The Bellwether Reunion Committee

Eleven people from the class of 1996 said yes. Daniella invited forty more. Four former classmates agree to plan a twenty-year reunion for Bellwether High. They meet reluctantly, around a kitchen table, with a legal pad, a folder of lanyard samples, and a class list of three hundred and eleven names. Only eleven of them RSVP. So Daniella starts filling the room. The hardware store owner who once sold lumber to the school. A pizza delivery driver. Caroline's grief counselor. People who never attended Bellwether and, in a few cases, had never heard of it. She writes them welcome cards with conversation prompts, because a room that looks full might feel like a room worth entering. Meanwhile Ryan keeps saying his bonus is coming through. Caroline can't write a single sentence about her mother without it rotting on the page. And Will, who was the cruelest boy in school in 1996, has come back as a hospice chaplain nobody recognizes. The reunion is a lie held together by folding tables and a working microphone. What happens after it collapses is the actual story. A short, dryly funny novella about grief, self-deception, and the people who keep showing up anyway. Reads in a single sitting. For readers of quiet small-town fiction and character-driven literary comedy.