Last Dance

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “Well, you claim to be an organizer. Organize it. I’m counting on you now, Kip. Don’t let me down.”

  They smiled at each other, but Kip thought, Don’t let you down? Don’t make me laugh. All boys let me down.

  If I organized a waltz, you wouldn’t be there.

  And Mike would vanish quicker than a tan in winter.

  Chapter 5

  MATT O’CONNOR WAS BURNING with fury and confusion.

  Who was this boy he had never heard of, never seen, and yet was a close enough friend for Matt’s girl to go to him instead of waiting for Matt?

  Emily’s family caved in, her parents tried to strike her, her home vanished—and she had somebody else to go with?

  Go where?

  He was the one with tickets to the Last Dance.

  He was the one who had picked out that green dress.

  Look at that car, just look at it! That was the car of a show-off with money. A handsome guy, too. Kept turning to smile at Emily. He liked Emily. Why would he like Emily unless he had a lot of encouragement?

  Matt could not think straight.

  He was sure he was Emily’s first and only boyfriend.

  He was sure the only other boys in her life just happened to sit near her in school.

  But he was wrong.

  Here was someone his own age that she turned to without waiting for him to come.

  You knew I would come! he thought. You knew I would never abandon you! But half an hour later you’re in somebody else’s car, getting comfort from somebody else. And he’s doing a great job, it looks like. You don’t miss me. Look at you, all snuggly in that bucket seat.

  Jealousy, an emotion Matt O’Connor had never experienced and never known he was capable of, made him so angry he wanted to drive right into the rear end of that sports car. Smash through the bumper, smash through the chrome. He followed them. They were much too absorbed in each other to look behind even once.

  “Only one person at the Last Dance hates chocolate,” Pammy read out loud. “Okay!” she yelled at the top of her lungs. “Admit it, whoever you are! Who here hates chocolate? Don’t keep us in suspense.”

  Her date Jimmy said, “Ssssshh, Pammy. If they yell out the answer, then everybody knows. The point is to win the VCR and we don’t want everybody to know.”

  “But this is important,” Pammy said. “I mean, chocolate is my life. Next to you, of course, Jimmy. I need to know what weirdo in this room doesn’t love chocolate.”

  Pammy and Jimmy were the classic couple: they lived in the same condo, and had been going to school on the same bus since kindergarten, and dating since seventh grade. Pammy was petite and sharp angled and quick, darting here and there. Jimmy was pudgy and slow and funny and always seemed a little confused. They adored each other.

  The dance began in earnest. The band was playing a tortured version of a current hit, and the kids had divided into roughly equal thirds: one-third were holding their hands over their ears criticizing the band, one-third were happily dancing and bumping into everybody else, and the last third were filling out questionnaires and screaming over the music. Beth Rose said, “Well, I’d like to know what person here has shaken hands with the President of the United States.”

  She had acquired a second escort. Con on her left had been joined by Mike on her right. It was so odd to be with two boys, neither one of whom had brought her. She didn’t feel popular, though. She felt used.

  Jimmy stared at the questions and in his thick way could not imagine how to find out anything. His lips moved as he worked his way down the page only to discover that nothing about him, Jimmy, had been written up as a question. He and Pammy were not off to a running start.

  I want Gary, Beth Rose thought. Admit it, girl, you adore him, you’ve got it bad.

  But she had come down with the disease of love, while Gary was simply a carrier. She thought that probably Gary would never catch love himself!

  “Let’s find Kip,” Jimmy said. “She’s so organized, she’s probably finished her quiz by now. We can just copy her answers.”

  Mike Robinson groaned. “You can’t find Kip,” he said. “She’s off organizing the clothes and the hair drying.”

  “Oh, poor Kip,” Pammy said, sympathetically. “She always ends up with the work instead of the fun.”

  “Don’t feel sorry for Kip,” Mike said. “Feel sorry for me. Kip loves doing that stuff. I’m the one who’s stranded.” He tapped his chest with his fist, trying to look forlorn. Beth Rose did not fall for it.

  “You’re not stranded,” Molly Nelmes said, snuggling up to Mike. “I’m here.”

  Beth Rose hoped that Mike would say “Yuck!” and brush her away like spaghetti sauce on a white sweater. But no, Mike seemed pleased and when Molly took his hand, he let her, and even if Beth Rose was a judge, applied a little pressure of his own when Molly squeezed his hand.

  Molly didn’t want Mike; she wanted Con; but most of all, she wanted a man, and Mike would do for the moment. Mike cooperated fully, and Beth Rose began to dislike him. Why did Kip always get the short end of the stick? If anybody ever earned a boyfriend, Kip did.

  Con didn’t take his eyes off Molly. Molly’s body fit into the curves of Mike’s slouch, and Molly entwined her arms with Mike’s, and penciled an answer in Mike’s quiz instead of her own. Mike and Molly began dancing at the same time they wrote on the quiz. It was very sensuous: not really dancing, just winding around each other—testing—seeing what might be there.

  And Con was jealous.

  Oh, it was enough to make anybody lose faith in romance.

  Beth Rose had gotten close to Anne this year because it was Beth’s Aunt Madge who gave Anne a home.

  The night Con proposed, he and Anne had been in Anne’s kitchen, and her family was out, and it was late in the evening, and Con kept trying to find something interesting to watch on the tiny countertop black-and-white television. Anne kept trying to get him to admit that they really did have a serious problem. But in the end he had asked her to marry him—changing the channels all the way through the cable dials four times before he found enough courage. Then he hung onto the dial and stood on the far side of the room and looked at the wallpaper beyond the TV.

  Anne told Beth Rose, “He forced himself to ask me. That was the horrible part. We loved each other, but asking me to marry him was a horror show worse than anything we saw in an R-rated movie.”

  “Would you have said yes if Con sounded like he really wanted to get married?” Beth Rose had asked.

  “No. Oh, no,” Anne said. “We have another whole year of high school yet, and then college. Do you know what the divorce statistics are for two seventeen-year-olds getting married? Whew! No, Beth, but I wanted him to want to!”

  “Some people rise to the occasion,” Beth Rose told Anne firmly. “Maybe he would have been a fine husband and a fine father.”

  Beth Rose was now standing in a ballroom with Con, and Con couldn’t even bring himself to hold a hair dryer to Anne’s hair, let alone earn a living and diaper a baby. He was, in fact, wishing he could be dancing in Mike Robinson’s place with Molly.

  And yet Beth Rose liked Con. He was weak minded, but she thought he might out-grow it. She did not believe, however, that he would outgrow it any time soon.

  She couldn’t bring herself to get mad at him. “I have one answer for you, Con.” She tapped her quiz. “It’s me.”

  He had forgotten her, and when she spoke he seemed to pause and ask himself who this red-headed girl was. “Let’s see,” he said, trying to work up some interest in what Beth Rose could have done. “Are you the one who’s been trying to finish knitting the same sweater for six years?”

  Beth Rose managed to laugh. What poor girl had written that as the only interesting thing about her? “I’m the one with the collection of toy fire engines.”

  Con was astonished. “You? But—that’s such a boy kind of thing to do!”

  Beth Rose laughed. “The first nine were or
iginally my grandfather’s collection. I inherited it, and I just kept adding to it. I have some with real engines, some that wind up and some that are just desk decorations. One of them has carved wooden horses to pull it and another one has six metal horses pulling the water pumper. I have almost forty fire engines now. The Smithsonian wrote to me last year and asked if they could buy one of them because there isn’t another like it. It was a childhood toy of President Theodore Roosevelt.”

  Con was much more amazed that it was Beth Rose with the collection than that the collection existed.

  “You and Anne will have to come see it one day,” Beth Rose offered. There was much more to tell about the collection. She waited for Con to ask her what answer she gave the Smithsonian.

  But he was looking at Molly.

  And Molly knew it.

  Pammy and Caitlin and their dates converged on Con and Beth Rose. “We heard you muttering over here,” Caitlin said. “Don’t deny it. You have an answer. Now what is it? Admit it.”

  Beth Rose teased them. “I’ll give you one chance. If you ask me the wrong question, you’re out of luck and you’ll never get the VCR.”

  Caitlin wailed, “Oh, no! Okay, let me guess. Are you the person here who’s been trying to finish knitting the same sweater for six years?”

  Con laughed out loud. “That’s what I thought, Caitlin. It’s a good guess but it’s way off the mark.”

  A good guess? Beth Rose Chapman thought.

  Tears rose hot and painful in her eyes.

  She knew suddenly that they would all assume that.

  Anne Stephens clung to Gary’s arm. He made an excellent escort. He had a basic kindness that never deserted him. And yet, Anne would never have dated Gary. He was too removed. “Drifty” was Anne’s word. Gary never settled on anything—from an athletic team to a girl.

  And I still think Con will settle? Anne asked herself. Con, who shoves me into the water on our first appearance in public together.

  The Last Dance.

  I guess it is.

  Gary said, “You look lovely, Anne. I kind of wish you had been willing to come back up here soaked. The way that dress was then, you’d have been the hit of the dance.”

  She thanked him, wondering what kind of explanation Con would give her. If he had come up with one.

  She thought of their daughter: their thirty-two-day-old daughter.

  Gary opened the huge glass door into the ballroom. It was quite dark, so that kids working on their quizzes were hunched in little groups under the few wall lights, and the rest danced lazily to a slow number. Nobody looked at Anne. She had not realized she had been holding her breath until she let it all out in a long slow controlled puff.

  Thirty-two-days-old, Anne thought. What does she weigh? Does she have any hair yet? Does she smile into her mother’s face? But I’m her mother! It’s my face she should smile up at!

  Gary propelled Anne straight across the room, past preppy Caitlin and her date, and Pammy and Jimmy burbling around like toddlers in a bunch of grown-ups.

  Beth Rose was standing stiffly near Con. Molly and Mike were attached like sticky tape on Con’s other side.

  Anne held tightly onto Gary’s arm.

  Kip had an iron will.

  Or so Mike liked to tell her.

  “You’re not even human, let alone female,” he liked to tease her. “You’re made of iron.”

  Kip got to the door first, opened it herself, and held it for Lee. He said thank you, but Kip did not hear it. Across the room her eyes found Mike. He was wrapped around Molly like gift ribbon.

  She thought of the evening ahead, without a date. That was a scene she had played enough. She had few choices here. She could beg Mike to dance with her. She could get into her Organizer, but Nevertheless-a-Wallflower-Nobody-Wants role. Or she could just throw in the towel and go home.

  “You stopped walking,” Lee said.

  “I don’t have anywhere to walk to,” Kip said.

  Ahead of them, Gary took Anne to Con like a package he couldn’t deliver fast enough.

  Lee said, “Which one is your boyfriend?”

  “I don’t think I have a boyfriend. If you mean the male person I used to date who told me he would come to this dance only if I remembered that we are friends, just friends, nothing but friends, that male person is the one who is currently mating with the girl in the purple dress.”

  Lee howled with laughter. “They’re not quite mating, yet,” he said.

  “Give them thirty seconds,” Kip said.

  Lee said, “Give them a lifetime. I don’t think you need that guy any more than you need a hole in the head.”

  “Yes, but what am I going to do now? This is a dance. I don’t have a partner.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Lee demanded. “Didn’t you just teach me how to waltz? Did you think it was a robot down there counting to three?”

  Kip said, “Yes, but you have to work, Lee.” This one is another Gary, she thought, taking on charity cases by the hour. Well, I’m not going to be anybody’s charity case. She said, “Thanks, Lee. You’re very nice and I’m grateful. But I’ll have a good time anyhow. Don’t worry about me.”

  She kissed him and he kissed her back.

  Kip had no way of knowing that Lee had never had a girlfriend, never kissed a girl on the lips, never had a date. He had always been too shy, too unsure of himself, too awkward to ask a girl to go out with him.

  She could not know that Lee found girls like Anne—beautiful though she might be—annoying. He disliked anybody who had to be led around, escorted, given aid like a wounded animal in the road. He felt overwhelmed by bouncy bubbly creatures like Pammy who attached themselves to boys for each waking minute. He was puzzled by girls like Beth Rose who expected you to mind read instead of just saying out loud what she wanted.

  Lee had decided to stay out of the whole boy/girl scene. Who needed all those complications? If a date introduced anything into your life at all, Lee thought, it was just plain old trouble.

  Kip’s kiss had been on the cheek.

  She smiled and walked away.

  The white lacy blouse was cut very low in the back. Her shoulder blades made two faint shadows on her pale skin. The bright skirt swayed. It had a satiny lining, and even though the band was playing as loudly as any band could, Lee fancied he could hear the swishing as well as see it. He watched Kip walk right up to the group that included her boyfriend—or, as she put it, the male person with whom she had come—and manage to laugh and joke with her friends, pull out a questionnaire, and exchange a silly hug with another boy over an answer.

  For the first time in his seventeen years Lee considered the possibility that maybe a girl could be worth complications.

  Emily’s family rule was seatbelts first. She had started life in a big white plastic baby seat, and moved on to the seatbelt of the middle backseat of the car, and only as a kindergartner graduate to the front seat and the big seatbelt. To Emily it was unthinkable to sit in a car without fastening a seatbelt.

  Christopher’s car had bucket seats, and as her hands located the straps and began locking them in, he did the same—but he fastened his seatbelt into her buckle and took her buckle out of her hand and pushed the metal tip into his fastener. They were overlapped now. Not tangled, but difficult to undo because they were angled backward.

  Christopher said, “Same kids going to be at this dance who were at the last one?”

  “Pretty much.” She was very uneasy. I shouldn’t be in this car, she thought. She said, “My boyfriend Matt—I think I’d better call him. You know, why don’t you…just…why don’t you just take me back home, Christopher? Just go around the block.”

  Christopher looked amused. “I’m your neighbor,” he said. “What are you getting worked up about, Emily?”

  She flushed. A boy who lived only a few blocks away from her was thoughtfully driving her to a dance. A resort where he worked every day, where all her friends would be.

&nb
sp; Christopher smiled at her. “I can’t drive you home, Emily. Your parents don’t want you there. You and I will dance the night away instead.”

  It was important not to be rude. Smiling back, Emily said, “Actually I’ll be with Matt all evening. I mean, it’s nice of you to drive me over, but—I tell you what, Christopher, why don’t we stop at this drug store, and I’ll call Matt on the pay phone.”

  “You have a dime?” Christopher asked, still smiling. There was something wrong with the smile. It was too smooth.

  “Uh. No. No, I don’t. Could you lend me a dime?”

  “No,” Christopher said, still smiling, “I couldn’t.” He drove past the pay phone, and his right hand came down and stroked the seat belts, as if to check that Emily was securely fastened down. Matt did that all the time, and it made Emily feel so safe and special. But this was different. This was as if Emily were his prisoner, and he was checking the ropes.

  Emily stared out the window. They passed a little group of shops, one of those patches of stores that crop up in suburban areas: shoe store, pharmacy, bank, Zip Mart, and law offices. The Zip Mart was open. It would always be open. She would be safe in there.

  Safe? she thought. Safe?

  Now Emily, aren’t you getting a little dramatic? Nothing is happening.

  Christopher said, “Got you all roped in, don’t I?”

  He patted the crossed seatbelts.

  She tried to smile at him. After all, he was being extremely nice to her, going out of his way like this, ruining his Saturday evening. She must not be rude in return.

  His same smooth smile came back. He seemed to have only the one smile: it didn’t grow or shrink or change in quality: it was the smile of a store mannequin.

  Emily wanted to rip open the car door and leap out onto the sidewalk and run, run, run.

  I can’t leap out of this car, she thought. I’ll look so dumb! How will I ever face him again? What explanation will I give him when he stops the car and wants to know what I’m doing? Will I say, I don’t like your smile, Christopher, so I decided to walk the eleven miles to Rushing River?