Last Dance

by Caroline B. Cooney

  Anne.

  It was enough to make you spit.

  Molly pounded her silver heels on the floor, and it was no dance—it was a tantrum.

  But she blamed nothing on Con, and she blamed nothing on herself.

  It was Anne Stephens’ fault, and if precious, elegant little Anne thought she could just waltz back to Westerly and take Con and her social position back up as if nothing had happened, well, precious Anne was wrong.

  Molly was keeping Con, and that was that.

  Molly smiled into the mirror.

  The mirror said nothing.

  Molly’s smile said it all.

  Emily was shaking so hard she could barely find the telephone, let alone dial. Oh, for a phone with memory that would accomplish these tasks for her! What if Matt had already left? What if he was on his way? What would she do then?

  “Oh, Matt!” she cried out, when he did answer. “Oh, Matt, don’t come. Forget it. We’re not going.”

  “Not going? But Em, I thought you were so excited about this dance. We bought that dress, and—”

  “And Mother and Dad are splitting up tonight, Matt. Right now. This minute. They’ve been throwing things at each other for hours and screaming horrible accusations, and Mother is packing a suitcase and shoving her things in her car, and she says I have to go with her, and we’re leaving now.”

  Emily did not know why she was weeping so much. Her parents had no more use for her than they did for each other, and it was only since she began dating Matt that they saw anything good in their daughter at all. Matt was so wonderful they figured Emily must have something invisible going for her that they had not yet spotted.

  It terrified her to think of moving away with her mother. She could manage a different high school, even if it was her senior year—her precious senior year—that would be lost. She could leave behind the familiar neighbors and rooms and garden and kitchen. But the only thing that had saved the Edmundson family this long was the fact that the rambling multilevel house permitted them to live quite separately. Emily knew she could not live in a three-room apartment in Lynnwood with her mother. They would be at each other’s throats. They could not pull it off. Emily had managed never to fight her parents the way they fought each other, and she could not bear to start now. The thought of the wars to come, once she and her mother were jammed in next to each other and could not be apart, was enough to make her feel ill.

  “So let them split,” Matt said. “You and I are going to a dance. I’ve never been to Rushing River Inn, and I plan to throw you in the swimming pool. So be prepared. You’ll know when I’m going to do it because first I’ll unpin your corsage and set it in a safe, dry place. The money I paid for these flowers, I’m not getting them drowned in chlorine.”

  His voice was as goofy as his grin, all spread all over the place, silly and sane at the same time. Oh, how Emily loved Matt! She took a deep, shaky breath and tried not to break down. “Matt, you don’t understand. Mother is in the hall screaming at me to get in her car, and Dad is on the landing, screaming at me to stay put.”

  Her parents’ voices terrified her. Screaming at each other she had gotten used to. But screaming at her was new, and she wanted to hide from them, under the bed or in the closet, like a baby.

  “M&M, I understand perfectly,” said Matt, who had begun calling her for her favorite candy, and also because her name (Em) and his initial (M) were M&M. “And who cares? You’re sixteen, soon to be seventeen. Old. Very, very old and mature. And we’re going to a dance, because kids like us spend all our time doing fun things. I have four new tapes, and my mother bought the neatest new snack—looks kind of like mouse droppings, but it really tastes pretty good. I’m bringing it to eat in the car so we can keep up our strength, and you’ll like it.”

  Matt had a mind filled with thoughts. Emily visualized the inside of Matt’s head as a clothes dryer with a glass door: thoughts tumbling like drying jeans and socks, with no relationship to each other except they were all crammed into the dryer together. You had to concentrate to follow Matt, and tonight she could not think.

  Emily’s parents appeared in her bedroom door.

  The door framed them, like a picture, perhaps a twentieth anniversary picture—not that they planned to have or celebrate one. Her mother said fiercely, “Emily, the car.” It sounded as if she were introducing them.

  Her father yelled much louder, “Emily, you’re not going anywhere.”

  Matt said in her ear, “I heard that. They sound a little irritable. Listen, M&M, be happy, it’s finally going to happen, this divorce you’ve been worried about for so long. We’ll stay out all night, and when we get back at dawn, they will have split.”

  “But Matt,” she protested. The tears had begun, and she did not know what to do about them. Emily generally choked when she cried and couldn’t talk. Anyway, she couldn’t tell Matt anything now because her parents were listening.

  “If you do not come with me to Lynnwood right now, young woman,” her mother said, “as far as I am concerned you do not need to come at all.”

  Emily clung to the phone like a life raft. Her own mother was giving her one chance—just one—now or never. Come or I don’t love you?

  Her parents, unable to look at each other any more, because they were so angry and feeling so violent, glared at her instead. Her father bellowed, “You go with that woman, and I’m changing the locks, and you’re not coming back here. And that’s that.”

  “Just stay calm and come with me,” Matt said in her ear.

  Stay calm?

  What—was he out of his mind? Stay calm? And if she went with Matt, she would have neither mother nor father; Matt couldn’t bring her home after the dance because she wouldn’t have one!

  Emily wanted time to think.

  She wanted to talk with her counselor in school and maybe her music teacher, who was very understanding even though Emily was a poor saxophone player at best. Then she wanted to talk with Matt’s grandfather, who was the most wonderful person on earth, and definitely with Beth Rose, who had become such a good friend this year. Emily figured she had at least a month of heavy-duty consulting to do before she could make this decision. And they were giving her one minute.

  Why, oh why, couldn’t she have a nice family? Why couldn’t she be like Kip, with that horde of terrific little brothers, and that cozy mother who loved to give parties, and that father who seemed to do nothing but laugh and hug all the time?

  Matt said, “Lemme talk to ’em.”

  Oh, yes. He would be a buffer: like the wall around a castle. She could put him and the telephone between herself and her parents’ fury. Emily said, looking at neither parent, but holding the phone in their direction, “Matt would like to talk to you.” Let them fight over who got to do that as well.

  Her mother took the phone and slammed it back down, hanging up on Matt. “Get in the car, Emily, we’re leaving.”

  They loved each other once, Emily thought, or they wouldn’t have gotten married. How did this happen? How—

  Her mother grabbed her wrist. Hard enough to hurt.

  And Emily said softly, “Mother, I’m going to the Last Dance with Matt. I’ll telephone you and let you know what I decide about living with you or Dad.”

  Her father said, “It won’t be me you live with, young lady, if on the night I need you most, you go traipsing off with that loopy jerky kid.”

  She almost fell for it—his needing her—but the truth was that Mr. Edmundson seldom needed anything except his television set, and if he needed her, it was only to bring his food from the microwave in the kitchen to the TV in the family room.

  Family room, she thought.

  Some family.

  Sobbing, she jerked her wrist free. She tried to run out of the room, but her father blocked the door. She shoved him away and ran down the stairs and out of the house. She would call Matt from the neighbors’—wait for him around the corner—figure out what to do later!

  Her
parents were yelling at her, and their terrible voices followed Emily across the lawn. She fled farther than she thought she would. She could not stop running, but crossed backyards, and stopped, panting behind a stranger’s garage.

  Emily Edmundson thought—What have I done?

  It won’t be a Last Dance!

  It’ll be a Last Home, Last Family, Last Mother and Father.

  Inside the house, the phone rang again.

  It was Matt.

  Mrs. Edmundson said harshly, “She’s coming with me, Matt, and not going to the dance. Do not drive down here.” And she hung up hard enough to damage the phone.

  Chapter 2

  “YOU CAME,” ANNE SAID.

  Con just looked at her. She would never get used to the silence of that look: not by one quiver of his heavy eyebrows did Con give away what he was thinking. “Yes,” he said, and nothing more. She stood in the hot dark living room and he in the hall, lit by the lowering sun and cooled by the breeze from the screen door. Anne thought they might stand that way for hours: heat and emotion turning them to statues.

  But Con said, “Let’s go, kid. I not only paid for the tickets but also for the chance to win a VCR. We have to get our questionnaires and start filling them out.”

  He had started calling her “kid” when she got back from the hospital. She liked to believe she was still a kid, but inside she felt old, old, old. Brighten up, Anne told herself, you’re a high school junior off to a dance, not an old crone beaten down by decades of misery!

  She did not take a single step toward Con. He would have to walk to her. And he did, grinning his old careless grin. He caught at her waist without getting panicky, half danced her to the porch, and even kissed her.

  He opened the door of his car for her. For a moment she thought she saw a baby seat in the back, but the weird vision vanished instantly, and she shivered. How long would her life be haunted by the baby she had given up?

  Con had given nothing up. But they could not talk—once again they could not talk—of what Anne had endured that he was not part of.

  Con said, “I filled yours out for you. Everybody else did them in school.”

  Anne had no idea what he was talking about.

  “For each ticket,” Con explained, “they gave you a questionnaire—boring stuff like what’s your middle name, where were you born, what do you collect, where have you traveled, and what have you done lately. They’re going to make up a quiz for us to do at the dance, using the interesting answers we came up with. We have to run around the ballroom, asking the other kids questions until we have it filled out, and the first person to get it all filled out wins the VCR.”

  Anne tightened up. What have you done lately? Would people be asking her that? Would they come up and say, “Anne, are you the one on this list who just had a baby?”

  Con touched her knee very lightly. “Don’t worry,” he said, “all your answers came out fine.”

  “And did you know everything about me?”

  Con grinned. “What I didn’t know, I made up,” he said.

  “I won’t know my own life when it’s time to fill in the blanks,” Anne protested. But she was beginning to laugh. Perhaps she would have fun after all. Perhaps Con’s relaxed air would infect her, and the mountain winds would blow away her nerves.

  “If you don’t know, I’ll tell you,” Con said. “I have all the answers.”

  Gary sat in the car waiting for Beth Rose. He liked the occasional dance because he rather enjoyed dressing up and going somewhere special. Tonight he was wearing possibly the reddest pants in the entire world. They were cotton, and slightly baggy, and so red that people were going to complain all during the dance. Even in the dark, his pants were going to blind the eyes. He had already thought of wisemouth retorts for a variety of possible remarks about his red pants. His shirt was ivory, with a few narrow horizontal stripes—also red—and he was carrying a jacket, in case Beth Rose gave him a hard time, but that was not usually her style.

  Beth Rose was undemanding. His own family did a good deal of yelling, but if Beth Rose ever raised her voice, Gary had not heard her. Whatever he felt like doing, Beth Rose generally felt like doing, too. She always seemed to be in a good humor, and most of all, she was always glad to see him. It was kind of nice, to drive up to a house and know, for absolute sure, that the person living there would fling herself on you with delight.

  But when he was not with her, Gary rarely thought about Beth Rose. Gary’s mind landed on one thing and stayed there, so that if he was fixing his car, he was not also dreaming of a date that night. He was simply fixing the car.

  When Beth Rose did not dance out of the house and leap into his car, he was mildly surprised, but figured she was still brushing her hair or something, so he waited longer. The sunset was beautiful, and he stared into it, watching the distant clouds change colors.

  Beth Rose still didn’t come.

  With a vague sense that he might have the wrong night, Gary got out of the car and wandered up to the house.

  “Beth Rose?” he called, poking his head inside the screen. “You coming or do I have the wrong night?”

  She had been watching him steadily through the slats of the blinds. Now she sat up on the couch and heaved a sigh. It’s very simple, Beth Rose told herself. You just stop being in love with the guy. The only thing you can say for Gary is, he’s here. He’s not in love; he’s hardly even awake.

  Six months of dating according to Gary’s standards.

  Which were low.

  Which said a date came when Gary felt like it and consisted of what Gary wanted to do. When he remembered.

  Maybe this really should be the last dance, Beth Rose thought. Maybe it’s time for me to say goodbye and find a boy who puts me first.

  She tried to imagine such a boy, but she could think only of Gary, whom she still adored as much as she had the first night.

  Gary walked on into the living room, saw her on the couch, and grinned at her. Beth Rose’s heart flipflopped, in spite of the strict orders she gave it not to. With two steps Gary crossed the room and dropped like a very tall stone onto the couch next to her. The sofa didn’t break, but it definitely bent. Gary tipped backward, resting his feet on the wall and his head on her lap. “So? We’re dancing here?”

  “No, we’re dancing at Rushing River.” Normally she would have bent her head to kiss him, but tonight she sat there as if nobody lay in her lap at all.

  Gary said, “Why didn’t you come out to the car?”

  “Because I wanted you to come in here.”

  Gary touched her freckled nose with his fingertip. “Got your wish, then, lady.” He grinned at her again, drawing a smile over her lips, until she smiled back. “I see I have to play caveman if we’re going to get to the dance in time to win that VCR.” He sat up fast, turned, slid a hand beneath her, and scooped Beth Rose into his arms as if she were the pillow on the couch.

  “I don’t know that I would call this caveman behavior,” Beth Rose said. “As I recall, cavemen drag their girls by the hair.”

  Gary laughed. “Next year,” he promised, and carried her to the door. She arched her back and tried to kiss him, but he tilted his chin back teasingly and wouldn’t let her.

  And I call him unromantic, Beth Rose thought, leaning back in his arms and starting to laugh.

  When she leaned back, her thick red mane of hair caught in the middle hinges of the front door. Gary stepped back slightly to free her hair and her dance slippers whacked the doorknob. Gary turned to the side to fit her through that way and got the hem of her skirt under his shoe.

  Beth Rose was laughing hard enough to shake them both.

  Gary’s face turned red.

  “Keep blushing,” Beth Rose teased. “We need a match with your trousers if we’re really going to be color-coordinated.”

  Gary attempted a frontal attack on the door.

  “Aaah,” yelled Beth Rose, “you can’t go that way—my hair isn’t going with yo
u!”

  Gary swore under his breath.

  “What did you say, Gary darling?” Beth Rose was giggling insanely. She said, “I guess we’ll dance here after all. At least my feet won’t get tired.”

  “The trouble with romance,” Gary said very irritably, “is it’s so easy to look like a jerk.”

  “But Gary,” Beth Rose told him, “you’re the handsomest jerk in town.”

  “Oh, good,” Gary said. “I feel better now.”

  Kip and Mike Robinson were the fourth couple to arrive at Rushing River Inn. “You’re always so efficient,” Mike said, smiling. But she could tell that it annoyed him, to be early instead of with the crowd.

  Kip could never figure out what other people were doing with their time that they could drift in an hour or two hours later than an event began. If a dance started at eight, Kip was there at eight, and not two minutes later.

  It was perfectly clear that the Last Dance wasn’t even going to think about beginning before ten. How—how—were she and Mike going to manage all that time without a bunch of friends to help spread the burden?

  Pretending to circle around and check out the ballroom of Rushing River Inn, Kip swirled until her bare back faced Mike, and she tossed her head slightly so the pink and violet and yellow ribbons would tangle in her thick brown hair and he would untangle them.

  Mike said, “Well, we can start filling in these questionnaires. Course there’s nobody here yet to ask.” He began studying the questions to see if he already knew any of the answers.

  Kip finished her circle and faced him. She knew she was graceful and pretty tonight, and now, in the dim light of the ballroom, she knew that the wild colors of her skirt were the right choice: the darkness softened them, and yet the vividness remained. Mike either hadn’t noticed or didn’t intend to. It is the last dance, she thought. We have just come as friends, and Mike is afraid if he says one nice thing, he’ll tip the balance, and I’ll fling myself on him, and he’ll have to cope with it.

  Kip wanted to cry.

  She thought, if I cry, Mike will freak out.

  Girls didn’t mind their emotions all over the place; boys couldn’t stand it. Kip often thought that a girl’s tears were like a broken egg in the palm of the boy’s hand: all he wanted to do was shout “Yucky!” and wipe it away.