At their fiftieth school reunion, three men insisted they recognized everybody. They sat at a table beside the entrance so they could greet classmates before name tags gave away the answers.
Peter pointed to a woman in a green coat. “That’s Joan. She used to play the piano.”
It was Margaret, who had never touched a piano. Joan arrived a minute later with a walking stick. Peter said he would have known her anywhere if she hadn’t changed her hair. Joan said it had been white for twenty years.
Alan identified a former geography teacher who was actually a caterer. He spent ten minutes discussing an exam neither of them had taken. The caterer listened kindly and eventually asked whether Alan wanted more potatoes.
Only David stayed quiet. He had brought a yearbook, but kept it in his pocket. His friends accused him of cheating. David said he preferred to ask people about the present before explaining what they had been like at seventeen.
A woman named Celia joined them. Peter claimed they’d sat together in English. Alan said she had been on the hockey team. Celia smiled and let both stories continue. She asked what they remembered about the school dance. Peter recalled lending her his jacket. Alan remembered escorting her home. David remembered that the dance was canceled when a pipe burst, and everybody had gone to the chip shop instead.
Celia laughed. “At last, somebody was actually there.”
Peter and Alan blamed the passage of time. Celia said time had improved most of the stories, especially the ones that never happened. She asked if they remembered Mr. Grant, the caretaker. They both nodded enthusiastically. David remembered he had a limp and kept boiled sweets in a drawer.
Celia told them Mr. Grant had kept a notebook of everything students lost. A scarf, a football, homework, even a trumpet. On his final day he returned dozens of items, each tagged with the owner’s name. Celia had inherited the notebook after his death. Tonight she had brought it for the display table.
Peter rushed to find his name. It appeared five times, mostly beside “gym shoes.” Alan’s name appeared beside “confidence before mathematics test,” which Mr. Grant had written as a joke. David’s name appeared once: “small blue yearbook, found under stage.”
The three men walked around the display afterward. Peter found a note about the bicycle accident: Mr. Grant had kept the bent bell until Peter could afford another. Alan discovered the supposed exam disaster had ended with a pass. David said their memories were not entirely wrong, only edited by fifty years of retelling. Celia observed that Peter had made himself braver, Alan had made himself worse at mathematics, and David had kept the one instruction that actually improved with age. They agreed not to tell the class which parts they’d embellished.
David pulled his yearbook from his pocket. He had collected it from Mr. Grant just before graduation. Inside the cover was a note: “Ask people who they are now.” He had never known who wrote it.
Celia admitted she had. Peter asked how she remembered David well enough to write advice. She said he was the only student who had thanked Mr. Grant for looking after their things.
Peter looked at his five entries. “Did I thank him?”
“No,” Celia said. “You asked if he had your other shoes.”
Alan still wanted to know whether he’d walked Celia home. She held up the notebook. Under his name Mr. Grant had written: “Lost: sense of direction. Found: at chip shop.”