TROUVAILLE ... l.danes (REWRITE)

chapter eight; the present

HOW LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE THEY HEARD THEIR DAUGHTER'S LAUGHTER

two-thousand-and-two

WITH RED wine sloshing in her wine glass, Shelley leans her back against the wooden footboard. Olive stretches out in front of her, her back held up against the headboard, elbows resting on the pillows as she flips through their High School yearbook, commenting on all the people they used to know once upon a time.

Shelley leans her neck on the top of the footboard, head leaning back to look at the memorabilia donning the wall. A Cyndi Lauper poster, upside down from this position, sits proudly surrounded by a bunch of cinema stubs from all the movies she and Olive would go see after some guy who had a crush on Olive started working there and gave her discounts every time. Her eyes flicker over all the books stacked over the floor. Most of them came from her time working in the bookstore, when Andrew's dad would always let her take one home at the end of the day. She worked almost every day that summer and created a fairly extensive collection.

Maybe, she was always going to come back to them.

"Oh. My. God." Shelley sits up a bit too quickly, head spinning with the rush of blood and the two bottles of wine they've already been through. It takes a few seconds for Olive to stop having two heads, but soon she just becomes herself again as she's leaning over the bed to stuff the yearbook under Shelley's nose.

Shelley stares down at the picture perfect girl Olive's long, ring-adorned finger is pointing at. Her dark brown skin glows despite the less-than-perfect picture quality they were exposed to in the early eighties, covered in just the right amount of makeup to elevate her social status and make her nose look smaller. Half of her shiny black curls fall loosely behind her back, while the rest is pulled up in a glittering red scrunchy to match her red-and-white summer cheerleading uniform. As Head Cheerleader, Tammi Varma had to be perfect, down to the cuticles of her usually white-painted nails or the shine of her small gold hoops.

If you ask Shelley, she didn't hate Tammi Varma. She didn't particularly like her, sure, but that's mostly because she spent most of class giggling with her friends instead of actually paying attention and then trying to steal Shelley's notes from her bag afterwards. If you ask Olive, though, she'll tell you that they were bitter rivals who spent most of High School vying for Luke Danes' affection. This is not and has never been true.

Olive doesn't care too much about what's actually true.

Shelley whistles lowly when she sees Tammi's picture staring back up at her, that unflinching grin always on her face. "I almost forgot about her. What's she up to?" She glances up from the page to see Olive taking a large gulp of her drink.

"Oh, you know, went all the way to Northwestern to be a cheerleader on TV and ended up getting married to some football player. Lives in Miami now, with her three kids, two Labradors and, uh, I think she works for an interior design company." Olive nods when she thinks she's done, unaware of the way that Shelley is staring incredulously at her, just happily drinking the last remnants of her red wine.

"How?" Shelley asks, grabbing the bottle to fill Olive's glass back up. "I mean, how do you know all that?"

Olive laughs, throwing her head back. A few of her twists fall out of the bun she'd thrown them up into, held together loosely by an old scrunchie she absolutely had back when they were sixteen and scrunchies were all the trend.