On Writing & Storytelling: An Excerpt from Reunion: Coda’s Chapter 13, Scene Five

Author’s Note: This excerpt from the chapter titled Goodbye, Farewell, and Adios is taken from the most recent version (Friday, February 16, 2024) and may or may not reflect what readers will see in the final published version. It’s 90% of what was on Wednesday’s unedited rough draft, but it has already been revised at least twice, including on one pass today.

The line of graduating seniors moved slowly toward the dais where Dr. Burke, Mrs. Benitez, one of the assistant principals, and School Board member Janet McAliley stood. As each student’s name was called, they walked up to Dr. Burke, stopped in front of him, and took the empty red-brown leather diploma case with “Diploma; South Miami Senior High School” in gold leaf on the front – we’d get the real thing outside the Gibson Center after the ceremony had ended and we’d given back our caps and gowns – and shook his hand with a smile for the mandatory photo op. Then that kid would walk back to his or her seat while the next one did the same thing, and so on.

As I waited – half-thrilled, half-terrified – for my name to come out of the PA, my mind did what it always did when I was nervous or down: it played a movie in my head, a black-and-white flick like the ones you’d see in old war documentaries: me and the other Cobras, wearing the loose jumpsuits of World War II American paratroopers and checking our chutes and gear. 16 okay….15 okay…14 okay….

Then, in a flash, the imaginary versions of me and my classmates were back in our high school, wearing our normal clothes – we didn’t have to wear uniforms back then – and running up and down the stairs or dodging the crowds in the hallways as fast as we could so we wouldn’t be late for class. I could even feel the heaviness of my olive-drab Jansport backpack, crammed with textbooks and Mead notebooks, and the way the straps cut into my armpits as I hustled along the blue-carpeted corridors from one class to the next.

I walked into the dream version of my English 4 (AP) classroom, where I had been just two days before, writing yearbook messages and wrestling with my feelings for Marty. I expected to see Mrs. DeVargas – her cup of Sanka decaf coffee on her desk and probably as cold as a witch’s tit – and my 32 classmates sitting at their metal and plastic flip-top desks.

But – the sane part of my brain noticed – dreams, even waking dreams, have a way of messing with you and breaking the rules of reality and reason. Instead, the sneaky, little bastard in the Skull Cinema showed me a different – but not unfamiliar – scene.

The classroom disappeared as if it had never been there. Instead, I stood, in my white cap and gown holding a dozen long-stemmed pink roses in one hand, in the middle of a fancy ballroom like the ones in Sabrina or The King and I. And like someone who has watched a movie so many times that they lose track, I knew, even before it happened, what was coming next.

Or, in this case, who.

Sure enough, preceded by the delicate aroma of her perfume (it smelled like gardenias and orange blossoms), Marty Reynaud, the girl with the chestnut hair, hazel eyes, mysterious smile, slinky black dress, and sexy dancer’s legs, walked in.

But before I could give her the roses – they were for her, after all – Marty looked over her shoulder, as if she had company, and pointed her right finger at me.

As I stood there with my mouth open and my right hand gripping the bouquet of roses, I saw Mom, Mark, and Bruce Holtzman, the guy who had gotten me into the Men’s Ensemble two and a half years before, walk into the ballroom and stand in a loose half-circle around the girl I so desperately loved.

My heart skipped a beat, maybe two, as Marty took the roses from my hand without a word. She looked at the bouquet thoughtfully, then at me. Her lips curled in a smile, a brilliant smile that made me shiver and ripped my fears to shreds.

Without looking away from me, she waved to Mark, gave him the roses, then focused on me.

“Come on, Jimmy,” she said with that classy British accent that set her apart from all the other girls in our class, “let’s dance. For old times’ sake.”

(C) 2024 Alex Diaz-Granados