Lena Jensen author

This story was one of ten Showcase Shortlist stories in the Australian Writers’ Centre March 2024 Furious Fiction competition.

I’m wearing a little black dress in the faded photo. Scooped neck, cinched waist, hemline finishing above slender calves. I’m blushing, but only I know that. Twenty-four of us are lined up on the stage in two even rows, waving at the photographer.

‘Is that really you?’ he says, peering from the photo to me.

I suck my tummy in and sit up straighter.

‘You were hot!’ he says, topping up his glass of red.

I open the email again. ‘Thirty year reunion at the campus! Partners welcome!’

‘What’s that?’ he says.

‘Nothing.’ I turn the screen off and take plates to the kitchen.

***

‘Last chance to RSVP!’ the message the next morning says.

I look at him sleeping next to me, pink spittle trailing from his mouth to the pillow.

I take the photo out of the bedside drawer. All those faces, gleaming with youth, eagerly anticipating what would come next. The places we’d go, the careers we’d forge, the partners we’d meet.

The young man standing next to me in the front row is grinning. You can’t see it but his arm is around my waist. I can feel it now. Its warmth, its sinewy strength.

That exquisite feeling of nerves and excitement, wondering if anyone has noticed.

I Google his name. Nothing comes up.

‘I’ll be there!’ I reply.

***

I peer at myself in the full-length mirror in the bedroom. Round-bellied, hollow-cheeked, frizzy-haired.

I go to the mall and try on dozens of black dresses, none of them little. I find one that almost fits.

I dig out the straighteners and practice taming the frizz.

I start skipping breakfast.

***

‘You’ve made quite the effort for a girls’ evening,’ he says as I come down the stairs. ‘Isn’t that dress a bit…tight?’

I turn my phone’s location services off after I get in the Uber.

‘We’ve got a full house!’ the woman at the door says, a glass of sparkling in her hand. ‘Well, you know. As full as it can be.’

I head straight for the bar, eyes scanning the room.

‘Fabulous dress!’ a voice calls after me.

I move between groups, emboldened by the wine. Talking about the old days. The parties and gigs, the lectures accompanied by hangovers. My eyes dart around the room.

I want to say ‘Does anyone know what happened to…’, but stop myself each time. Unease is rising in my guts.

At the end of the evening, we line up on the stage for a photo. Two rows. Uneven numbers. No arm around my waist.

A woman shouts above the chatter. ‘Let’s raise a toast to someone who sadly can’t be with us tonight…’

Dread seeps through my stomach, curdling the wine.

She says his name. I cover my ears.

***

Back home, I look at the photo one last time. The gleaming faces. The even numbers. The grinning young man. I put it back in the drawer.

I hang the black dress in the wardrobe and climb into bed beside him.

I acknowledge and pay respects to the Kaurna people, the traditional custodians of these ancestral lands on which this story was written.