice of sunshine,'" he explained.
"Oh, okay. So, where are you getting married?" Again, Feliciano beamed. Did he ever stop smiling?
"We're getting married in Vermont, and our honeymoon is in Berlin."
"That's nice," said Arthur politely.
Almost out of nowhere, Feliciano's smile seemed a bit sad. "We were supposed to get married in Venice, but it's not allowed." Arthur was confused.
"Who wouldn't allow it?" Feliciano raised an eyebrow.
"Um, the government? Same-sex marriage is illegal there. I think it's 'cause of the influence from the Vatican. I'm not sure." He frowned for an instant, but then his face lit up. "Still, married is married. I can't wait!" He giggled. A grown man was giggling. Was that normal? Then again, this was a former cheerleader he was talking to. In fact, he had been the head cheerleader. "Don't worry, Arthur, I'll make sure you're on the guest list." Then his expression turned to one of panic. "Oh, crap! I was supposed to email Ludwig the list of wedding cakes! I'm horrible! I'm sorry, Arthur, but I need to go. It was absolutley lovely seeing you, maybe we can talk later!" Arthur watched as he pulled out his Blackberry and ran away. It really was remarkable how little had changed.
Arthur walked around in the crouds, watching as old friends reminicsed and old enemies either cast frosty glances to each other across the room, or did the exact opposite and chatted it up, passive aggressively undermining each other. He recognized some people (a lot of people, actually) and in an odd way, it was interesting to see how things had turned out.
It wasn't long before he ran into more of his former friends. Apparently, he had been somewhat popular. Who knew? Either way, he decided to stop and say hello to Liz, Gil, and Rod, who were all clustered in a group, as they had done in high school.
"Hello," he said, and they all turned around at once.
"Arthur! Hey, man, what's up?" asked Gil, holding his hand up for a high-five. Rod gave him a withering glance.
"Are we seventeen again?" he asked, a disdainful expression on his face. Still, Arthur humored Gil and high-fived him.
"Arthur, how on earth have you been?" asked Liz, a smile on her face. Her hair was now at her waist, when in high school it had been a short bob, but otherwise it seemed like things were static with her as well.
Arthur forced a grin on his face. "Oh, things are quite good,"
"I can't believe how British you still sound," she said. No matter what she said, Liz never sounded like she was insulting you...well, unless you were Gil, anyway. Arthur wondered if they still went by their 33 nicknames, and assumed they did not.
"It's been, what, fourteen years? I would have thought that good old America would have beaten that accent out of you," she said, a light laugh at the end of her voice. Arthur couldn't help but laugh.
"But I visit my family in the summer," he said. "If, God forbid, I ever sound American, I assure you, they will make sure that damage is perfectly reversed." He wondered what would happen when he no longer had the money to visit London every summer. His parents almost always paid, and they always flew to visit extended family together, but he knew at some point the money had to end.
Gil grinned. "So, how's your boyfriend?" Rod rolled his eyes.
"Would you give that a rest, Gilbert? They were only friends, you were always the only one who ever saw things that weren't there." Arthur had no idea how to respond to that. Liz (Elizabeta, he realized she probably called herself now) was giving him a pointed look, one that he wasn't entirely sure he was recieving.
"Ah, Gilbert, Alfred and I were just friends," he said, his voice coming out slightly squeakier than it normally did.
"Who said I meant Alfred? Fruedian slip!" he exclaimed, doing a fist pump. Was it odd that nobody from high school seemed to change at all?
"I don't think that means what you think it means," Arthur muttered under his breath.
"So, Arthur, what do you do now?" asked Elizabeta. He was thankful she had changed the subject.
"I work for Rapture," he said evenly.
"Woah! That is so cool! I didn't even know that was real! What's it like working in an underwater hellhole?" What on Earth was Gilbert talking about?
"What?" asked Arthur. "I have no idea what you're talking about." Elizabeta sighed.
"He probably thinks you mean Rapture from Bioshock," she said, rolling her eyes. Gilbert paused.
"So, that's not what he means. Oh," he said, and looked disappointed. "Lame," he added as an afterthought. Roderich adjusted his glasses.
"I believe Rapture is a company that produces wireless keyboards," he said. He was the exact opposite of Elizabeta, in a way. Everything he said sounded like an insult, whether he meant it or not.
"We also make wireless mouses," he added weakly. "I don't do that, though. I mostly work with spreadsheets." He had to sound like the most pathetic person at this reunion.
"Well, at least you're better off than Gilbert," said Elizabeta smoothly.
"What? You have to be kidding. I have the most awesome job ever, and you're just jealous because I have to, like, fight off hot gamer chicks with a freaking stick," He smiled smugly, while Elizabeta fumed.
"He's the cashier at G-Squared," she said, jutting her thumb at Gilbert.
"G-Squared?" asked Arthur.
"Great Gaming," clarified Roderich. Oh. He had also driven past there on his way to work, but he was far too busy to play video games, so he had never visited.
"What's with the condecension, you snob?" Roderich glared at Gilbert.
"I am not a snob." Gilbert snorted.
"Oh, please. You are the textbook definition of snob. You think you're so great just because people pay you to play the piano. You dork," To ease the awkwardness, Arthur decided to change the subject.
"What do you do, Elizabeta?" asked Arthur.
"Ack. Do not get her started," said Gilbert, massaging his temples.
"I write romance novels," she said, smiling broadly. "Under the psuedonym Nemi Aktus," she said. Arthur blushed. One of his many little secrets was that he was a horrible romance novel fanatic, and he had in fact read many of the books written by "Nemi Aktus". They were very well written, but of course he couldn't tell her that.
"That's lovely," he said. "That name sounds familiar. Maybe I saw one of your books on television," he said.
"Yep," she said cheerfully. "Waltzes With Unicorns was on Oprah," she said. Gilbert snickered.
"What kind of dork would read something called Waltzes With Unicorns?"
"Right, well it's been lovely talking to you all, but I have to go now. Take care, all!" He walked briskly in the opposite direction.
"Nothing seems to have changed," he muttered to himself. "I feel like everything is exactly the same as it was ten years ago. Is anything different? Do our lives just stay static? Are we all doomed to-" At once, Arthur fell to the ground, having been too busy talking to himself to watch where he was going. "God, I'm sorry," he mumbled to the bright blue high tops he was facing.
"What?" said a voice. Oh, no. 'Of course,' he thought, 'this is just like something from a Nemi Aktus novel.' He had been running into people all night, and of course he had to do it literally at some point. And of course it had to be him. His former "best friend forever," The promise had been just as futile as when teenage girls scribbled it on each others' notebooks, only they hadn't abbreviated.
"Uh, Arthur?" Arthur looked up.
"Yes?"
"Can I help you up? You've been sitting on the floor for about a minute now." He laughed. Alfred laughed a lot, he remembered. "And, I thought, 'Well, maybe he likes it there!' Still, it would be impolite to just leave you here." More laughter. "Impolite. I just saw you and you're already rubbing off on me again." He extended his hand to Arthur. He grabbed it, pushing thoughts of how nice his hand felt as far out of his mind as they would go. He was quite accustomed to doing that now; it had become common practice.
"Thank you," he said quickly.
"Hey, no problem." There was that smile. The smile that had gotten him into so much trouble, the one that had cheered him up so many times, the one that, for all intents and purposes, Arthur could never refuse. The one he could never turn down and hated to see leave Alfred's face.
"So, how's it going, my best friend forever?"