Chapter 2
The reunion was at a place downtown called 'The Social House,' a noisy, crowded bar they had rented out for the night. The air was buzzing with chatter and smelled like beer.The bass from the speakers vibrated through the soles of Katherine's expensive heels, and she immediately felt out of place.
Her black Tom Ford dress, now felt like a costume. It was too severe, too formal. Most people were in jeans or casual dresses, laughing and hugging each other with a familiarity she could only watch. She was overdressed and on edge, an outsider from the moment she walked in.
She ordered a glass of water from the bar, needing something to do with her hands. She scanned the crowd, a sea of faces that were both familiar and strange, aged by ten years of life she knew nothing about.
"No way. Is that… Katherine Hale?"
She turned. It was a guy named Dave, who used to sit behind her in chemistry. He was heavier now, with a friendly, tired look in his eyes.
"Hey, Dave," she said, forcing a small smile.
"Wow. You look… really different," he said, his gaze flickering over her dress. "Good, I mean. Really good. So, what are you up to? Did you end up becoming like, a scientist or something?"
"Something like that," she said vaguely. "I work in the corporate sector."
"Nice. I'm in insurance now. Boring stuff. Married, got two kids. They're a handful." He pulled out his phone to show her a picture of two messy-looking toddlers. Katherine nodded and said they were cute because it felt like the right thing to do. The conversation died a quick, awkward death.
This was the pattern for the next hour. People would recognize her with a jolt of surprise, comment on how different she looked, ask what she did, and then move on to someone they actually shared a history with. Each interaction left her feeling more and more like a ghost.
Then, she saw her. Jessica Thorne.
She was in the middle of a loud group, holding a beer and laughing at a story someone was telling. Katherine's heart gave a hard, angry thump. This was it. She straightened her back and began to make her way through the crowd.
As she got closer, she could hear what they were talking about.
"...and Henderson totally knew it was us who put the frog in his desk, but he couldn't prove it!" a guy was saying, and the group roared with laughter.
Katherine stopped at the edge of their circle. An awkward silence fell as they noticed her. Jessica's eyes scanned her from head to toe, a faint, unimpressed smirk on her face.
"Well, look what the cat dragged in," Jessica said, her voice dripping with fake surprise. "Katherine Hale. I almost didn't recognize you without a textbook attached to your hand."
A few people in the group snickered.
"Hello, Jessica," Katherine said, keeping her voice steady.
"So, what's your deal now?" Jessica asked, taking a pointed sip of her beer. "Last I heard, you were on scholarship somewhere."
"I work downtown," Katherine replied, refusing to give her the satisfaction of a direct answer.
Jessica laughed, a short, sharp sound. "Doing what, shredding paper? Come on, Hale, don't be shy."
This was the moment. Katherine let a small, cool smile touch her lips. "I'm the Executive Assistant to Damien Veyron."
The name hung in the air. Even in this noisy bar, the name 'Veyron' had weight. She saw a flicker of genuine shock in the eyes of the people around them. For a split second, she had them. She had won.
But Jessica was a master of her craft. She recovered in a heartbeat.
She let out a high-pitched, fake laugh. "An assistant? Oh, honey. Wow. All that time you spent locked away in the library, and you ended up being someone's secretary." She turned back to the group, dismissing Katherine completely. "Anyway, that frog story is nothing. Ashley, tell them about the time we toilet-papered Coach Miller's car…"
The conversation roared back to life, flowing around Katherine as if she wasn't even there. They physically angled their bodies away from her, absorbing back into their circle of shared jokes and memories. She was left on the outside, standing alone.
The sting of the dismissal was sharper than any insult they had thrown at her in high school. Her great victory, the weapon of her success, had been swatted away like a fly.
She backed away from the group, a cold numbness spreading through her chest. She watched them, all of them, talking and laughing. They weren't successful like her. They had normal jobs, mortgages, messy kids. But they were happy. They were connected. They had stories. They had a life.
The realization hit her like a punch to the gut.
She had built her entire life on the foundation of proving these people wrong. And in the process, she had built a beautiful, expensive, empty prison for herself. Her success wasn't a life; it was a shield. And tonight, she realized there was nothing behind it.
The noise, the music, the laughter—it all started to feel like it was pressing in on her, suffocating her. She had to get out.
Without a word to anyone, she turned and walked out of the bar, leaving the life she thought she wanted behind. She didn't let the tears fall until she was safely inside her car, the engine silent. The reflection in the rearview mirror was of a woman in a designer dress, her makeup starting to run, looking utterly and completely broken.
She hadn't killed the ghost of the girl in the hallway. She had just given her a better cage. And for the first time, the loneliness was so crushing, she wasn't sure she could survive it.