One Last Homecoming

By Leigh Kimmel

Sherry had planned a quick trip to her home town for her forty-year class reunion, to see the current classes' Homecoming game. Instead, she arrives to find the high school just as she remembers it, complete with long-demolished buildings and long-retired teachers. It's Homecoming, all right -- her senior year.

 

For someone with happy memories, revisiting one's younger days might be pleasant nostalgia. Sherry dreads the thought of being stranded in the past, forced to reassume the old roles after decades of independence.

 

How can she return to her own time when she has no idea how she got here? Worse, a hostile entity is making its presence known -- and it may not want  to let her go back. And the Homecoming game isn't the one she remembers from four decades ago.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Starship Cat Press
• Release date: Mar 11, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224252459

Book preview

City kids don't realize just how little there is to do in a small town. I still remember when I went to college and had to listen to the girls from the Chicago area complaining about how there was nothing to do in a downstate college town, when there were things happening every night, from guest lectures by famous scholars from all around the world to movies, plays, and concerts. Those kids had never lived where the biggest event of the year was Homecoming.

After nearly four decades away, I was coming back to the old home town for Homecoming. For years I'd resisted the idea, having too many memories of what a small town can do to a nerdy kid. But as time took its toll on the Class of '85, I realized there wouldn't be too much longer to see my former classmates.

So here I was, driving that country road I'd ridden so many times in the school bus, day in and day out from Kindergarten to my senior year. How different everything looked in the driver's seat, from the bridge over the river just west of town to the water tower that rivalled the grain elevator for the title of tallest place in the township. I made that last turn and blinked so hard in astonishment I had to pull over and take a second look.

I'd known from my old school's online presence that the physical plant had undergone a major renovation in the previous decade. There in front of me stood the building I remembered, just as it had looked the day of the commencement ceremony: the original two-story structure that had been demolished because there was no way to make it ADA-compliant, the junior high with its blue metal walls and the flat roof that had been peeled back like a sardine can in the '74 Super Outbreak, the agriculture and industrial arts shops, the big gymnasium.

Bewildered, I grabbed my phone, intending to call a couple of old friends who still lived in the area. But it awoke with No Signal in the menu bar—and I realized I hadn't seen a single cell tower since I got off the main road.

Wondering if I were hallucinating, or worse, had fallen asleep, I gave myself a hard pinch. The building in front of me remained unchanged—which left me in a very awkward position.

Nothing to do but brazen it out. I doubted that turning around and heading back home would return me to the reality I'd left behind – and with no charging stations in this time, I could end up stranded by the side of the road.

Someone had garlanded the entrance gate with bunting in blue and white, our school colors. As I pulled in, a big man came waving his arms at me. After a moment's cognitive dissonance I recognized my old math teacher.

I pulled over and rolled down the window. Mr. Corwin?

Where were you, Sherry? His thick eyebrows made his scowl even grimmer. "Mr. Powell's looking for you everywhere, and the parade steps off in twenty minutes. Now