“Karen…”

The whole class had suddenly turned around to stare at her with a disturbing curiosity. She had grown used of being an odd center of attention, the mysterious new girl in town whom very soon would fall back into the most complete anonymity and she would be forgotten until their next move.

Since the earliest years of childhood she could remember, her life had always been that way; a sort of roller coaster of ignorance followed by a furtive nonsense of wonders.

The fact was that her memories were still intact. She had kept in mind the slightest detail of that day from the grey of the sky that had been sliding on the hardwood floor to the scent of wax that had invaded the corridors and from which a gloomy sensation seemed to spread over you, passing underneath your bones; stealing your hopes.

She had crossed her hands methodically, cleared her throat.

She simply couldn’t deceive her audience.

“I don’t see the point of this so-called family life; the husband, the children… So I won’t get married and even less experience motherhood. I want to be an independent woman who doesn’t need the help of anyone. I believe that the only person we should trust and rely on is ourselves. The rest is just part of how lying sounds easy sometimes.”

She didn’t like shocking but taking her revenge over gossip. She knew way too well how the others were, what they murmured in her back. But the truth was that for once, besides the rebellious aspect of her statement, she had been sincere.

And it had left a bitter taste in her mouth.

“Let’s see where I am within fifteen years though if I wear a wedding ring and push some stroller, then you will have the right to advance the fact that I am sad and I missed out my whole life.”

She had been expelled that day for misbehavior towards the rules of Saint Mary’s Academy. From then on her mother had only chosen public schools until the night she had packed and rushed a bit aimlessly to Manhattan.

She hadn’t even needed to ask for any legal emancipation. Nobody had ever tried to catch her up. It must have meant something.

The last time she had thought about Saint Mary's Academy, Nevada was the day she had known that her relationship with Stanley had died, right when he had hold her hand to slid a diamond engagement ring on it. Her throat hadn’t tightened, she hadn’t felt the tears well up in her eyes. Instead of all of this, she had remained blank and calm while the weird sensation to be deprived of her life had spread over her mind.

Ten years later the ink got engraved on the paper and she sealed her third divorce; three consecutive failures in the shadow of what she had imagined once as a warm, bright existence. But what was left of her dreams, at the end, if not the harshness of utopian ideas that were dying in a corner of her brain?

She didn’t wait for the end of the procedure. As long as she had signed, her presence wasn’t required anymore so she left the building without looking backwards, swearing to herself that everything was over now. She wouldn’t marry anyone, not anymore. She was done with what she had always tried to run away from; no mattered the next person she would meet might actually be the right one she had been looking for all along.

“Karen Delaney, is that you?”

She couldn’t help but freeze at the sound of her maiden name. Only a few people knew about it and still, they wouldn’t even think about calling after her like that in the middle of a street. Perplexed, she turned around and came face-to-face with a woman in her late thirties wearing a pair of worn-out jeans; a baby bottle in hand.

“I’m sorry, I don’t…”

“Of course you can’t recognize me. I’m Cheryl Lane, we were in the same class at Saint Mary’s Academy. You didn’t stay very long since you’d been expelled. You got the reputation of a true rebel, then. I see no wedding ring on your finger, even less a stroller so I assume you’re happy.”

The fact someone else remembered her own statement took her aback. She blinked, cleared her voice but found herself in the impossibility to confirm the woman’s presumption. Something was aching inside of her, next to her heart.

Cheryl shook the baby bottle she had been holding all the time.

“I might not have followed the same path… I gave birth to my fourth child in March.”

“Congratulations…”

“Thank you. I am running late though so I have to go now. I’m sorry. It was nice to see you again and I hope that your painting skills made all of your dreams come true. You were so talented.”

And like the wind taking away the brownish leaves of the fall in a ballet of regrets, Cheryl vanished from her life leaving behind the glorious dreams of a past life; a missed one.

That might be the reason why the brief encounter made her feel so sad.

In a mechanical gesture, she grabbed her cell phone from her bag and wrote down a text message.

I need to go away for a while. Don’t be worried. I’ll be fine.

Everything went well until the moment she proceeded to send the missive and realized that now Stanley was out of the picture, she had nobody to call about the ups and downs of her life.

One more time she had just stopped being the odd center of attention and very soon she would disappear in the intricate nets of people’s blurry minds because it was always like that.