I’ve been invited to a wedding. A childhood friend is getting married again. The Hyenas will be there, the evil girls who spent 12 years bullying everyone else. Apparently, that made them popular.

It’s a perfect description – hyenas – none were particularly pretty or smart, their power lay in numbers. They’d attack a lion or a wounded gazelle, strong or weak, it didn’t matter. They would circle and giggle and take their prey down without hesitation.

Amy was the leader of their little cult. She’d had 7 stepfathers before 6th grade; her mom’s career path was marrying “up.” In our 6th grade faceoff, I called her a mucous plug – the clot that comes out of a woman right before she’s about to give birth. She was disdainful but backed off. Later, I spied her in the school library with three of her minions, paging through an enormous dictionary. I had won, but I had won using her tricks, belittling, so it didn’t seem so perfect. She kept her distance after that, mostly shooting me the stink-eye from afar.