Gary said, “Hey, I’m gallant. I’ll escort you back to the scene.”
“Oh, goodie. Do it quickly; we’re going to miss the opening act.”
Mr. Martin said, “Lee, I realize this is a very stressful evening. I realize you are saving the girl who saved the Inn. However, I really must request you to get to work.”
Kip said, “He’s working quite hard right now, Mr. Martin. I’m having a hard time keeping my toga up.”
“Uh-huh,” Mr. Martin said dryly. “Lee, the task at hand, please, is once more to replenish the food supply for these starving animals, otherwise known as teenagers.”
Lee sighed.
Kip said, “Saturday night, then, Lee.”
He could hardly bear to let go of her hand. And next Saturday night seemed a hundred years away. But her eyes were fixed on him, bright piercing eyes, as excited about next Saturday as he was, and Lee thought: Mike is out. I’m in. That’s that.
He went to work.
Mr. Martin asked Kip if she knew how the fire started. Of course she didn’t, and they talked of the fire a little, but Kip was bored talking to Mr. Martin. She began sliding away from him and back to the dance, so she could show off her toga and hear more compliments and maybe flirt with Mike again.
Two boys, Kip thought. This is me. I know this is me because I looked in the mirror. Furthermore, it’s me in a mess. Me totally bedraggled.
And I have two boys.
There’s a message in that, but I don’t know what it is.
Touching Lee excited Kip, but knowing Mike was interested again excited her more. She wanted to tell the world that two boys were fascinated by her, but she wanted to keep it in her heart, all private and cozy and perfect.
She was also starving.
Holding her toga around her, Kip went to the food table to figure out how to eat while holding her clothes up.
Mike was there before she had even found the kind of roll she liked. He put mayonnaise on the roll for her and mustard on the other side. He remembers I hate butter, Kip thought. Mike put roast beef and ham in the same sandwich. “No,” Kip said firmly, “you were doing great till you mixed meats. Back up. Dump the ham.”
Mike dumped the ham. He said, “Coke?”
She nodded.
He got her a glass of Coke.
She could not hold the Coke, eat the sandwich, and still keep her toga up. Mike alternated holding the Coke and the sandwich for her. He said, “I’d hold the sheet instead, but you seem to have a pretty steady grip on that.”
Kip could think of nothing to say, so she just drank more Coke.
“That guy Lee asked you out?” Mike asked after she finished the glass of soda.
“Yes.”
“What’d you say?”
Kip pulled her toga a little tighter around her shoulders. “Does it matter to you, Mike? You said you were just coming to this dance as a favor to me. You said we were just coming as friends.”
Mike hated this kind of thing.
He hated having to let go of any part of himself and admit anything. But with Kip you never had a choice. He drew in a deep breath. “It matters to me.”
Kip nodded for a while. Mike didn’t know what the nodding meant. He was surprised how much he cared. He didn’t know if it felt good to care that much again, or bad. He just wanted her to say—
She can’t say yes to me, Mike thought. I haven’t asked her anything. That guy Lee is the one who asked her out. Mike said, “Uh. Next Saturday night. Uh. You want to go to a movie?”
“Next Saturday I’m going to the country fair with Lee. We’re taking my little brothers for the day, and then we’re going to send them on home and spend the evening at the fair on our own.”
Mike swallowed. “Sounds like a nice day,” he said. He thought, Great. Now I have to bid, like an auction. He said, “How about tomorrow? Sunday afternoon.” He couldn’t think of anything they could do. He said, “We could go swimming. First swim of the summer.” Where? he thought. Great. Now I have to get up early tomorrow morning and figure out who has a pool.
But Kip didn’t answer him. She just kept looking at nothing in particular.
“How about it?” Mike asked. His stomach hurt. And not because he needed food. He wanted her to say yes.
He realized suddenly that one reason he had broken off with Kip was because it had been terrific. Mike didn’t want to want a girl so much. He wanted to want a girl occasionally.
“Why?” Kip said bluntly. She was always blunt.
It was easier to be “just friends” than to be head over heels in love.
He almost walked away.
He almost abandoned her instead of admitting how he felt.
He said, “Because I love you.”
“This was a great dance,” sighed one of the boys, happily examining his completely ruined clothes and sniffing the acrid smell of smoke in them.
“That’s because you never danced,” his girlfriend said, who was not nearly as pleased with the dance as he was.
“Think of the cost of this dance,” Pammy said, shaking her head. “We’re talking millions here. Add up the ruined dresses, the ruined shoes and stockings, and hairdos and all.”
“That’s true,” Jimmy agreed. “We’re probably a disaster. We should apply to the federal government for special funds to get new clothes and hairdos again.”
The boys teased him. “Oh, you need a new hairdo, Jimmy?”
Nothing ever bothered Jimmy. He just laughed.
Roxanne, whose beautiful gown had been torn when she slipped in the muddy croquet court and fell on her own water bucket, said, “You know what my mother is going to say about this?”
“What?” Although they could well imagine what their mothers were going to say!
“She’ll say, Roxanne, that is the last Last Dance you’ll ever attend!”
Emily was at peace.
She knew it was a temporary peace.
She knew that out there, beyond the dance, were two angry parents. No home. A place for a night or a week at Anne’s, but not a lifetime. She knew that she would have to go home to get her clothes, if nothing more. She did not know if her parents would offer her a truce, or if she would accept.
But she knew she had friends, and that Matt loved her, and that Anne had come through for her, the way other people had come through for Anne. I can make it, Emily thought. I’m strong, like Anne. This isn’t what I wanted, in fact, this is exactly what I did not want out of life. But it’s here, and I’m going to deal with it, and I’m going to be okay.
“We’ve got every answer except who skied in six countries,” Anne said. “I think whoever has been abroad so much didn’t come to the dance after all.” You would have thought Anne had nothing on her mind but the VCR questionnaire. Emily stared out into the ballroom, wondering who else out there was knee-deep in pain, or possibly deeper than that: maybe drowning in it. But having a good time in spite of that, Emily thought.
Or faking it.
Emily was not faking it.
She turned to Matt, and kissed him lightly, to reassure herself that he was there. And he was.
Beth Rose was relieved. She hadn’t missed a thing. They were killing time talking about dumb stuff, like the questionnaire, instead of real stuff, like whether Anne and Con would go together again. There was a bench against the wall, a rather long one, on which three or four could easily fit. Gary plopped down in the middle and sprawled on it. The band was playing a hard, fast rock piece. Beth Rose moved in front of Gary and kept on dancing from the waist down.
Con just stood awkwardly opposite Anne, as if he had come with somebody else and didn’t know Anne particularly well.
Gary said, “Well, Annie, old girl, actually, I just happen to know who skied in six countries.”
“You do!” Pammy cried, whose ears picked up anything at all to do with winning the VCR.
Gary beckoned to Anne. She moved closer. Gary sat up and patted his knee. Anne perched way out on th
e very tip of the knee. Gary, grinning, tugged her back against his chest. Then he brushed away her golden hair so he could whisper in her ear.
Con watched without expression.
Beth Rose kept dancing.
Anne sat on Gary’s knees as if she were sitting on a counter somewhere. She made a fist, rested her chin on that, and rested her elbow on her own knee.
Gary made a big production out of whispering the answer in Anne’s ear. Very loudly he whispered, “I made it up.”
Pammy was outraged. She almost broke her pencil in half.
“See, I’ve always wanted to be a con artist,” Gary explained. “I love to say outrageous things and see if anybody believes me. At the restaurant when I wait tables people from out of town ask me if I’m in school. I say, Yes, I’m putting myself through medical school, or Yes, I’m an apprentice in music box repair.” Gary smiled happily. “They always believe me,” he said proudly.
“What’s so funny about that?” Pammy demanded. “After going to all this effort to fill-out our questionnaires, everybody is snagged on number seventeen because number seventeen is a big dumb fib.”
“Yeah, but it’s a big dumb fib that worked,” Gary said, grinning.
Pammy glared at him.
“Aw come on, Pammy,” Gary said. “You’ve been happy all night tracking down the skier. Admit it. You had a terrific time and all because of me.”
Pammy snorted and walked away.
Anne’s large eyes were fixed on Con’s. Her head was tilted in their old trick: they used to match tilts, so that their eyes were always even. Con hadn’t thought of that in months. By the time he remembered their habit, Anne had given up and looked away.
Con loved how her fist was tucked under her chin. How her smooth gold hair fell to cover her face. But it was Gary’s lap she sat on, and Gary didn’t appreciate what he had. Gary actually preferred boring old Beth Rose.
Anne, hidden by her hair, struggled with tears. Why was she on Gary’s lap? Oh, Gary was nice enough, but it was Con she wanted.
And Con, Anne thought, who doesn’t really exist. I made him up. I constructed the Con I want as if he were made out of Legos.
She made herself think of Emily instead, of how she and Emily would talk into the night, and share the things Anne had nobody to share with, and talk of the things that hurt Emily too much to say to anybody else.
The band broke off playing and the DJ’s voice rang out. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! We can finally give away this beautiful VCR!”
Pammy jumped up onto the little stage, kissed the DJ, patted the VCR on its little display table, and grabbed the mike herself. “I just want to say thank you to everybody here. I just loved talking to all of you and I learned such interesting things tonight! Don’t you just love all that we’ve learned about each other tonight? Aren’t we just having the best time?”
Luckily the DJ took the mike back.
Anne slid off Gary’s knee and on to the far end of the bench. “Well, pooh,” she said. “None of us gets the VCR.”
Emily giggled. “Strong language there, lady. Well, pooh? Where have you been that you picked up such questionable language? I am shocked.”
Beth Rose was tired of spying on Anne when she had a romance of her own to attend to. She bowed in front of Gary, extending her hand graciously. “I would like to dance with my favorite con artist. Tell me, did you prefer the slopes in Switzerland or Tibet?” Gary leaped up, and danced her backward until they were right in front of the band, getting their ears blasted out. Speech was impossible, but the dancing was perfect. They went wild, writhing and stomping and twisting to the music, hardly looking at each other, but aware of nobody else.
The L word, Kip Elliott thought.
Aaaah, they’re collecting the wrong questionnaire. Nobody cares who was born on an ocean liner, and nobody cares who won’t eat chocolate. The thing the girls want to know is: who said the L word?
Mike said it to me, Kip thought. She was staggered. She could hardly look at him, but she need not have worried. Mike could hardly look at her, either. They were definitely the twitchiest couple in the ballroom.
Two boys, Kip thought. One of them I know that I am going to be in love with shortly, if I’m not already, and in the kitchen, he as good as told me he’s in love with me! The other one I used to love, and I don’t tonight, but I could fall back in love with him pretty quickly.
Is it possible to love two boys at once?
Is it possible for me, inside me, Kip thought, to love two people?
And just as important, is it possible for two boys to allow themselves to love the same girl?
Kip thought, now there is a challenge for the well-organized woman.
Kip thought, I think I am looking forward to summer.
Anne sat still. She didn’t look at Con. His face would be closed up anyhow, and it wouldn’t tilt to match hers, and he would be a stranger to her, as their own baby would always be a stranger to both of them, and she would start to cry, and he would leave her and go to Molly.
Con said, “Miss Stephens?”
She stared at his waist which was directly in front of her face.
“Excuse me, Miss Stephens, I realize you hardly know me, but I’d like to become better acquainted.”
Anne tilted her head way back until she could see his face. It was expressionless as always. And handsome, handsome, handsome. Her hair fell backward like silk. She could feel it against her bare neck.
Con said, “Tomorrow’s the first day of summer vacation.” He seemed to be very nervous. “Maybe we could have a first date, too. Something casual. You know. Just trying to get to know each other.”
Anne turned her head sideways and looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. “I haven’t been dating much lately.”
Con licked his lips. “I don’t want to rush you. I thought we’d start slow. Nothing emotional. Not even a kiss.”
“I’m not such good company these days,” Anne said.
Con located her hands. One was still tucked beneath her chin, and she was half sitting on the other. “A person can learn how,” Con said. He very slowly tilted his head, turning it away at the same time, so now they were both staring at each other from the corners of their eyes, at angles so great it was hard to focus.
Anne said, “I need to talk. Heavy things. Important things. Things I couldn’t seem to discuss with—with—with my—old boyfriend.”
Con shrugged. “He’s gone now.”
Anne’s hands in his were very hot and very dry. He sat down next to her. Anne whispered, “I can’t even hold hands very well. I’m sort of at the end of my rope.”
Conrad Winters bent over very slowly and took the laces out of his shoes. The laces made thin whipping sounds as they came out of the holes. Con held the cords in his hand. He knotted them together and then made knots at each end. “Maybe,” he said softly, handing her one end, “maybe if you hold your knot, and I hold my knot, we can keep each other up.”
Not from guilt, Anne thought. And not because Molly bores him. Not because his parents said he should.
Con is here because he wants to be with me.
Anne took the knot.
Con turned his wrist, looping the lace around his wrist until he had a bracelet, and her hand, holding her knot, was pulled in close.
“I’m sorry, okay?” Con said, so softly she could hardly hear him. “I should have gone to see you more. I should have called more and written more. But I did volunteer to get married, and you said that would be the stupidest thing we could do at our age, and I was so glad you said that, but I was so mad at the same time! I didn’t want you to say I was the stupidest thing in your life.”
“I didn’t want you to volunteer!” Anne said. “I don’t want somebody to volunteer to marry me, like I’m a charity case, or a soup kitchen! I wanted you to want to marry me.” Her hand was getting a cramp, hanging onto the knot. “But mostly I couldn’t stand it that we even had to think about i
t. I wanted to be a happy kid. Not a pregnant woman. I wanted to be worrying about math tests instead of a baby. Oh, Con—I—”
Con said, sucking in a deep breath, “Miss Stephens, I thought we were going to be mere acquaintances for a while. We seem to be losing control.”
Anne began to laugh. It was a real laugh, a laugh that came from inside and welled up and overflowed. She let go of the knot and put her palms on Con’s cheeks and pressed his face together until Con’s lips were all bunched up. She did not kiss him. She let go and took up the knot again, unraveling the cord from Con’s wrist. She slid back from him until the lace was stretched out taut and they were a good four feet apart. “Mr. Winters,” she said, “let us definitely not lose control again.”
Con grinned. He said, “Maybe we could sort of pass kisses down the rope. You know, the way little kids try to send messages down fake intercoms? Two paper cups and a string?”
Anne, whom he had adored since junior high, tossed her yellow hair and her eyes teased and her lips curved into a smile.
“Aaah, it’s quicker to use the wind,” said Anne, and she blew him a kiss, and he caught it.
It was midnight.
The Last Dance was over.
Summer had begun.
Turn the page to continue reading from the A Night to Remember series
Prologue
THE FIRST SNOW OF winter arrived on the last day of the year. Snow glittered beneath the streetlights and lay softly on the housetops and no wind disturbed it.
Five girls, getting ready for a dance, looked into their mirrors. Tonight was New Year’s Eve; in the year to come, they would turn eighteen and graduate from high school. They wanted to begin the year like the snow; lovely and welcome.
Emily, Anne, Beth Rose, Kip, and Molly.
They thought only of their dates, of music, and midnight.
They thought this dance on the twenty-second floor of The Hadley would be just a dressy evening—sweeping out the old year, embracing the new.
They were wrong.
Chapter 1
FROM HER APARTMENT ON the seventh floor high on the hill, Kip Elliott could sometimes see the faraway lights on The Hadley’s revolving tower. But New Year’s Eve was one snow flurry after another, and she could hardly even see the roads in Westerly.
Last Dance Page 17
