All The People We Used To Know

[Grand Moff Hissa]

June 23, 2018

Tonight had come very, very close to not happening.

It seemed pretty obvious that it might be controversial, in hindsight. A tenth anniversary high school reunion for a class that had lost a substantial portion of its population to a terrorist attack? A class where some of the survivors had baggage with each other, where a number had taken divergent paths in the decade since that left them barely able to coexist in the same state as each other, let alone sit down over cocktails and hors d'oeuvres? The safest thing seemed to be to move on with their lives, keep in touch with the ones who mattered and let the other connections fade, wither and die like they'd never been. Many would be doing just that, and would not be in attendance tonight, for any number of reasons.

That was okay. It was happening anyways, because it mattered. It really fucking mattered, and Jennifer Perez had set her mind and spirit to making it happen, and now it was real. And if anyone wanted to fight? She'd personally put an end to it, just like she always had.

There were many things about Bayview Secondary School that were not part of the widely-known story of the 2008 attacks. It was the biggest class ever taken, that was core to the narrative, but the other side of that was that Bayview was a really, really big school in general. A class camping trip to the Badlands had sounded, to many of the students, about as exciting a way to close out the year as another bout of standardized testing or a sports-mandated physical examination. Almost half the graduating class had, for one reason or another, not boarded those buses on that fateful day. It wasn't fair to those students for their lives to forever be defined by what had happened, no more so than it was healthy for the survivors to wallow eternally in their trauma.

This was a stance Jennifer held mostly on principle. She was not particularly close to the majority of her classmates—never had been. Her core group had been younger than her, and she'd cut them loose soon after her return, or maybe they'd cast her aside. It was hard to say and she didn't care anymore. It had been right. She still cared deeply for Isabel, and she'd been to the MMA thing with her and some of the others not long ago at all, but that was the exception. Her people now were mostly friends she knew from work or shared interests. It wasn't the life she'd imagined for herself, basically ever, but she loved what she did, loved her two-bedroom apartment/studio and her Patreon page, the rush of a new commission or a tricky alteration job or a gig calling her out of state, sending her into one of those frenzies of productivity and focus that had seen her through a bachelor's degree when it felt like the world itself was hellbent on crushing her and she couldn't even find her emotions most days.

She was still a common sight around the halls of Bayview, but even so it felt strange tonight. It wasn't like Spring Break, when she'd lent a hand repainting the teacher's lounge, wasn't like a month ago, when she'd waved off the buses setting forth on their own senior trips, even more sparsely populated than in her time but resilient in their own way, making a quiet and oh-so intentional statement that they would not bend, would not surrender. No, tonight, for the first time in nearly a decade, she could see the place as it had once been. She was remembering all the little details as she walked, running her hand over the metal locker that was hers as a sophomore, fingers tracing the initials gouged into its top corner, R.A.H., belonging to someone she'd never known, someone who'd been gone even when she was a freshman. She could see the places where artwork had been changed, or carpets redone, but if she closed her eyes she could walk the same paths, could hustle towards history class while profanities raced through her mind because she'd overslept and then they'd gotten stuck in traffic and she was already repeating the class and felt so, so stupid for it.

Her destination, however, was not the history department but the front hall. She was resplendent tonight in a knee-length strapless dress of spiraling bright red and royal purple, hair recently trimmed and gelled up like she'd always worn it, a pair of oversized sunglasses tucked away in her purse but ready to reappear at a moment's notice if she needed a little wall between her and the world. She was manning the check-in for the first half hour, covering the shift that had originally been marked out for Mr. Kwong. She didn't blame him for giving it a pass, in light of what had happened. Tennessee was on everyone's mind and tongue, most of the time now. The news was coming, inevitably, and after all that had occurred these past years, Jennifer doubted it would be good. There would be no boats, no stumbling race across the sand, calling out, the very last one to make it to safety, no steel left glinting in the sun with promises forever unfulfilled. It would just be death and endings and one more broken survivor.

Kimberly would not be attending, Jennifer surmised. She had done her best to track down whoever she could via social media, phone calls, relatives, the whole nine yards, but when it came to the thirtieth survivor she had run into a brick wall, one she suspected she was not intended to breach.

But it was what it was. If only three people turned up, it would still be worth it. If nothing else, they had the whole school open to them, now that class was out for the summer. It was modestly catered, a buffet set up in the old cafetorium, an open bar, but not one that stocked anything expensive, off-brand beers and basic cocktails and red wine. She would have to go there herself, at some point, probably. Just now, she wasn't feeling too hungry.

At her little podium by the entrance, Jennifer had a stack of blank name tags. It had been a very long time for some of the people she thought might turn up, so what harm was there in easing things a little? She filled her own out with a slightly unsteady hand.

Hello, my name is: Jennifer

And then, after a second or two of thought, in smaller letters underneath, she added: Perez

What? It had been ten years, and maybe some people had forgotten who exactly had been on the trip. There was still that little chance she'd draw unwanted attention. It had been so long, but she felt the ghost of somebody else's reputation whispering in her ear one more time.

[Namira]

((Ten Years Ago --> Lizzie 'Bounce' Volkova-Blake))

She hadn't forgotten.

Ten years ago, the very first person Lizzie had woken up to see was Jennifer Perez. They didn't meet again until Lizzie saw her later on that crazy, impossible day, the day that their lives were spared. They hadn't made it to the same set of boats, and there was something about that shock to the system of encountering somebody that she never thought she'd see again that made her burst into fresh tears. Lizzie hadn't even known Jennifer before all of everything, though that was hardly noteworthy when it came to her own withered social skills. She could have counted her friends on the fingers of one hand.

Lizzie was doing better than that now. She hadn't come out of her shell so much as been prised from it with a knife, but she'd decided to own the exposure, take the vulnerability and weakness and turn it into a strength. It hadn't been easy. She'd thrown up and cried from stage fright, she'd frozen up, she'd had to call a seminar early because the words on her flash cards started dancing away from her. Bit by bit she'd improved. People wanted to see her speak. As it turned out, if people would hire you for events, if you could make something out of those speeches, then people would actually want to see you for you, too.

It'd taken her aback that she was enjoying other people's company, that her social calendar was filling up, but Lizzie wasn't truly disarmed until she declined one friend's invitation because she was already seeing another. She'd had to sit down. Alice had come home to see her crying. Alice wouldn't be coming tonight, too many painful memories, ones she couldn't deal with. She was still struggling with it all, and there was only so much that Lizzie could do. They'd helped one another to their feet, but certain wounds ran too deeply for her to heal. Somebody needed to sit Niko anyway, and Alice had volunteered gratefully. The momentary idea of bringing a two-year-old along to this kind of event put a smile on Lizzie's face. An 'that's an utterly awful idea' type of smile, but even so.

Would anyone recognise her? She'd remained in St. Paul after everything, and though she wasn't arrogant enough to believe that her speaking might have put her on anyone's radar out of state, and she certainly hadn't gone out of her way to promote herself, unlike a couple others she could name. However, her profile had taken a major step up for her in the last couple of years when she'd started to get involved in politics. Public speaking to policy speaking, it wasn't too much of a change. Bounce Volkova with her ambitions set on government, would anyone even believe that? Yet there she'd been in the media, confidently speaking about her views on the district, what she believed needed to change. She'd given a couple of soundbites because if Lizzie retained anything from high school, it was her ability to get pissed off. SOTF was still happening and they'd thrown the previous administration under the bus to blame, and then replaced them with a sabre-rattling buffoon who didn't know the first thing about running the country.

So yeah, she got mad, and people listened, and bizarrely, it polled well. She was in the running for a Minnesota district, now. Crazy.

Lizzie stepped into the entryway and was hit by a wave of nostalgia and melancholy. She hadn't been back to Bayview since it happened. Being here now put a crushing weight onto her chest. She thought of her techniques, she thought of how to calm herself, took a deep breath. It didn't clear the pressure, but it helped.

Jennifer looked great, healthy, and Bounce was glad she'd decided to dress for the occasion, torn between casual and formal. She'd gone for a waistcoat, button up and dress pants, had her bob trimmed into a shorter style, still much neater than anything she'd worn in high school. She was still almost as skinny as before, most of the baby weight dropping back off. Her family made tiny women, apparently.

"Hello, Jennifer. It's good to see you again," she almost surprised herself by meaning it. She picked up a nametag from the stand, turning it over and over. She smiled. For the first time in a long while, she found herself lost for words.

[MK Kilmarnock]

They were the dead class.

But in some other respects, they were the living class. Of any group ever abducted from their trip in order to play that twisted 'game', they had the most survivors. Another one of those survivors arrived and looked around a, currently, mostly empty hall. Not terribly surprising, considering what was marking the occasion. Bayview Secondary's saddest class reunion, the lost children. Even the ones that lived were never the same.

Hello, my name is: Felicia Carmichael.

Felicia capped the sharpie and let it fall the last inch from her fingers to the podium, dramatically peeling the sticker away to slap it to her chest. One of the corners hung off where her dress was cut, but no matter, she would just sloppily fold it over aaaaaand done. Ready to mix and mingle, with... so many empty chairs.

Her wife had offered to come, though the unspoken argument playing between the two of them was much different from what they actually said. She could be support. She couldn't do anything. It might be interesting to learn about who she'd gone to high school with. She'd learn so much more about people she would never be able to meet. Like Rosa.

Ten years. One year off, seven years of schooling, one bar test and a license to practice law in the state of Minnesota, hell yeah. The decade between 2008 and 2018 hadn't allowed senior year of high school to define who Felicia was. Her former goals had turned to dreams, replaced by things uncharacteristically practical of her. They got the bills paid, and they got her life in order. Part of her didn't want to come back here; thankfully, it was only a tiny part of her, a lost remnant who still couldn't face the truth.

95% is still an A.

"Sorry I'm early," Felicia faux-apologized to the two other girls there. "I know you're supposed to show up late to parties but my Uber driver had places to be. Gave him two stars, only because he had the radio on the whole time n' didn't bother me."

[KamiKaze]

Nails dug deeply into the steering wheel. The key was in the ignition, but the car wasn’t running, only the CD playing “These Things” by She Wants Revenge, but it barely registered. Grip, let go, grip, deep breath, another deep breath, remind yourself of who you are and where you are.

You are Anna Chase, an Art and Home Economics teacher at Bayview Secondary School. You are here today for your high school reunion. You will talk to people who you haven’t talked to in years, and while some good might come out of it, who knows what will-

That wasn’t working.

Take another breath.

Think of where everything was.

Hands were still on the wheel. Feet were placed firmly on the floor. Count to three. Breathe. Think about five cars. Her car, a silver Volvo. The car she was parked next to, a red Camry. The car on her other side, a VW. Next to it was a minivan, and behind her, a truck was pulling into a parking space on the other side. Okay, what physical sensations? Her hands on the steering wheel. The upholstery underneath her. Her pencil skirt. Her glasses on her face. Hear? People walking past, cars pulling up, her own breathing. She could smell that dusty old car smell and the air freshener used to cover it up. Her hands lifted off the steering wheel and pulled out a pack of clove gum, shakily undoing the foil and putting one in her mouth. That was taste.

She felt fine getting ready earlier, but when she actually parked earlier than when the event was scheduled everything went to hell. So, she had to give herself a few minutes.

Okay, if it got worse, she’d leave early. She’d say hello to everyone she needed to, maybe get some closure, and see how she did. Then again, might not be too difficult. Wasn’t like she went into Bayview Secondary every week to work.

It took a bit longer, enough for the gum’s taste to actually fade away. It was only by then Chase reached into her bag and found some makeup. Cars weren’t the best place to retouch, but she wasn’t going to go to the bathroom just yet. She looked into a compact mirror.

Chase wondered if anyone she wasn’t in contact with already would recognize her. In some ways, she changed, but in other ways she didn’t. Same gray eyes, similar pale skin, same dark glossy hair but pinned into a rough bun. Still wore glasses, just different frames. Makeup and clothes had changed. People always told her that her work clothes made her look like what would happen if a Tim Burton character decided to become a schoolmarm. Honestly, she took that as a compliment. Obviously, age had changed her. As a teen she was small and childish-looking, but while she didn’t gain an inch since she graduated she did fill out a little. Her face had matured, definitely.

It had been a bumpy ride since she came back from the game, but she made it through. A lot of things happened in… ten years? Ten years. Some of which she’d talk to her therapist about, not just stuff relating to the game. But she got a steady teaching job, she had somehow managed to make things work with Janet for five years, she was involved in her community, she was… okay.

After finishing her makeup, Chase sniffled, but she smiled.

She was going to be okay. She just had to keep telling herself that.

Chase finally took the key out of the ignition, and with it, the CD she’d been playing stopped. She adjusted a lock framing her face. Her hair had grown back over the years, but she still didn’t like it being loose too much. Chase slid the gum and her keys back into her purse, and opened the car door.

She smoothed out her skirt a bit. Chase had decided to go business casual for today, something she’d wear to work. Gray dress shirt hidden under a black pinstripe waistcoat, black pencil skirt, tights, and black heels. Pretty typical Tim Burton schoolmarm, as they’d say. She slung her purse over her shoulder, locked the car, tossed her chewed gum in the trash, and stepped towards the entrance.

___

Chase walked into the cafeteria, and, upon seeing a group of people already there, almost turned and left.

However, that’d be silly. Chase wouldn’t go to all this trouble, only to turn on her heels the second she stepped inside. Normally she was a fan of arriving just before everyone else, but, well. Sometimes nerves don’t allow that. Just now was an example. Well, time to be responsible for whatever happened here, she guessed.

Her heels clicked on the floor. They’d promised a bar and buffet. Looks like they delivered. Chase went to the podium at the front and uncapped a Sharpie for her own tag. It took a moment, but eventually, she just settled on “Anna Chase.”

It didn’t need to be more complicated.

She slapped the tag onto her vest and looked around her.

Might as well talk to the other people here. She turned around, trying to figure out where to start.

“Uh hey…”

She paused.

“Jennifer. Felicia… Bounce?”

While she was sure that was Bounce, she wasn’t sure of the decorum in this situation. Old dead nicknames or proper names? She’d probably correct her, but Chase wasn’t certain right now.

[Cactus]

As his hand felt the cool steel of the Bayview Secondary School outer door, every single voice that ever echoed through his mind was screaming at him that this was an utterly unthinkable, awful, terrible fucking idea that he did not need to go through with. He could turn and walk away right now, and no one would be the wiser. Hell, would anyone even be wise at all? Who the fuck was Joe to think he could wander back in after all this time and pretend like any of this made a lick of difference on his life? He looked down at his heavily tattooed arm holding onto the door.

It hadn't made a difference in his life, it had altered it. So now, it was finally time to stop pretending that it hadn't.

Joe opened the door and stepped inside.

It had been a long time since he'd set foot within these halls, and when he had, he'd looked very different. Back then, he'd been a skinny dork with a propensity for playing the drums and thinking too hard about everything. Right now, he supposed that the drums part still stuck. His long hair and lengthy (but neat) beard made him look like he stepped right out of 1972. Directly through a time portal from a Black Sabbath show to entertain the folks coming back to celebrate what was left of the class of 2008. His reddish-brown hair hung free, and the only thing that usually disarmed people were the thick-rimmed glasses he wore. It gave him a scholarly vibe, someone told him once. Joe just used 'em to see, thank you very much, but fuck - whatever floats your boat. He was still thin - probably a bit paunchier than he'd figured he'd get but the metabolism of champions doesn't last forever, as he was finding out. His arms were pretty good but fuck, this little belly wouldn't go away. It was no good smoking your own jerky if you fucking ate it all once it was done.

The thing that creeped him out the most was that the school didn't really look like it had changed all that much. The walls were still the same, the tiles on the floor were more faded but they too, hadn't changed.

Fuck, it was eerie.

No more eerie than this whole thing, though. Still, Joe wasn't sure why the fuck he was even here. After that whole business had all gone down, he'd said fuck you very much to the whole US of A and left for Scandanavia. He'd found a college in Sweden and man, the Swedes were a whole different thing than Americans were. Quiet, wry and a genuinely kind people, he'd learned to love it there. So he'd stayed. Why come back? His parents left the west coast as soon as he told them he wasn't coming back - why on Earth would they stay, after all? Their kid didn't go on the trip. The rest of their kids had all long moved away.

Realistically, fuck camping. That had been the whole reason, too.

No injury, no illness. No suspension or big fucking problem. He'd just looked at the form for the trip, thought about spending a week with almost three hundred other kids, and noped right out of that. His parents had called him lazy. Had told him that he'd regret it. The band had given him so much shit over it. Jamie, Nik and Brendan were telling him that they could get high and compose some really rad fuckin' stuff in the middle of the woods. They'd tried so hard to sell him on it. Laverne hadn't gone; she probably figured she couldn't fit in a tent with so many other people - she was probably on to something there. So he'd stayed behind, fuck it. They had the whole summer to jam out and smash the drums around.

Only they hadn't.

Joe looked around the room at the few people uncomfortably milling around. Holy shit. Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit. They were all survivors. Not the 'fuck it, I slept in and missed the trip' kind. Honest to God people whose faces he remembered. Whose names meant something. Instantly Joe wished that he'd worn something a bit better than a band shirt and black jeans. A collared shirt, or something. It was his band's shirt, and it wasn't like they were famous or making any money at all, but they'd toured some beer halls in Germany last year and that had been a riot, so why not support the gang?

He had his life, why was he looking back on this?

Man, this was a mistake. Joe wished he was back in his cabin in Sweden. Playing the drums, making some furniture, smokin' some jerky. It was a simple life but it was so fucking far away from all of this shit. All of this shit that he'd tried so very hard to forget. All of this shit that had happened to some other kid's classmates. Some other kid's friends. He wasn't that kid; hadn't been for a long, long time.

Joe slowly wandered over to the little podium filled with name-tags. A woman stood next to it, looking both confident and uncertain all at once. This had to be Jennifer - how she'd managed to track him down or even remember that he'd gone to school with her beyond him. Joe guessed the yearbook was good for something, at least - once you got past all of the pictures that invariably got crossed out for good. But hey, one morning he'd woken up and there'd been a really earnest email in his inbox.

He'd run from this long enough, he guessed. Fuck camping had been his refrain back then, so it was ironic to think that he lived in a cabin in the Scandanavian woodlands. Camping always. Submerging himself within it, to remind himself just how fucking lucky he truly was.

Leaning over, he took a pen and scrawled his name on one of the name-tags. His penmanship was neat, easily legible. Joseph Ross. He stuck it to the upper left breast of his shirt, and exhaled. He was doing this. Jamie would have had some sort of smart-ass thing to say, had she not taken a knife to the chest and been ten years dead. A chill ran down his spine. She'd been his best friend, and he could count on two hands how many times he'd thought about her over the last decade. He hadn't thought about Jamie, he hadn't thought about how Nik had gotten murdered by his own brother, he hadn't even considered that -

Fuck, Brendan lived, didn't he?

That revelation shook him a bit, and he stepped away from the podium without a word. Instead, he just surveyed the room, raised a hand in silent greeting to those who were starting to file in, and leaned against the nearest wall. What did you say to these people? What did he say to Brendan? Hey dude, long time no see, how've you been since you fought in a death game and probably got all the PTSD you could ask for? At least he knew Laverne likely wouldn't show up. Probably wasn't a wheelbarrow large enough to bring that in, if the last time he'd caught a glimpse of her was any indication. Fuck, that was a dick thing to think. Joe thought it anyway. It was weird just standing here. He'd barely been a blip on anyone's radar in high school, and most of these people were more than a blip on the history of the United States. These people were a major fucking paragraph.

Couldn't just sit there in silence, though. Fuck it.

"Hey."

For no one, for everyone all at once. He didn't offer anything else; just shifted uncomfortably.

He was here, wasn't that enough?

[Cicada]

The hidden rule of a debate was that there was no winner. Victory was a function of arbitrary definitions and declarations that were determined by the subjective nature of charisma.

Thusly playing devil's advocate all her living life had been fun, up until reality had not so gently reminded her. Victory, defeat, neatly packaged arbitration and moralizing aside, people died and there was no amount of argument possible to the contrary.

Her name tag simply read 'Cecina Bryant'. She was five foot even, modestly overweight for her height- her once lopsidedly granite legs had also been paved over by padding. She looked better now than she had all those years ago. Her face was friendlier now that it was a bit chubbier, now that her forehead was cleared of wild vine bangs. She looked tired nowadays- when she was done with the kids in her classes she dealt with her two year old daughter back home- but somehow she was far brighter in aura than she'd ever been as a student of Bayview Secondary, even with the dark under her eyes almost starting to sink into her skull.

She'd also elected to dress formally. She normally decried tradition as needless burden, but she wasn't so mindlessly contrarian that she didn't know when the burden had to be bared. Much like Anna she was tucked into business casual, perhaps a bit more nonchalant with nothing layered atop her plain white button up. Summer was summer, she'd come from debate camp which had so happened to be hosted outdoors.

Cecina remembered those fateful days. Not with clarity, because if she could confess something on her dying bed... she hadn't cared much, at the time. Classmates she'd been mostly unfamiliar with had been mere statistics, had been cancelled school days and eerily empty hallways and the matriarch of the Bryant family complaining about a lack of graduation photos. Only with the passage of time had Cecina come to understand, from a healthier place, the disconnect that her pervaded her teenage melancholy. Understand, without erasing. Everyone nowadays still accused her of stoicism in the face of humanity.

Everyone, meaning, she had friends, she had a fiance, she had an older father who opened up to her and admitted his insecurities in life. She knew all their names, their birthdays, their favorite sorts of gifts. She was not the same emotional void she'd been back then.

Yet here she stood, among faces she only vaguely recognized. Unbidden, familiar memories of apathy stole her attentions into rambling abstractions: she was once more the girl who didn't belong, the shadowy face almost lost to motion blur in the background. She was seized by the desire to wander away, instinctive, defensive. Only one name kept her grounded to earth- Anna. Cecina had promised in passing that she'd be there, as the only other one of Bayview's active faculty who had known Anna in the then and in the now, in two separate, wildly and horrifically different phases of her existence.

Now, she wasn't even sure she really knew Anna. Likely, she'd always known that to be the case. She'd just bothered to pretend to the contrary.

Still, she could linger, just in case her colleague did need an easy out. She did at least recognize Volkova by name- one of Cecina's present students was doing volunteer work in the representative-to-be's campaign. She stayed silent as she returned the felt-tip pen, glanced another direction deeper into the decorated cafetorium to appear distractedly busy.

Cafetorium- the kids didn't even call it that any more. That had gone out of vogue before Cecina had even started teaching.

[Grand Moff Hissa]

"It's, um, it's great to see you again," Jennifer said, at first mostly to the woman in front of her, but then she broadened it to include the rest of those who'd assembled by adding, "all of you."

It was, despite everything. She knew them, all by name but some better than others, and it felt a little strange to realize that the one to whom her experiences on the island were most closely tied was one of those she was least familiar with on a personal level. She hadn't known Bounce's name. She hadn't remembered much about the girl at all, so preoccupied had she been by her own utter despondency, which had ultimately been for the best, because later—much later indeed, after the boats and the plane and the return to Saint Paul—a few little details had filtered their way back into her consciousness from somewhere.

Bounce had been into SOTF. She'd taken a slightly more principled and conscious stance than many, and had not been alone in her fascination, which was incredible in hindsight, how multiple classmates of Jennifer's had openly discussed what was now banished to the shadows and whispered about with fear and revulsion. Then again, the internet had changed the world in many ways since those days, so it was easier now to access those quiet, hidden places where depravity reigned supreme. Perhaps the following of the attacks was much the same as ever, but was now quarantined. But would the infection die out, or would it fester and return with a vengeance?

In any case, Bounce had made something good of herself. Jennifer had never had the knack for holding grudges even against those who personally slighted or harmed her, and Bounce had done no such thing, had in fact conducted herself, so far as Jennifer knew, with compassion and ethics in the face of disaster.

If there was anyone who should have raised an eyebrow, really, it was Felicia. Of the twenty-nine students rescued, ten had taken lives. Of those ten, only three had killed more than once, and Felicia was counted among that number. It hadn't been malicious, hadn't been murder, and yet it had happened.

Then again, Jennifer had never had that much of an issue hanging around killers, had she? She'd learned that during her time on the island, and it was unchanged by her return to civilian life. She knew Felicia slightly better than Bounce, or at least had a little less distance in association; they'd both been there at Ray's MMA thing not long ago at all. Felicia was a professional now, a lawyer, and she felt like a real adult to Jennifer, but then she suspected that was universal, that strange suspicion that everybody else had grown up while you remained the same kid as always, putting on a brave face and fancy clothes and acting like you belonged.

There was more continuity in her familiarity with Chase and Cecina, if not necessarily a great deal more warmth and intimacy, particularly on the latter front. Both taught right here, but Jennifer was sure it must feel different to each of them. To Chase, it was a return to tilt at the demons of her past and come out victorious. She came back to walk the halls she'd been ripped from and usher the new generation towards the future her own peers had been denied. To Cecina, what was it but a job? But maybe that was an unfair, fucked-up thing to think. It probably was. No, it was. Cecina had lost something too, whether friends had been torn from her or not. She had lost memories and autonomy and a part of herself, swept up inevitably into a story in which she had played the most passing of supporting roles. It would define her now, in its own way. She would be known for being lucky, for having missed the culling. Quietly, she must have asked herself the what-ifs, again and again, or else forced herself not to.

Jennifer volunteered at Bayview frequently (as she was doing right now, in fact, though this didn't really count the same way because it had been far more her initiative), and that was the context in which she tended to engage with the teachers. She wondered loosely what they made of her, whether they thought she lingered to haunt the halls like a ghost due to something she'd lost, or attributed to her some grand altruism or desire to protect, or were just happy to have someone to help clean up after the last bell for summer had rung and the seniors had trashed the halls with all their now-unneeded papers and locker shelves and three-ring binders. The truth was, she struggled to explain her continued presence herself. There had been some feeling of connection and belonging, and it had not dissipated over the years. Being here, from time to time, was healing, or at least it made her happy. That was part of why she'd thought it such a good idea to summon the others back as well.

And last but not least was Joseph, one of those called from furthest afield. Being completely honest, Jennifer remembered him in only the loosest of terms. She'd been aware, to some extent, of Jamie and Laverne, and of course Brendan was all over school in his own way. She'd had no idea of anything about a band, not at first, and couldn't begin to guess if they'd been good. Then again, Jennifer's relationship with music was a strange one. She'd always been quietly yet deeply ashamed of her favorite groups and albums and songs, to the point that she rarely brought the topic up. If it was something mainstream, she felt like an idiot for being into it, like she liked things only thoughtless people liked, and if it was anything less than mainstream she was crushed by the idea that she was being pretentious or phony.

But she was really, truly glad that Joseph was here. She'd been just a bit nervous that nobody would show besides the survivors, and that was the last thing she'd wanted. This class, this story, this continuing life belonged to all of them. They had all been affected, all experienced loss and pain, and each and every one of them had been forced to cope and move on in their own ways. She felt, often, that there wasn't enough credit given to those who'd had experiences less blatantly horrific. She'd always felt it odd how much sympathy she received. Even at the time, with the collar around her neck and death seemingly breathing down it, she'd felt that she didn't have it quite as bad as everyone else. A charmed life, she'd thought. Diplomatic immunity.

"Thank you for coming," she said, smiling at them, nodding. This entrance to the school was right next to the doors to the cafetorium, and she could see the refreshment tables from here, and she was starting to wonder if she could sneak her way over for a moment, just to grab a drink. They were all adults now. If anyone came in, they could surely figure things out. Nobody was going to kill anyone else if she turned her back for a minute.

Not this time.

[General Goose]

Harun was successful. There were no two ways about it. Everyone who met him cited him as inspirational, as a paragon of dedication and diligence, overcoming the most unthinkable of horrors and the most appalling of setbacks to get to where he was today. In many ways, his life was like a story-book: a terror attack survivor who had gone on to have a foot in the door of both the gaming and the political world, doing so by adhering to his principles and not ceding to the Darwinist bullshit the terrorists were peddling.

If people wanted to derive inspiration from that...well, he could hardly stop them. It was all strictly true.

But he didn’t feel particularly disadvantaged. He was one of the lucky ones. That he’d survived, that he hadn’t gone insane, that he was, by all accounts, in a better place physically and mentally than before? That was luck. Sheer dumb luck. Getting kidnapped was the only real misfortune that had befallen him - his time on the island had been uncomfortable and awful and had left some brutal memories, but he wasn’t traumatised. He didn’t deserve to be treated like he had.

His fingers were scarred, sure. Every now and then he had a nightmare about Rashid. And he had moved out of Minnesota the moment he got the chance, sure. But there were all details. By and large, he was lucky. And that new string of luck had...continued.

Harun had gotten into politics too. Think tanks and academic study. Then his side hobby of covering video games online had earned him some gigs working on indie game design and it was more than he could ever have hoped for. It was like a dream. Like somebody had sat down, asked him to chart a happy ending for himself, and it was happening exactly as he’d designed. That perfect mix of variety and stability.

But he’d recently returned to politics. He was actually working for one of his former classmates.

Minnesota was famed for its political activism, its high rate of civic engagement, its history of esteemed progressive pioneers. That might have gone some way towards explaining why Harun’s Bayview class had gotten so involved in politics. It was always a politically motivated class - he did look back at the days of the Activism Club with a more worldly cynicism now, surprised that a group had been set up around the concept of activism rather than a more discrete and achievable task. But he looked back on it fondly, all things considered.

He hadn’t remembered Bounce as being one of those who were into politics. He barely remembered her at all. Harun had a gut instinct that that was being she was enough of a wallflower to make even Harun’s bashful and cringe-inducing attempts at teenage social interaction seem successful in comparison. But he wasn’t sure - and it didn’t matter enough to be worth asking. What did matter was what she was like now. What she had been shown to be. She was somebody who cared. So he had taken another sabbatical, this time returning to Minnesota, working on her campaign as the head of policy.

It made a damn good narrative. Two SOTF survivors, joining together, keen to shake up the political system! But Harun enjoyed the work too. He liked policy development. Allowed him to work at what he did best, just the right balance between socialisation and isolation, making a difference. He felt that his experience was useful here too. He could come at politics from all angles - academic, think tank, private sector creative, a victim of injustice, the child of immigrants who’d had so many different jobs, whatever. It wasn’t just about SOTF. He tried not to be defined by it. It was tricky, but he tried.

He arrived later than most. Harun had begun getting compliments for his looks lately - he cleaned up nicely, he supposed. He was no model, no Hollywood actor, but still. He was average. Above average, at a push. Enough to get the occasional compliment that wasn’t just patronising or condescending. He had a healthier weight. Had a healthier complexion. Even a bit of lithe muscle in places. No longer relentlessly picked his lips. Actually combed his hair. And he was in a suit tonight, all smart and impressive, looking his best.

He walked in. Hands in his pockets. Looked around the room. Hoped someone would come up to him because, for all the maturing that he’d done, he felt like a kid again.