§ § § - August 20, 2008
They found Lauren, Camille and Myeko gathered at the table they had left not thirty minutes ago, and took their own seats. "Find anyone you know?" Maureen asked.
"Not to talk to," Lauren said. "Every time I recognized somebody and came up to say hi, they got all awkward with me and could barely look me in the eye."
"Same here," said Myeko. "What's wrong with these people? Or did we stumble in on the wrong reunion by mistake?"
"No, this is Class of Eighty-Three all right," Camille said. "I know about two-thirds of the people in this room, especially the Fantasy Islanders, because you and I and Lauren and Michiko all went to school with them from kindergarten on. We're in the right place, but I think there's an Invasion of the Body Snatchers thing going on."
"I went to school with them too," Maureen said, "and I got the same reactions. And here Leslie was getting remarks about being 'the famous Leslie Hamilton' and how she married a prince, and all anyone could see of Michiko was the crown."
"Have we changed that much?" Lauren wondered.
"Hey y'all, 'scuse me, but can I sit down a minute?" The woman who joined them was dressed as if for a job interview, in a skirt suit and high heels, and her makeup and frosted brown hair were flawless. They all knew who she was from the moment she broke into their powwow: it was Rae Ellen Moore, the girl from Mississippi who'd earned notoriety for herself by running away within a couple of months of graduation and who had been a drama classmate of Myeko's.
"Sure, go ahead," they agreed, making some room for Rae Ellen to wedge a chair in between Camille and Leslie. Myeko added, "Hi, Rae Ellen."
"Hey, Myeko. Nice seein' y'all again. Look…I don't mean to butt in, but I couldn't help overhearin' y'all's conversation, and I just had to put in my two cents. Hope y'all don't mind, but I think y'all oughta know." Rae Ellen shifted her chair, settled herself and rested her elbows on the table, interlacing her fingers in front of her in a sort of supersized fist. "It hasn't got anything to do with y'all changin' too much. I mean, sure, y'did - ever'body did, after all. We get older, we can't help it." Mentally Leslie repeated the words: We cain't hep it. A faint memory poked at her brain, something about her sister Kelly having made fun of a classmate's heavy southern accent once when the twins were seven and Leslie was nine. Rae Ellen's voice brought her back to the moment. "But maybe y'all changed too much in some ways and didn' change enough in others."
Leslie and her friends looked oddly at her and then at one another, and Camille asked suspiciously, "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Look at y'all," Rae Ellen said, gesturing toward Michiko and Leslie. "Michiko, honey, you married a king - and a filthy-rich one too. I mean, he was rich even for a king! Y'all gotta know that's gon' change a body." She seemed not to see Michiko's shuttered look. "And look at you, Leslie." Lookit yew, echoed Kelly's voice in Leslie's head. "You started right off the bat bein' famous. You'uz Mr. Roarke's ward from your first day in school. An' then you git into Mr. Roarke's bidness, an' after that you go off an' marry a prince." Pree-yunts, Kelly mocked through laughter. "How's anybody gon' compete with that?"
Finally too impatient with the harping on her husband's identity to check herself, Leslie demanded sarcastically, "So what do you expect me to do, divorce my husband so I'm less of a high-and-mighty snob?"
A couple of stifled snickers erupted from the other side of the table and she saw, in her peripheral, Lauren and Maureen trade a merry glance. Rae Ellen sighed. "No, that's not what I mean, y'all. It's just, some people're gon' be intimidated by that."
"Oh, and you think we had no idea?" Michiko inquired with light sarcasm of her own.
"C'mon, y'all, I'm not tryin'a be mean or anything like that. I just think y'all oughta know. It's not just y'all two, it's the rest o'y'all too." She indicated Camille, Lauren, Myeko and Maureen. "Y'all can't stop hangin' out with each other."
"Well, of course we hang out with each other," Myeko pointed out. "We've been friends for years, and we all live on the island."
"Yeah, I know that, but y'all aren't friends with anyone else, y'git it? Y'all been an exclusive clique since high school started, and nobody else could ever git in. Y'all had y'all's own table in here, y'all always did ever'thang together, y'all were always at the same parties and the same places in town an' ever'thang else." Rae Ellen's accent had thickened as she got into the spirit of her speech. "An' right in the middle of it all, there was the famous Leslie Hamilton. Y'all was like royalty, don't y'all know that?"
Leslie scowled at her. "You know something? This 'famous Leslie Hamilton' crap is really getting on my nerves. I refuse to go into the story of my life, but everybody except my friends here seemed to think I had the idea I was better than everyone else just because I lived with Mr. Roarke. If you think I was cliquish with them, that happens to be because they were the only ones who ever wanted to be friends with me. You may have conveniently forgotten, Rae Ellen, but in the first days of ninth grade here, I tried to make friends. I got rebuffed one way or another every time. You can take only so much of that before you give up and take refuge with those who've proven their friendship." She speared the southern woman with a hard look. "Maybe you weren't here at the time and didn't know that, but it's true. When that damn mumps epidemic went around in senior year and all the other girls here were out sick, not one soul would deign to keep me company at lunch." She tossed a fleeting glance toward the corner. "Only Cori Mukulani over there, and even she had ulterior motives. You think I was being standoffish? If you thought that needed correcting, why didn't you do something about it yourself, instead of criticizing me for it?"
Rae Ellen stared at her, her mouth hanging open for several seconds. "Oh, well…all I can say is, maybe you shoulda tried again. You know the sayin', If at first y'don't succeed…"
"Tell me something, Rae Ellen," Lauren broke in. "If you thought Leslie needed to break out of our closed little circle, why didn't you try it yourself? Or did you think it was solely Leslie's responsibility to broaden her own horizons?"
"Or maybe you just thought I was so damn stuck-up that I'd snub you, so why even bother?" contributed Leslie acidly.
Rae Ellen unclasped her hands and flipped them palms-up in exasperation. "Don't y'all see what I'm tryin'a tell y'all? Y'all're gittin' these reactions now because nobody ever remembers y'all doin' anythang with anybody except each other! I know, Myeko, I know, I 'member you from my drama classes. Maybe you were the exception to the rule, 'cause your Halloween parties were open to anybody, and you made sure we all knew that. But what I mean is, y'all're still a clique! Y'all need to open up and try to be friends!"
"You must have missed us a little while ago, making the rounds and trying to say hi to people," Myeko said, "except nobody seemed to want to talk to us. Even my old drama pals got uncomfortable around me. I've lived here on this island all my life. I'm nobody special. I'm a mother and I didn't marry anybody famous, and I don't have a big glittery entertainment career or anything else. I'm just an ordinary person. So what's with the collective snub in my case? You seem to have all the answers, you explain it."
"Hell, I don' know," said Rae Ellen. "But even now - lookit y'all, sittin' here in a huddle an' ignorin' ever'body else. An' half the people at the twenty-year reunion saw y'all all leavin' together right after roll call. That was just plain rude, y'all. We had a drawin' for a door prize, and if y'all hadn'ta left, one'a y'all woulda won it. Lauren's name was the first one we drew. But y'all cut 'n' run, so we drew somebody else and they won it. It was a nice prize too-an Alaskan cruise."
The girls looked at one another in disbelief, and for a moment they said nothing, a little abashed. Rae Ellen did have a point on that one, and they all knew it.
Then Camille inquired, "So the snubbing now is payback for that, huh?"
"Dangit, Camille, you're missin' the point. Y'all been actin' like an exclusive club for all these years, but y'all got the gall to wonder how come nobody wants to talk to y'all. So now y'know. There's no point breakin' in on a group that won't accept new members."
Leslie could feel exasperation bubbling just under the surface and wondered whether to give it voice or squelch it. Camille had no such inner debate, though. "Hey, you know what? I don't know who appointed you as our collective conscience - maybe you appointed yourself - but I'd like to know if you're through now." She propped her chin on one fist and speared Rae Ellen with her eyes. "For your information, we had no idea people thought like that. We would've been more than happy to welcome new members into our so-called club. Even you if you'd been so inclined. But didn't you just hear what Myeko said? We just tried to make friends, say hi to people. And this is the result. Now explain it."
All six girls waited, staring expectantly at Rae Ellen, who met each one's eyes in turn and then took on an outraged look. "Y'all mean that? I'm s'posed to explain it?"
"Hey, you think the solution was for us to make an effort. It sounds like you think all it took was us to reach out and it would've worked. It didn't, so let's hear the reason you think so," Myeko suggested.
"Too little, too late?" volunteered Michiko with a sarcasm utterly unlike her; Rae Ellen threw her a startled look.
Leslie could no longer hold back the question that had been waiting its turn, and said to Rae Ellen, "Tell me one thing. When I was eating lunch alone during that mumps epidemic, if I had gotten up and come to your table and asked to eat with you and whoever you sat with, would you have agreed, and invited me into your circle, or would you have said there was no room for me there?"
At that point Rae Ellen turned a mesmerizing shade of pure magenta, causing the other girls to look at one another again and Leslie to nod once or twice. "That's about what I thought. Don't talk to us about trying to assimilate, Rae Ellen, not when none of you is willing to accept our friendly overtures. We let you in thinking, hey, here's somebody we can talk to and catch up with, and what do we get but a lecture. If that's all you have to say to us, your time's up. You can go now."
"What she said," Myeko and Lauren said in chorus.
"Anyway, what's it to you?" Camille wanted to know. "You're the one who ran away shortly before graduation, aren't you? You made it pretty clear you hated it here. So what do you care whether we try to make friends or not?"
Rae Ellen reared back in her seat; somehow her face gained even more color, and for the first time, tears gleamed in her eyes. "Never mind, y'all," she muttered, and nearly overturned the chair in her haste to leave.
"Did you see that?" Camille asked, looking astonished.
Michiko frowned, and for the first time her old self glimmered through as she gazed worriedly after their fleeing classmate. "Something's not right here. I'll be right back." She jumped out of her chair and chased Rae Ellen, leaving the others glancing at each other.
"She did have one good point," Lauren said finally. "We were pretty rude, walking out on the twenty-year reunion the way we did."
"I guess we were just so busy thinking about Myeko's reunion party, we never even thought about what it'd look like," Maureen agreed through a sigh. "But I'm starting to think it was a mistake for us to come to this one too. Who'd ever have thought we looked like a snobby clique to everyone else?"
"Maybe it wasn't necessarily everyone else," Camille said. "Maybe that was just Rae Ellen's opinion."
Gears clicked in Leslie's mind. "If it was, then that might explain how she reacted just now before she ran off. Maybe she saw the chance to yell at us for it because she wanted to be part of our circle of friends back then, and we just never noticed."
"Well, cripes, couldn't she have just walked up to us and asked to eat with us?" said Myeko, rolling her eyes. "It works both ways. We may be at fault for some things, but it's not like she couldn't have come to us, too."
"Hey," Lauren said, eyeing Leslie, "you said Cori Mukulani ate with you when the rest of us had the mumps that time. Are you serious?"
Leslie groaned. "I was hoping you wouldn't ask about that." Her friends laughed, and she flashed a brief, sheepish grin. "It's a long, dumb story. I'll tell you about it after we leave this place. No point in it getting all over school." She smirked and they laughed.
Michiko came back then, with Rae Ellen by the arm, and signaled at the other girls with her free arm to follow them out the cafeteria door. Rae Ellen let Michiko tow her along without complaint, merely keeping her head low as if hoping no one would see her.
They tried a few doors before finding an unlocked one to an empty classroom, and closed themselves in after flipping on the lights. "Let's sit down," said Michiko. "I told Rae Ellen I think we all need to have a long talk."
The girls plopped into desks, and Lauren snorted, "Geez, this feels like I just jumped into a time machine. Is Mrs. Melchior gonna walk in the door and demand to know if I remembered to bring my geometry homework?" They all laughed, even Rae Ellen.
"Before we start," Camille said, "you seem to be coming out of your shell, Michiko. I mean, we saw your mother shove you in here, and it was pretty clear you wanted to stick your head back in the sand. So what's happened?"
Michiko glanced around at her friends, at Rae Ellen, and even at the door once before heaving a sigh that brought her upper torso off the back of the desk chair. "Mama-san scolded me the entire way down here. She tricked me out of the apartment by telling me she needed my help carrying groceries home, and then instead, she pushed me onto the shuttle bus and announced that I was going to the reunion no matter what. And she read me the riot act. I've never seen her so angry. She made sure I knew that I was trying to grieve myself into the grave alongside Errico, that my daughter needed me, that maybe my husband was dead but I wasn't, and after losing my father she wasn't about to lose one of her children too. She just let me have it. And then I began making the rounds with you, Leslie, and I saw that nobody could see me as anything but the queen of Arcolos. I was about to start feeling sorry for myself again, till Rae Ellen here dropped in on us and read us all a whole different riot act."
Rae Ellen blushed again. "I'm sorry, y'all."
"Well, maybe we deserved what you said about the last reunion," Lauren said with a small, sheepish shrug. "We did kind of cut and run, as you put it. Our husbands were there with us, and they were all a little uncomfortable, but not really much more than we were. We had a party planned at Myeko's house, and that just seemed way preferable to what we thought was turning into a cornfest."
"Nobody ever mentioned a door prize," Camille put in, peering at Rae Ellen.
"It was s'posed to be a s'prise," Rae Ellen explained. "I forgot who won, but there was a coupla well-off class members who donated it an' thought it might liven things up some. An' I guess it did. We all started minglin' and talkin', and it turned out right nice. It's just, y'all didn't stick around long enough to give it a chance."
"We thought the party at my house would be better," Myeko said. "I had a whole collection of 80s CDs and my husband was grilling, and Frida was visiting with her husband too, and even Michiko and Errico were there. We wanted to catch up and that was where we did it, but I guess we just had a crappy sense of timing."
"But it was rude of us to walk out," Leslie said softly, thinking back on that night five years before, remembering their husbands' wisecracks and the way the girls themselves had made fun of the entire thing-and, she remembered guiltily, of Rae Ellen herself. "We're sorry, Rae Ellen. We really didn't think about how it would look, and the guys were just as eager to leave as we were."
"How did it make you feel, seeing us leave?" Michiko asked.
Rae Ellen reddened again, but she barely hesitated before answering, which told Leslie she must have wanted to say this ever since that night. "First thing'at crossed my mind was, I never saw anything so rude in all my life. Jus' gittin' up and walkin' out and not even sayin' goodbye or offerin' an excuse. An' I couldn't stop thinkin' about it the rest of the night. It…it went from thinkin' how rude it was to whatever y'all musta left to do, an' I figured it was some exclusive, cliquey thing again, somethin' y'all were doing that was just for y'all and for nobody else. That damn club o'yers again. An' now I hear y'all had your own private little ol' party." She made a disgusted face, caught up in her memories and the anger they had brought out. "It figgers. Y'all jus' never let nobody else in."
When she fell silent, the girls sat for a moment without speaking, each one thinking back on that night and wondering who else had noticed them leave and what kind of impression that must have made. After a minute Maureen confessed, "It's really embarrassing. I'm sorry too, Rae Ellen. But honestly, we had no idea everybody else seemed to think we were just a snobby little club. We were no such thing, and even if we had been, we wouldn't have been the only ones. You always have your high-school groups, you know. The jocks, the popular girls, the brains, the badasses and the outcasts. There wasn't much mixing in those sects, and even within the groups, you had subgroups."
"The Great American High-School Caste System," said Leslie sardonically. "It starts in junior high, or middle school…whatever they call it nowadays. But that's when you sow the seeds, and by the time you hit high school, your identity is written in stone till graduation. And this isn't even America-it's only because we have so many Air Force students from Coral Island, and they've always outnumbered the locals."
"Didn't you ever see The Breakfast Club?" Myeko teased.
Rae Ellen grinned, looking a little sheepish. "Oh sure, I loved that movie. But y'all, 'member how it was one member of each one of those categories you mentioned, Maureen? An' somehow they all became friends. I thought about that for a long time after I saw that movie, an' it always made me think o'y'all and that clique y'all had."
"It wasn't a clique, Rae Ellen," Camille said, exasperated. "Maybe we looked like one, but we were a group of friends who lived near one another and had a lot in common, and it was natural for us to fall together. And it's still like that. We've been through a lot together, and we share a lot of memories, so of course we're proud of this friendship we have and we cherish it. But in spite of what you want to believe, that doesn't mean we don't like to make new friends. I'd like to know where you got that crazy idea."
"Probably from our walking out five years ago," Myeko offered.
"That kinda reinforced it," Rae Ellen reflected, "but it goes back a lot further'n that. I had my friends back then too, o'course. But I think what it really was, was that you had her in your group." She gestured at Leslie. "She was Mr. Roarke's ward an' all, an' I think a lot of people I knew looked at it like she was a queen with her ladies-in-waitin' buzzin' around her, doin' her biddin'."
Leslie shook her head, disbelief overwhelming her. "Holy paradise! Did I act like that? Did I present some kind of touch-me-not attitude that put people off?" She looked around at her friends in appeal. "You guys all knew I was shy and scared to death the day I started the eighth grade here. It's the same old stupid story. You get a shy person who has a hard time talking to new people, and immediately everybody assumes she's stuck-up. There's just no generosity, no benefit of the doubt, no room for…for…I don't know." She slapped the desktop, frustrated. "I fell in with Michiko and Myeko and Lauren here on that first day, because they were the only ones who seemed to realize it was just shyness and fear of the unknown, and not being stuck-up at all. But that stupid newspaper article apparently sealed my doom. I was Mr. Roarke's ward from the very first day, and of course that was too much for most of you. It was just easier to assume I was full of myself."
"Calm down, Leslie," Maureen urged. "We get it."
"But does Rae Ellen get it?" Leslie demanded, eyeing the name's owner.
Rae Ellen cleared her throat. "I guess maybe I was wrong about that. I didn't come here till almost the end of ninth grade. I 'member thinkin', wow, Fantasy Island. I git to go to high school here an' all. But there was kids makin' fun o'my accent, an' all I could do was try to make some friends real quick so I'd have somebody t'hang out with an' not spend my whole time here bein' lonely and bullied around. But I ended up missin' my hometown, an' that's why I ran away the end of senior year."
"Where's your hometown?" Michiko asked.
"Pascagoula, Miz'sippi," said Rae Ellen. "After I finished up here, I finally got back there, and I've lived there ever since…well, till that damn Hurricane Katrina wiped it out three years ago. Our house was a total loss. We been livin' up in a suburb o'Little Rock in Arkansas since Katrina. It's nice, but it sure ain't home." She smiled crookedly.
Camille smirked. "You know something stupid? When my daughter was born, my husband and I almost named her Katrina. We really would've got some attention then, since my name also belongs to a notorious southern hurricane. I got so much flak about it back in '69 when Hurricane Camille was all over the news, I never forgot it, even though I was only four when it happened. It's one of my first memories."
Everyone laughed, and Rae Ellen nodded. "There's a bridge over near Biloxi that you can cross an' you bounce up'n'down the whole way, an' that's because of the damage Hurricane Camille did to it. Might be one o'the last souvenirs o'that one." She grinned.
"Do you think you'll ever go back to Pascagoula?" Maureen asked.
"I hope so," Rae Ellen said, sighing. "Maybe someday. My husband's too sick'n'tired o'the hurricane risk, though. Hey, all y'all're married, right? Or were?" She tacked on the last two words with a hasty glance of apology at Michiko.
"Yup," the girls said, and each one filled her in on their families while Rae Ellen listened with interest, nodding frequently. It turned out Rae Ellen had a son and daughter of her own, both in high school. Their conversation continued on until the classroom door opened and several people stuck their heads in; the group looked around in surprise.
"What's the matter?" Michiko asked.
"Do you know how late it is?" one of the two women asked. "I mean, it's almost eight o'clock, and people are wondering where you are."
"Have you been in here all this time, Rae Ellen?" a man asked.
Rae Ellen grinned. "Yeah, I guess so. 'Member how we'uz talking 'bout the last reunion when we first got here? Well, the bad guys here aren't so bad after all."
"The bad guys?" chorused Maureen, Leslie, Camille and Lauren, gaping at her.
Even the newcomers in the doorway blushed, and Rae Ellen dropped her head. "I'm sorry, that jus' came outta me. We'uz talkin' about how y'all left the last reunion. Anyway, c'mon in, y'all. We're kinda gettin'a know each other, and they're cool."
The newcomers came in, and as if rehearsed, Leslie and her friends - especially Camille - flew out of their chairs. "Steve Matsumoto?" blurted Lauren, the only one who had the presence of mind to speak.
"Wow," uttered Leslie. "We haven't seen you since senior year."
Steve Matsumoto grinned in sheepish fashion; he was balding and had a very thick and bushy mustache, as if to make up for what had gone missing up top. He and Camille had dated during high school, till breaking up after attending separate colleges. "Hi, everybody. Camille, hi, nice to see you. You're looking good."
"You too," Camille said, clearing her throat. "Where do you live now?"
"California," he replied, and somehow that seemed to set off an entirely new conversation, while Steve and Camille caught up a bit and the other four introduced themselves. The chatter took on a new momentum, till the first woman who'd spoken checked her watch and reminded everyone that the main reunion was still waiting for them. "We're gonna miss it if we don't get out of here."
Leslie found herself in conversation with an islander named Tim Chiang and a former Air Force brat named Christine Wald, and caught a glimpse of Michiko strolling along with Rae Ellen, engaged in a lively discussion about something. Inwardly she smiled; it looked as though Michiko had finally emerged from Errico's grave, and she was glad.
On the way home, Michiko glanced around the car and asked, "Hey, where's Tabitha, anyway? I had the feeling someone was missing all this time, but I only just figured it out finally. Is she sick or something?"
"Or something," said Camille dryly.
"We'll have to find out what's going on with her too," said Leslie. "But for right now, we're glad you're finally back among the living. And hey, could you do Father and me a favor this weekend? We're going to need your help."
Michiko peered at her. "Oh? With what?"
"Some fantasies," said Leslie. "Tell you what - be at the main house Saturday morning at…hm, let's say ten o'clock…and we'll fill you in."
So how does Michiko handle her little assignment? Stick around…and I promise to try not to take so long to continue the storyline this time!