The closer they came, the more nervous Amy felt. She stopped the car two blocks away.

"Let's not go," she said.

"Excellent. You've come to your senses," Sheldon said. "Turn the car around."

"You're not going to tell me it will be fine?"

"Why? It's certain to be an odious and humiliating catastrophe."

Amy bit her lip. He was probably right, and yet...she had gotten dressed up, heels and makeup and everything, and driven an hour and a half. "It won't be."

"Oh, yes it will," Sheldon nodded, wide eyed. "Herd-like viciousness fuelled by mass intoxication is de rigeur for this type of event."

"How would you know? Did you go to your high-school reunion?"

He blinked. "I didn't go to highschool. And it was in Texas. "

Amy shook her head. "No, i'm going." At least it wasn't Texas. Small mercies. "We're going."

She was not the mousy girl she had been then. She had friends, she had a boyfriend (well, she had Sheldon) and she had, for crying out loud, a Ph.D. She had a saucy dress that bared her elbows and her knees.

Sheldon sighed theatrically. "Very well, if you insist on persuing this folly," he pulled a sheaf of paper from his bag, "here."

Amy took the neatly stapled sheets hesitantly. The first page was laid out like an academic article. "'John F. Kennedy Highschool, Class of 2003, Exploitable Weaknesses, by Dr. Sheldon Cooper'. Sheldon, what have you done?"

"Research." He glanced at his watch. "We have seventeen minutes to 8 pm, we should prepare some cutting remarks we can deliver to your erstwhile classmates."

"We don't really have to be there at eight," she muttered. She flipped through the pages. There were photographs of many of her classmates, and with them charts of income, debt, education, marriages, divorces, affairs, convictions, medical histories... "Maggie Carter joined the circus?"

"A carnival, just for a year, but that's nothing. Her second husband filed for divorce three weeks ago. When we find her - we have to stand to her right, she has mild hearing loss in her left ear from a concert she attended in 2006 - I could say 'why, that's a lovely wedding ring on that woman's hand,' and then you say, 'or is it?'" Sheldon seemed to be trying to raise one eyebrow and smile at the same time. It wasn't going well.

"I am not saying that. And you're not either." She could hardly remember Maggie Carter, actually. Was she a redhead? "Where did you get this?"

"The footnotes will direct you to the relevant bibliographical entries on pages 39 through 44." Sheldon looked almost offended. "I always source my work."

"Nevermind! Don't tell me!" This had to be illegal. Did he have to sign it? She would have to make sure to shred the report, against the inevitable day when Sheldon would do something to make the police or Interpol search his apartment. Amy handed it back. "I'm not looking at it."

Just at Sandy and Carly and Tiffany? a little voice whispered. Just a glance? Had they gotten divorces? Or plastic surgery? Or flunked out of an art history program at a community college?

Amy shook her head and bit her lip. Sheldon was looking at her expectantly. Just one look. No. That was wrong of her. Penny had flunked out of community college and Penny was her friend. And Sandy and Carly and Tiffany, they had been...

"Put that away. Let's go." Amy stared straight ahead and hit the gas, maybe a little too sharply. The car lurched the rest of the way, taking the speedbumps hard enough to make them both bounce. Sheldon made a suppressed clicking noise with his tongue for each one, but he didn't say anything.

#

The gym looked like a gym with tinsel on it. The music sounded like 2003, but bitter. Amy thought about surrendering her woolen cardigan to the coat rack, but her fingers fumbled at the buttons. Elbows might be too much after all. She kept the cardigan.

"Oh boy," Sheldon sighed again, peering through the doors into the gym. It wasn't exactly crowded, but a handful of people milled between the stage and the tables over the markings of the basketball court. "Oh boy."

Amy took Sheldon by the elbow, ignored the way he twitched a little at her touch, squared her shoulders and marched in.

Nothing happened. No one turned, no one looked at her, no one pointed and laughed, no one set her hair on fire. You've come a long way, baby. Amy smiled tentatively and crossed the room to the refreshments.

She ladeled herself a glass of punch from a plastic fruitbowl. "Sheldon?"

"I can't drink something that has just been standing here, in the open." Sheldon peered into the punch, then up at the shadowed ceiling. "We don't know what lives in those rafters."

"Nothing lives in the rafters." Probably. She took a sip and felt its bitter-sweet alcholic tendrils wrap around her.

"Beverages shouldn't be ladeled," Sheldon said. "Ladels are for soup. Soup is a food."

Amy smiled. There was no use arguing. "Would you take the punch if it was to be consumed with a spoon?" she argued anyway.

Sheldon paused and tilted his head. "I'll have to think about that."

"Amy!" A half-familiar voice squealed behind her. "Is that you?"

Amy finished the punch, plastered a smile on her face and turned around. "My appearance has changed only marginally in the decade since we last met," she told Tiffany.

The other woman laughed and looked Amy up and down. "I'll say." Tiffany hadn't changed much either. Still tall, still pretty, still displaying a medically healthy bosomness.

"This is Sheldon. My boyfriend," Amy said. It was like a tiny warm sun in her chest. I sounded natural saying that, right? Right? RIGHT?

Tiffany laughed again. "I thought I knew all of your cousins."

Amy had a lot of cousins. Quite a few of them had died over the years in accidents that were horrific but statistically commonplace. (She had checked the probability once.) She ladeled more punch into her empty cup.

"Sheldon isn't my cousin," Amy said.

Tiffany smirked.

"Marriage between first cousins is legal in the State of California," Sheldon pointed out. "But it is a criminal offense in Texas."

Amy frowned. "Really?"

"Lucky for you, Amy." Tiffany winked.

"I already told you he's not my cousin," Amy said. Had Tiffany also developed hearing problems? She's making fun of you, Amy reminded herself. Right. She should have looked up how many times she'd been divorced after all.

Tiffany rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Seeya." She walked away to join a cluster across the room. Amy recognized Carly and Sandy...and they were all looking at her. She tried to ignore them.

"Are those your friends?" Sheldon asked.

"We hung out together," Amy explained. She finished her punch and poured some more. What did I ever do before alcohol? "I hated them. A lot."

"A nuance of social protocol i'm missing?"

"Just highschool. I did their homework and they..." Well, they had called themselved her friends, for a while, so long as it wasn't in public.

"I'm sure hating her was the proper response," Sheldon said. "She seems loathsome."

"She is," Amy said. "They all were, and I wanted so much to be like them. What does that make me?"

"Confusing?"

"Pathetic."

Sheldon considered it. "All right."

Amy sighed. They were still staring at her - and pointing and laughing. She felt the edge of tears welling up in her eyes. So much for not being that girl anymore.

"Let's go home, this was a bad idea."

"No."

"What?"

"You can't drive, you've been drinking."

"Do you want to drive?"

"Be serious. Are we stranded?"

Oh no. No no don't say it. "We'll just sleep at my mothers, it's a two minute walk from here." Why had she said it?

She had no time to change her mind or suggest a better option, like sleeping under an overpass or hitchhiking to Pasadena. Sheldon was already halfway to the door. Amy took a deep breath and followed him, right past the cluster of Tiffany and Sandy and Carly.

"AAAAAAAmy!" Sandy called out. "I see the makeover didn't take!"

Amy winced. They had given her a makeover, one weekend. She had been thrilled. So pathetically thrilled. Makeup, contact lenses, a short skirt and low-cut blouse. For the time it took to walk from the door to her locker, Amy had felt beautiful. Then the laughter started.

She had never been their friend, only some kind of pet.

The song changed, sliding into the demanding beat of the White Stripes. A seven nation army couldn't hold me back.

She moved. Sheldon lunged to stop her, but he didn't have great reflexes. Her handbag took Sandy in the face. Someone grabbed her cardigan, but she had her hands in Carly's hair by then. Long nails scratched across her cheek. She lashed out with a foot. Dammit, it was hard to balance in heels. Amy went down under force of superior numbers, the bottom of a vicious pile of fake eyelashes and cloyingly sweet perfume.

You are beautiful, in every single way, Christina Aguilera crooned from 2003. Words can't bring you down. Well, she had been a lying blonde bitch then too.

#