The
Black Knight Squash Fiction League Match #3 A
Collaborative Novel
CHAPTER ONE
Reunion By Pierre Bastien
There are two reasons to go to a reunion.
One is to reunite with people and places from your past. The other is
to meet someone new—or at least someone that feels new—in familiar
surroundings. So far, Ollie’s experience had been the former.
He started off this particular reunion by
getting a sub at Juliet’s, a local restaurant that still served the
same mix of pizza slices and submarine sandwiches he remembered from 15
years ago. He walked up to the counter and placed his order: large
chicken finger sub, with mayo, lettuce and hot peppers.
He must’ve placed that order at least a
hundred times. Even though he hadn’t been here in years, the
instructions still tumbled out of his mouth crisply.
Ollie could picture the sub in his mind’s
eye: the bread, white, with a crusty crust, about 6 inches long, plus
or minus. The mayonnaise, coating the inside of the bread. The deeply
fried chicken, probably not organic, resting on the mayo. Then the
lettuce, shredded, with salt and ground pepper on top. Finally, the hot
peppers, finely chopped up, mixed with vinegar or something (he wasn’t
sure), and formed into a nice spicy mush, resting on the lettuce. Each
bite was simultaneously warm, crisply refreshing, and oh god the mayo.
As you ate the thing, the mayo would gradually get pushed further and
further into the tail end of the bread, until at last you were left
with a delicious final bite: the hardish, pointy end-piece of the sub,
which would ordinarily be a rather disappointing finish, were it not
for the huge cache of creamy mayo hidden within.
Ollie looked around the place as the
cashier took down his order. Behind the counter hung a large menu
board, the kind where you can rearrange the letters. Ollie wasn’t
convinced they’d rearranged the menu even once in 15 years. The board’s
white background had yellowed considerably. Or maybe the board had
always been yellow, and he’d just never noticed it.
One of the menu items was scallops over
linguine. Who the hell would order scallops from a place like this? he
wondered to himself.
After collecting his change from the cashier, Ollie sat down at one of the dozen Formica booths to wait for his sub.
***
An hour later, Ollie walked briskly across
campus, squash bag slung over his shoulder. He started to work up a
sweat. May in New Hampshire seemed entirely pleasant—unlike the
winters, which were cold and harsh. He thought back to his days as a
student, wrapped up tightly in a thick coat as he shuttled between his
dorm, the classrooms, the dining hall, the gym.
He made his way into the gymnasium, feeling
warmed by the familiar cold, gray cement. He passed the weight room,
the pool, and wall after wall of pictures of athletic teams past. He
was in some of those pictures, somewhere, with long hair.
Finally, Ollie set sights on the squash
courts. They were beautiful, well-lit international courts,
glass-backed, with ample spectator seating. They had been built less
than five years ago, replacing an impressive but now obsolete set of
hardball courts.
The courts were, for the most part, empty. Classes had ended for the year, he guessed.
On one of the courts, a slim brunette was
practicing her forehands. Her hair was up in a
ponytail that swayed back and forth against her
white shirt as she slotted drive after drive. Not bad, he
thought. Her swing wasn’t the smoothest—it had a funny hitch in the
shoulder—but what she lacked in technique she seemed to be making up
for through dedicated practice.
Ollie found himself hoping she was his age. She didn’t look like a student—that was a good start.
Just then one of her drives caught the
nick, and the ball rolled to the middle of the back wall, causing the
brunette to whip around suddenly. She caught Ollie gawking at her. He
looked back over his left shoulder, as if there might be someone behind
him, but nope—he was the only person within a country mile.
A vague sense of dread filled Ollie as
he realized that he would now need to turn his head awkwardly back
around to face the girl. “Uhhhh,” he stammered, as he started to twist
his neck back her way.
Except, when his eyes met her face, she was smiling at him. He wasn’t sure why she was smiling, but he smiled back.
“Ollie?” she asked.
A second wave of dread poured down his back. He did not recognize her. Or, wait—
“Hayden?” ...
Ollie slowly blinked himself awake. It was
probably time to get up. The light slanted in through the windows in
that angled way fall light falls. He grabbed his iPhone off the side
table and checked Facebook, which helped his brain engage.
Under the covers, he moved his foot through
the sheets until it connected with Hayden’s calf. She budged a little,
but she was still asleep.
Ollie looked over her way, admiring her
brown hair tumbling down her back and onto the white pillow that was
lodged between them. He stopped to appreciate his lucky break of
meeting her at the squash courts that past spring.
They were high school classmates. It
had taken him a second to recognize her. Since graduation, she had
blossomed, in a way. Not that she was unattractive before, but somehow,
she had come into her own. That’s why it took him a second to realize
who she was.
“Is that as tight as you can hit it?” he had asked her then. Ollie chuckled at the memory of his quick burst of sass.
Most of their other classmates were already
married, and most had kids. Ollie and Hayden were glued to each other
the rest of the reunion. It was comfortable. To top it off, they both
lived in New York City. There was a sense of inevitability that they’d
get together.
And here they were.
Ollie got out of bed and went to the bathroom to pee.
This morning they were off to see the Jeff
Koons exhibit at the Whitney. They both liked getting a little culture
in on Saturday mornings, before the day got away from them.
Ollie heard what sounded like an alarm going off. He listened for it, but the sound stopped. He started brushing his teeth.
Just as he was working his way around his
lower back left molars, he heard the alarm again. Maybe it’s Hayden’s
alarm, he thought. Weird that she would set one on Saturday; it wasn’t
needed. Let her sleep, he thought.
Ollie walked over to Hayden’s side of the
bed and picked up her phone to turn off the alarm. Except, her alarm
wasn’t going off.
He couldn’t help but see two text messages that had come in:
