Recently I combatted boredom by pulling my 8th grade yearbook off the shelf. It is primarily an excruiciating record of self-punishment; I have signatures in there from all the girls who had formally rejected me, via elaborately folded note, from their clique. I’d forgotten about that. They each wrote variations on, “Well, we aren’t THAT close anymore, but have a great summer!” Ouch! Thank goodness for Annie, who had voluntarily extracted herself from the clique the year before and subsequently accepted into her circle, with cheery good grace, all newcomers and newly rejected. I didn’t appreciate what a feat her unflagging kindness was at the time. I was just glad I had someone to eat lunch with who didn’t regale me with veiled insults and calculated inside jokes. We would walk to the candy truck parked across the street from the school to buy Now R Laters and Nerds. I think she’s doing well. Our little sisters keep in touch, though we no longer do.

I decided it would be a fun project to google everybody who signed my yearbook. I lived in a small logging town and wasn’t particularly popular, so it wasn’t that hard to go through all of them. Mostly I found boys because so many of the girls changed their names when they got married. Even though I myself tacked on an extra last name when I tied the knot, I was resentful of the way my childhood peers were thwarting my spying attempts. Why couldn’t they just stick with their original name, for goodness sakes? Oh well.

The guy who wrote “Have a new friend in you old house that you are moving to” is now in computer science grad school. The leader of the boy clique that paralleled my former girl clique is doing special ops for the marines. A girl who moved away the same year I did, hoping to get started in modelling, is now an optometrist and has a testimonial video online for her university. And so on! It’s a fun game.