understandable, which she understood, which she was allowed to feel a little bitter about anyway.
They came over, said the right things, took the photo if there was one to be taken, and drifted back toward the center of the room. Emily watched them go each time with the resigned accuracy of someone who had learned to read these interactions for what they were: attendance, not presence. She had become very good at parsing the difference. She had also been becoming, less consciously, the kind of person who took up as little space as possible in rooms that seemed not to have reserved any for her. Near the edges, smaller, adaptable. She would understand much later that this had been damage wearing the face of practicality.
She had not yet learned Marcus’s last name when he crossed the room toward her. She knew him the way you know people in small schools by proximity and reputation, which in his case was straightforwardly good. Football team, but not the kind that made you nervous about it. A girl named Caitlin sophomore year. Two rows ahead of her in AP History. The kind of boy about whom the most remarkable thing was how unremarkable his decency was, how it did not appear to require an audience.
He stopped in front of her and said hey.
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