Ghosts of the Past

This is what it looks like when seven chicks from high school get together 35 years later.

The most interesting part of the evening? Had to be Wendy's claim that a guy who got killed in a car accident right after graduation hadn't died at all. (Insert eerie music here.) According to Wendy, her son came home from school one day and said his friend was the son of said dead person--and that said dead person's parents had fabricated his death to get him away from the bad crowd he hung with.

Cut to me yelling for Sally ('cuz Sally's the go-to girl when it comes to high school tragedies--she's got a scrapbook full of them.)

"But I went to the funeral," she protested after hearing Wendy's story. "He'd better be dead, 'cuz if he's not, I'm gonna kill him for putting me through that."

As you can imagine, the possibilities tossed us into a frenzy. Could a kid's parents really go to such lengths to protect their progeny from the wrong crowd? (Hey--should someone get a-hold of Britney's mom??)

"My son's friend even knew the nicknames we used," Wendy told us.

Spookier and spookier.

"Wait a minute. What about the other guys in the accident?" Sally pointed out.

"Maybe the accident really happened. He just didn't really die." (That was my contribution.)

I mean, I think we all wanted to believe the guy had come back from the dead. But Martha was off in the corner, clicking away on a computer, and there it was: the official death record.

Surely, his parents couldn't have faked THAT, could they?

Wendy called her son who now says his mom had the name wrong. But wait...someone's still saying that their parents faked their death in high school, right? What about that secret nickname?

No matter what, I'm filing this one away for future use in a story!