It’s summertime in Cape Breton, and I’m standing in a dimly lit banquet hall. A DJ is set up in a corner, and pop songs from the 2010s play out of the speakers. Groups of people dressed in semi-formal attire mill about, mingling and laughing and catching up. It’s the ten-year reunion of Riverview High School’s graduating class of 2013.
A classmate I haven’t spoken to in a decade sidles up to me and says, “What have you been up to lately? ” It’s not that I am ashamed of what I’ve been up to since graduation. I’ve been working, travelling, living—all that good stuff. But, really, is it anyone’s business? The past is so difficult to wrangle. I try to conjure up a few sentences to capture the failures and triumphs of my young adulthood, package them, and give them away to a now stranger.
