She moved her head back a little and her reflection appeared, floating ghostly over the street. Despite having had innumerable men tell her she was beautiful, she’d never really believed she was, but rather had decided that she must project something, not availability exactly, or vulnerability, but a kind of desirability, a sense that here was someone worth knowing, worth pursuing. That her husband had been the one to finally claim her was less a testament to his powers of seduction (powerful though they may be), than the result of her own weariness after years of intrusive male attention, and the realization that her fiercely defended independence no longer seemed worth the constant struggle to maintain it. But she had to admit that despite the novel and complete love she felt for her children, her capitulation to marriage and family hadn’t brought her any more satisfaction than her refusal.

And now, of course, she thought, studying the lines of her face, men no longer looked at her the way they always used to. Only a few days ago she’d given her usual carefully demure smile to a passing man’s frank stare only to discover that he was actually looking at the young woman walking behind her. In the past she’d often wished she could make herself invisible, but now that it was actually happening she found it vaguely disorienting.

Perhaps in the end she’d only made the decision to cash out of the game while she still retained her value – that’s what Charlie would have said, wasn’t it? She hadn’t seen him for years, but she could still hear his sharp, sarcastic voice grating in her head, a one man chorus condemning every compromise she made. He’d been an unlikely friend in high school and a few years beyond, not at all her type, slight, lanky, rebellious, from a family only marginally better off than hers, yet she was strangely drawn to him, fascinated by his asperity and mordant wit, the sheer contrariety he radiated in the face of all the rigidly enforced orthodoxies of their conservative prep school.

His father had been a professor, an occupation with professional status but little of the wealth of the other kids’ parents. Her own father’s job had been even lower, a history teacher at their school, which meant she got free tuition, but also placed her on the wrong side of the economic divide, removed from all those things – the cars, the clothes, the jewelry – that the preppies took for granted yet were so important to them.

Everything had been complicated by the fact that the prep school, after having been all male for almost a hundred years, had finally found it in their financial interest to go co-ed. Her parents had leapt at the chance to enroll her in that first small class of girls, and the handful of them had landed in the middle of that hyper-masculine, hyper-competitive atmosphere like, as Charlie had said, chum in a shark tank. She’d entered as a sophomore, and become one of the pioneering cheerleaders, in the sights of evert jock in the school, quickly and almost effortlessly finding herself claimed by the alpha of them all, an upperclassman linebacker and lacrosse all star who brushed aside all potential rivals.

She was flattered and relieved to make such an easy transition, to be just starting at a new school and already part of the popular crowd, her boyfriend providing instant status and acceptance. It was only later that she began to wonder if perhaps her sudden elevation had denied as many possibilities as it had provided, if because of her attractiveness she’d been prematurely cast in a role that wasn’t quite right for her. But it had been too easy, hadn’t it, to be up on top of the pyramid, to have the things the other girls wanted, especially since she couldn’t have so many things that they did. Her parents lived in a school supplied house on campus, which put her in a strange position, not a day student, yet not a boarder, getting a free ride, but not a scholarship kid, in the middle of things, yet subtly set apart.

to be continued….