I didn’t want to celebrate the one-year reunion at a college I hated. One that I barely graduated from, but for some reason couldn’t leave. I couldn’t go back to my parents’ farm; I knew my ties with them were broken, unrepairable. And frankly I didn’t want to return home. I knew from the day I left that I’d never see them again. I wanted to move to New York City, create the life for myself that Ruthie had always dreamed of. But as much as she would have pushed me, encouraged me to get as far from here as possible, she was also pulling me back, tying me to this place like a rope around my neck.

The more the years passed, the less I remembered the details of her face, of our time together. One morning I woke up and couldn’t recall her smell anymore. Frantically, I ran to my dresser and pulled out her perfume, the bottle of Victoria’s Secret’s Very Sexy Now, the name still duct-taped over from when she hid it in our room in college, and pressed the snuffer cap against my nose until I started breaking out in a rash.

If I had brownouts in my memories of her here, it would only get worse if I moved away.

The ding of the diner’s bell pulled me back, as two women entered, ignoring the Please Wait Here to Be Seated sign and claiming a booth against the window.

They looked different, but not different at the same time. It’s incredible what one year in the real world can do. Catherine’s hair was long and blonder now, in perfect beachy curls around her thin and blushed face. Annie wore a black beanie and dark eyeliner that accentuated her thick eyebrows and blue eyes. They looked like adults. Like people with real jobs in real cities who had forgotten everything that happened here and built new lives for themselves.

They weren’t in my section—I was assigned to the counter today, waiting on mostly regulars and very few alumni, for which I was grateful. I wasn’t ready to talk to them yet, so I just watched. I stood at the counter as Lisa took their order—an omelet with home fries, blueberry pancakes with extra syrup—and I found myself jealous that they could eat like that in public. I was still delicately crunching on arugula whenever I was in front of anyone, keeping the real food for after. They didn’t recognize me at all, I was sure of it. I hardly recognized me either.