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    Years From Now: the Reunion
    Years From Now: the Reunion
    Years From Now: the Reunion
    Ebook55 pages50 minutes

    Years From Now: the Reunion

    By Ann Michaels

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    On the last night before high school finishes forever, we meet a group of friends as they party and enjoy each others company in the final moments of their school life. But we soon become aware that, each person in this group is a unique individual; each coming from a different background; each possessing diverse talents and abilities, and differing dreams, secrets and desires. The friends go off into the world, making their separate way through life, to pursue their dreams and hopes. But some of our friends have secrets, held close for years, and these secrets may haunt them for years to come. Others look around and years later, find that they are on a life pathway that surprises or disappoints them. Then, years later, there is a reunion.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnn Michaels
    Release dateJul 17, 2015
    ISBN9781310578656
    Years From Now: the Reunion
    Author

    Ann Michaels

    “Who wants to become a writer? And why? Because it’s the answer to everything. ... It’s the streaming reason for living. To note, to pin down, to build up, to create, to be astonished at nothing, to cherish the oddities, to let nothing go down the drain, to make something, to make a great flower out of life, even if it’s a cactus.” —Enid Bagnold “It is only by writing, not dreaming about it, that we develop our own style.” —PD James Samuel Beckett was the poet laureate of the comma splice. He closed his novel “The Unnamable” with a long sentence that ends: ... perhaps it’s done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don’t know, I’ll never know, in the silence you don’t know, you must go on, I can’t go on, I’ll go on. Which goes to show, I suppose, that rules are made to be broken.

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      Book preview

      Years From Now - Ann Michaels

      Smashwords Edition

      copyright 2014. Ann Michaels

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Years From Now: the reunion

      Index

      1. Farewell Friends

      2. Sonja

      3. Richard

      4. Kerry

      5. Marco

      6. Jesse

      7. Therese

      8. The school reunion: 2014

      9. Facebook friends

      10. Tonight’s the night

      Farewell to Friends

      15th November, 1984

      The school hall thrummed with excitement. Exams had been completed; tonight was the farewell, or, as the Americans call it: the prom. After tonight, many of those from the 1984 graduating class of Wattle Brook High School will never see each other again. Others will connect years later on the coming phenomena of Facebook. But for now, that is years away in the future.

      The school girls’ have become women tonight. No more tartan uniforms and flat, black, ugly shoes. They are transformed by stilettos and curve-clinging dresses. Therese, especially, looks fine tonight and as usual, Richard’s eye follows her, as she raises a glass to her lips, chews her dinner slowly and thoroughly, and throws back her thick, golden hair, like a flag of freedom.

      Therese is talking animatedly to Marco, who is seated next to her. They are talking about the eighties era. Their time. And wondering how this period will be thought about in the future. Neither realises that, the current penchant for: big hair, gigantic shoulder-pads, and power dressing, will soon be regarded with derision and laughter. And they are unaware, as the young often are, that their country is deeply engaged in unprecedented economic deregulation, which will set free a horde of corporate pirates, who will engage in an orgy of excess, building paper empires, which will later crash and burn. They don’t know that, the free university education that they will take for granted, will soon pass away.

      Marco looks very dapper in his tuxedo. He was probably born looking chic and debonair, as some people seem to be. His dark, beautiful hair glows softly, in the light thrown by the spinning disco ball. The disco ball, though, is not lit up yet. It just spins about slowly, throwing its radiance casually. Biding its time. The disco will begin later, after dinner is finished.

      On the other side of Marco, at the white, cloth covered table, sits fresh-faced Kerry. She is Marco’s girlfriend. They have been together for about a year now. A senior high school romance. Kerry appears to be lost in thought at this moment. She seems to be staring at some dust motes, which are floating, as though in syrup. They gleam in the light of the round, disco ball, as they continue their intoxicating dance. What nobody knows, not even Kerry, is that she is pregnant. She will wake up feeling sick tomorrow and blame the small amount of cider she drank the night before. It will take another few weeks for her to understand the life growing within. By then, she will be living in a remote Aboriginal community in Northern Territory, as a trainee youth worker. She applied for the job months ago: not telling anyone.

      Jesse is watching Kerry, with his bright, blue eyes. He likes the way she is able to disconnect from the chaos around her, and just be. Jesse is feeling wired, not only because of the weed he smoked earlier, but because of a deep feeling of agitation, which is infiltrating his mind and body, more and more every day. And he is wishing yet again, that he had the musical ability, which seems to come so easily to Richard.

      It isn’t fair; Richard intends to study maths at university. That is his passion. The musical ability is just an

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