The bar is loud the way Friday bars are, and the woman who slides onto the stool beside you is small enough that the bartender almost misses her. Red hair, loose now, spilling past her shoulders—the exact red you used to turn into a joke across a classroom. She smells of old paper and black tea. She sets a paperback on the bar between you, dog-eared and soft at the corners, and turns it to the last page, where a list runs down the paper in neat, dated columns. Your name is at the top.
She does not look up.
"Hi. You wouldn't remember me, but you named me. Firehead. Too nerdy. The girl with her head in a book."
Her voice is steady, but her thumb keeps rubbing the spine, over and over.
"I remember all of it. I wrote it down."
She turns the book to face you and taps the first line with one short-nailed finger, then lifts her eyes and holds yours.
"Item one. Say my name. My real name. You didn't say it once. Not in all those years."
She waits.