t's just me and the geek, Seymour Halpern, and I can't help but think of that old line about the last man on earth because here I am, living it. We sit side-by-side at the long and lonely crepe-papered table in the newly constructed gym of Thomas Ewin Consolidated High School, since renamed Chamberlain High, waiting for survivors to start straggling in. Seymour is in his glory pretending to be my date and the irony isn't lost on me that if he'd had a date ten years earlier I'd be the only one here.

The tabloid reporters were waiting outside when I arrived, but since I wasn't one of the "lucky survivors," no one wanted to hear my story or see what I'd done with myself since that fateful night. Cindy Campbell was an unknown to them; a nobody. The only one who paid any attention to me was Seymour, but he didn't count to them either.

"Boy, weren't you lucky that you were in France as an exchange student, Cindy. Looks like it's just you and me c'est soire, oui?" He leers over the table at me, eyes directed at my carefully arranged breasts, light glinting off his oily forehead.

I slip a cigarette out and light it. I check around hoping for anyone else to show up. I wanted to catch Sue Snell at this thing, tell her off for turning the death of all my friends into a book and movie deal with Simon & Schuster, but I didn't really expect her to show; I heard she'd been trucked off to mental-city.

The only people here with us, besides the impatient tabloid people, are the stoic catering staff and the band, most of whom are drinking out of brown paper bags and smoking. If I could trade in the geek for the lead singer, the evening might not turn out to be a total disaster. I tap my ashes onto the highly polished wooden floor of the gym and blow a wall of smoke directly at Seymour until he backs away.

"Yep, they sure did a nice job rebuilding the old school, didn't they?"

"Sure," I nod just to be polite. It'd been ten years, ten wonderful years away from this armpit of the world and I came back for what? No one asked me to be on Donohue or put my picture in papers. And I mean, I actually knew Carrie before she became famous. She was my friend, not Sue Snell's.

"Do you want to dance?" Seymour stands and extends his hand in an almost gallant gesture. There is no music. The band looks over warily, then turns away. I smoke. He sits down. Seymour snorts a laugh and cleans his glasses on the tablecloth. He gets up and returns with some red punch. I take the glass from him and sip it. Standard crap, sugary and spiked.

"Seymour…"

"Sy." He smiles awkwardly.

I crush my cigarette into the meticulously waxed wood floor with my heel, then light another. The lead singer glances over. He smiles and I smile back. From a distance he looks like Mel Gibson, but I left my contacts in the hotel room. I was afraid they would cause red-eye.

"I missed you," Seymour croons. He drinks his punch and gets up for another. He brings back two more glasses and hands one to me. I polish off the first and start on the second. It isn't so bad this time. Maybe after a dozen of them I won't feel like such an idiot sitting in an empty gym with the nerd I never even talked to in school.

The band starts playing and Seymour stands and holds out his hand again. I take it this time, silently, and follow him to the dance floor. I eye the lead singer, but up close I can tell he's much older than I am. Everyone in Chamberlain is old.

Seymour kisses me; his trembling lips powder my face and I thank God he doesn't have bad breath. "It must be fate, Cindy, that we're together." Seymour kisses me again, his lips more sure of themselves this time. I try to twist away but he holds me and I remain in his arms. The music pumps up into a faster number but we continue to sway, arms locked around each other. When the last of the tabloid reporters leaves I ask Seymour if he wants to go.

"Go?" He gapes obscenely.

"No one else is coming, I'd like to go back to the hotel and take a shower. It was stupid to come all the way back to Maine for this." I pull out of his arms and dash out the front doors. The parking lot is empty and the night sky is bruised with the sickly orange lights of downtown Chamberlain.

I imagine Carrie standing here covered in slime, the gym in flames, the screams of her classmates. I close the doors and hold them. I watch the confused fear play across Seymour's face through the squares of the safety glass. I smile and produce my lighter, flick it on and study the blue and yellow flame. It must have been such a power trip for her to leave all those assholes in there burning.

I miss her.

Seymour pulls the door open and frowns. "What was that for?" I walk to my car, flicking the lighter as I walk. I want to burn it all down, the lost opportunities, the lost fame and fortune, the loss of my childhood friend.

"Let's go to The Cavalier for a drink, isn't that where she died?"

"What?"

"Let's go there, Seymour. I need to be where Carrie died."

"Why? Cindy, the roadhouse was torn down. It's a hardware store now." His voice creaks like a boy's.

I get into the car and start the engine. Seymour taps on the window for me to let him in, but I flick on the lights and pull away. I watch him shrink into the dark in the rearview mirror.

drive to the site of the original school, now a park, and idle past the scrawny saplings, each one planted in memoriam of a dead classmate. I cruise through town, remembering Carrie's carnage, and drive up to where her house once stood. The windows of the surrounding houses are boarded up like blinded eyes, silent sentinels, including the one where I grew up. It looks like a lost child's toy in the dark.

The Cavalier has been replaced by a hardware store, just like Seymour said. I pull into the parking lot and get out of the car. I pace around "feeling" for the spot where Carrie might have breathed her last, but I give up and just stare up into the sky. I wonder what she was thinking as she lay there, the night filled with smoke and brilliant stars. I hope she felt some kind of freedom before she died, from her mother, her life and the freakiness inside of her. The only problem is she left the rest of us trapped here in the mess she made.

I promise myself to let it go, to move on with my life, but it's like admitting I lost a winning lottery ticket. If I'd been at the prom I probably would have died in the fire like everyone else, but if I'd survived there's no telling what I could have done. My whole life would have been different.

I jump back into the car and return to the hotel. I pick up my stuff and check out. The note that Seymour left at the desk gets tossed into the garbage without being read. I take the quickest route out of town and from the highway I can swear I see the flames dancing across the sky in the rearview mirror as I bid Carrie farewell. The dark road ahead is lonely, but it's all mine.