Unbreakable

Chapter Fifteen - I'm Scared

The reunion was held at the towns event center, it wasn't huge like I'm used to back in D.C. but for the size of this town it was fairly large. There was a banner outside the building that ran across the entrance that read "Welcome Back Class Of 2014" The inside was decorated with black and blue streamers, it was classy and aesthetically pleasing to look at. We made our way to the check-in booth at the front while I swallowed down the last bit of my nerves.

"Name?" The short brunette woman asked without looking up from her clipboard.

"Spencer Beckett." I spoke above a whisper, my nerves still evident in my voice. The short brunettes eyes darted up from her clipboard at my name and her face turned into a expression I couldn't quite read.

"Oh my gosh! Spencer! I didn't even recognize you!" She chirped, I smiled uncomfortably at her excited tone while I racked my brain trying to figure out who the woman sitting before me was.

"It's Linda! Linda Sinclair, we were in Algebra 1 together!" She beamed.

"Ohh, of course. Linda." I exclaimed in a forced tone and smile. I had no idea who the fuck this girl was but the fact that she knew me made me feel bad. I was never good with faces and names back in high school, most likely due to me trying my hardest to repress any memory that had to do with that time in my life.

The woman who I now knew as Linda was smiling widely at me as she wrote my name on a sticky paper name tag.

"And who is your lovely companion?" Linda beamed grabbing another name tag.

"Elara, its nice to meet you." Elara extended her hand and shook Linda's with a sweet smile on her face. Once she got her name tag we made our way to the main room where the reunion was taking place. The room was much bigger than it looked from the outside, on the left side there were refreshments and food set up. On the right side there was an old retro Photo Booth and a few stands set up that had an assortment of things on display.

One stand had pictures throughout our senior year plastered all over it and everyone was going up and signing their name underneath the picture that they were in. Another stand had a big wheel on it, it looked like a wheel from wheel of fortunate and in each spot on the wheel their was little prizes you could win and some big grand prize that of course was a sliver of the size of all of the other prize wedges. The final stand had our old time capsule sitting on top of it, it was still dirty from recently being dug out of the ground.

There were blue and black balloons everywhere on the ground and hanging down from the ceiling. Tables were scattered throughout the room and a giant swan ice sculpture was placed on top of the table in the middle of the room. It was elegantly carved, the details were truly exquisite. The dry ice below it wafted up a fog that made the swan look almost magical.

"Wow." I murmured aloud to myself barely above a whisper.

Elara and I walked through the crowd and found an empty table, we quickly sat down and took in all of our surroundings, there was an uncomfortable silence between us but neither of us wanted to be the first to break it. After almost five minutes I finally spoke.

"Elara, I'm sorry." Her head turned towards me cautiously as I spoke. "I was hurting and when I'm hurting like that I tend to push people away, people who don't deserve it." I tried holding eye contact with her but the guilt I felt was winning out and I had to advert my gaze from hers.

"I get it Spencer, I really do but I wish you wouldn't have pushed me away. You didn't have to deal with that hurt by yourself... I thought we were closer than that."  She mumbled the last part as she spoke. I could see the hurt in her eyes as she spoke, I didn't realize how much I hurt her which made me feel even guiltier. I never meant to hurt her feelings, Elara has been such an amazing friend to me, I just don't know how to deal with certain emotions very well.