At the university reunion, I learned that __________ had become a __________. On hindsight, that had been a long time coming. __________ had never been particularly bad at anything in school, missing classes only once or twice. After dark, I'd seen __________ around campus, at the supermarket or the food court, often with a group of friends in tow. "Can't see why you'd keep on living like that," said the class valedictorian, chewing a cherry stem at the cocktail table. I nodded, dumbly. So obvious, those early signs. Yet nobody had seen it coming.

The valedictorian continued: "Of course, I put it like that, but I hear the actual process takes quite a while to settle. There's mandatory counselling, of course. They even make you write journal entries. Seems like __________ would have hated that, all things considered." She cast a glance the other side of the room, where a toast was being made at __________'s table. The clinking of glasses in the air. "Finally, by the seventy-fourth day, if you haven't given up, they slide a cuttlefish pen under the nape of your spine, and cleanly remove your --"

A sudden movement. Behind me, people were getting out of their chairs. The valedictorian spat out her cherry stem. "Look out!" she yelled. I turned to __________'s table, but __________ was no longer there. All that was left was the smell of spilled whiskey, and the conversation that had happened in __________'s name, which continued to bounce off the walls endlessly for the rest of the night.