Free Miss Independent by Kiki Leach Page A

“Except the bad news didn’t come in the mail today. It came in the phone call from Joan. She appointed someone else as a temporary replacement since she’s all but turned in her reunion badge.”
                  Her heart sank. “Oh God. She didn’t call to ask me to be the replacement, did she? Because there’s no way in hell I want anything to do with people I went to high school with; let alone, sit at a table and hand them name badges while I throw on a fake smile and pretend that I care that they bothered to show up and reminisce about years I’d so much rather continue forgetting.”
                  “No. She’s already appointed someone, the vice president.”
    “Thank God!” she screeched. “But I didn’t know there was a vice president for this thing. Thinking back on it, Joan’s name was the only one I ever saw all over everything, from the invitations to that silly video she digitized and sent in the mail from our senior year. Anyway, who is it?”
    Samantha hesitated and swallowed hard. “It’s Sheila.”
                  Vanessa leaned forward and rattled her head, fearing she had misheard. “Say that again?”
                  “Sheila Harris. She was asked last night and accepted the position first thing this morning. Via Joan, Sheila said that she wanted you to be the first to know, given your history. And in case you had changed your mind and planned to in fact attend, even though you are long past the RSVP deadline – her words, not mine -- you would have to deal with her from now on.”
                  “I would have to deal with her from now on just like I had to deal with her back then?”
                  “Hopefully not in the same way?” said Samantha, scrunching her face and ducking a little as if she were expecting a strike.
                  Vanessa dropped her mail onto her desk and rested her hands on either sides of her hips. Her palms began to sweat, making small prints on her brand new, cerulean Diane Von Furstenberg wrap dress. “Did she say anything else?”
                  “Which one?”
                  “Either of them.”
                  She gulped. “Sheila said she hoped that you would make it. Something about it being time to move forward.”
                  “As if that’s not what I’ve been trying to do for the last five years, which is exactly why I cut her out of my life to being with? Now I’m right back to where I started with both of them and she’s got the audacity to tell me that it’s time to move forward?” She grit her teeth and pressed the tip of her middle finger against her forehead to keep from swearing. “This was all from Joan, right? She’s acting as Sheila’s residential mouthpiece?”
                  “Yes.”
                  A slight smile crossed Vanessa’s face as she shook her head. It wasn’t a smile of happiness or impending satisfaction that she had made a success of herself, while Sheila’s only claim to fame was being the daughter of a former senator and screwing Nathan into possible unwanted, lifelong submission. It was a smile of anger, sadness, dread, desperation, sickness, and knowing. She couldn’t scream as loud as she wanted. She couldn’t cry as hard as she needed. She couldn’t punch something because it was all made of glass. She couldn’t leave her employees in a lurch again and get drunk in another hotel bar before 3pm, despite feeling as if she needed something other than a few pep talks from her therapist to get her through the rest of the day. She had to be professional. She had to at least pretend that she was able to get through it, even if she felt like crumbling faster than the Berlin wall inside.
                  “When is the date of the reunion, again?”
                  She looked down at her notes. “June 13 th