“Walking through the empty school, you could imagine children from times long gone, their lives ahead them, not yet realizing the toll the hard landscape they inhabited would cost.”
Based in San Diego, CA, JD Clapp is a writer, iPhone photographer, and grit poet. His most recent visual work was published in Seaside Gothic Magazine (Jan. 2024). X: @jdclappwrites
When Jen Attends Her Class Reunion Fiction by Alison Wassell
CW: Mention of Bullying
When Jen attends her class reunion with a figure Beverley Rose will say is ‘to die for’ and a dress to match, she won’t mention that when she was fifteen she memorized every piece of graffiti in the end toilet cubicle while she ate her lunch, nor that every day she would take her coat to the last lesson so she could make a swift getaway at home time, nor that not once does she recall waking up, in those days, without that sick feeling you get before a hospital appointment or a driving test, nor that even now, when her boss announces in staff meetings that they’re going to break into pairs to discuss something, she starts to hyperventilate and waits for her partner to shout “Oh Miss, do I have to?”, nor that when her mum and dad thought she was doing homework she was, in fact, knitting effigies of Beverley Rose, Paula Cotton and Samantha Scott and submitting them to horrific torture, nor that when she lifted her desk lid that time in the fifth year to find a can of deodorant she really, really wishes that, instead of acting as though nothing had happened, she had taken it out, shaken it, and sprayed it right into the stupid, sniggering faces of her tormentors.
When Jen attends her class reunion with a figure Beverley Rose will say is ‘to die for’ and a dress to match, she will accept the compliment gracefully and stand around sipping Prosecco for a while, commenting on how the years have flown by, and how it seems like only yesterday they were all conjugating Latin verbs, solving quadratic equations and lusting over Mr Thompson, the geography teacher. She will listen politely as Beverley Rose, Paula Cotton and Samantha Scott boast about their careers, their children, their grandchildren. She may even boast, just a little, about hers. Then, probably before the buffet, she will sniff the air dramatically, declare that there’s a dreadful smell around here that’s turning her stomach, but that it’s been wonderful to see everyone, swivel on her Jimmy Choos and leave, and unless you notice how white her knuckles are on the strap of her Louis Vuitton handbag, you might be forgiven for thinking that her schooldays were the best of her life.
Alison Wassell is a writer of short fiction from Merseyside, UK. Her work has been published by Bath Flash Fiction Award, Ellipsis Zine, The Phare, Retreat West, Reflex Fiction, Briefly Zineand Litro. X: @lilysslave