Last Dance

by Caroline B. Cooney

  It surprised her that Anne’s rooms were done in pink, when Anne’s color was so clearly gold, too. Anne’s hair gleamed like precious metal. If Emily had hair like that, she’d be in front of the mirror all day just admiring herself and her golden tresses.

  Just the right thickness, too: not so thin it slipped out of pins, and not so thick it was hard to put up. Tonight Emily was fixing Anne’s hair to match her evening gown.

  The gown was black. Emily detested it. Okay, so black was sophisticated. So black was fashionable. So Anne looked fantastic in it: like a jewel on velvet.

  But black hardened Anne and aged her. Anne had a lovely Laura Ashley dress: cotton with tiny flowers sprinkled among tiny vines, with puffy sleeves and a sash that doubled her waist and tied gently and was still long enough to fall to the faraway hem. That was what Emily wanted Anne to wear.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Anne said. “I might wear that to a party next April. On somebody’s verandah, overlooking the tulips. But to a New Year’s Eve Ball?”

  Anne was right, of course. Anne had perfect fashion sense, and her mother and grandmother had all the money in the world to cater to that fashion sense.

  The black dress was very dramatic: the skirt was satin and velvet in horizontal bands, while the top was a wool knit into whose lace thin black velvet ribbons were threaded. Into Anne’s hair switch Emily was braiding three glittering rhinestone and velvet ribbons. The thick golden braid lay on Anne’s slender back, sparkling against the black wool and the suggestive holes of the lace.

  Anne would, as always, be the loveliest girl from Westerly High.

  Emily often wondered how it felt inside to be so beautiful. She had thought once she began living with Anne she would learn, but Anne seemed to accept being beautiful as if it were the same thing as having a nose, or two elbows. It was just there. Anne never remarked on it and did not actually seem to notice it much.

  Emily was wearing one of Anne’s old dresses to the ball because she had no money to buy one of her own.

  “I’ll buy you one, of course, dear,” said Mrs. Stephens. But the endless borrowing from Anne’s family was exhausting. The Stephenses were terrific to Em, and yet it was driving her crazy. This was why people returned to bad situations: after a while, you couldn’t mooch another minute.

  Anne told Emily she was silly to worry about it; her mother was rich and she liked spending money on Emily, too.

  But that didn’t matter—whether the Stephenses liked doing it.

  Emily didn’t like receiving it.

  Charity was the pits when you were the taker.

  The new bedroom was no longer sunshine. Now it was just a yellow motel. She was just waiting there, waiting for things to turn better, or at least turn differently. But right now, the road into the future stretched straight ahead: the Stephenses providing room and board and evening gowns, and Emily mooching.

  Her parents had split up.

  Her mother, who never thought much of Em to begin with, was living in a two-room apartment in Lynnwood. Em had spent a weekend there last month. Talk about a suffocatingly small space! The fighting between them was wall-to-wall and room-to-room.

  Her father stayed in the old house in Westerly. He would ask Em to visit, but when she came, he didn’t hug, didn’t welcome, didn’t ask about her day. He would bark, “Why don’t you move back in here and keep this place clean?” Emily couldn’t even bring herself to sit down, let alone scrub the kitchen.

  She didn’t really want her mother and father to get back together. They did not make a husband and wife; they made a war. But if they didn’t get back together, Emily had no family. Forever and ever, no family.

  She was grateful to the Stephenses for taking her in.

  Emily hated feeling grateful. She was almost eighteen. And then what? She couldn’t go on borrowing dresses from Anne forever.

  Anne was creaming her hands. She owned every hand cream that existed, and Em had tried them all. The two girls had the softest hands in Westerly. Or at least the best creamed. Emily stroked the velvet of her borrowed gown with her soft fingers. She felt like a princess wearing velvet. When I get married, I’ll wear velvet, she thought. Guess I’d better not get married in July.

  The borrowed dress was a rich deep cranberry color with a white lace collar: very English country. Its neckline was demure, and from a straight simple seam, the velvet fell in tiny gathers to a high waist, and from there it cascaded to the floor and even the tips of her dancing shoes didn’t show. When she walked she lifted the skirt, and it was a graceful old-fashioned feeling to walk like that. Emily had practiced twice, in secret, without any of the Stephens family seeing her. She loved the dress a hundred times more than Anne had. But then, Anne had so many dresses, none of them became special to her.

  Matt would love the dress. His hands were rough, because he liked the outdoors and machines. He had a backyard full of old cars he was rebuilding (he referred to the cars as “antiques” but Emily considered them “wrecks”). He had called her up this afternoon to promise that he had used a brush on his fingernails and was very presentable.

  “What you are,” Emily said softly into the Stephens’ telephone, “is perfect.”

  “I know that,” Matt said. “Perfection is my stock in trade, always has been. Listen, Em, I hope you’re going to be perfect tonight, too, because I have something going, it’s this surprise I’ve got and it requires perfection. So nothing average, nothing dull. Got it?” Emily was laughing. Matt’s voice always cheered her up. She always thought of Matt’s voice as having geometry: width, height, and depth. It was a voice that filled her life. “Bought you yellow and white flowers, Em, and they look great. I’m even getting to like the color yellow. I used to think it was noisy. I don’t now.”

  “Loud,” Emily corrected. Too late to tell him she wasn’t all that fond of yellow any more herself. Or that yellow flowers were not right for a cranberry-red gown. Besides, Matt giving them would make them right.

  “I am a short a car, Em, it’s true, I finally sold one. The 1954 Cadillac, I found a buyer, it’s been sold, and there is a space in the yard. Hard to see because of the snow, but it’s true, Em, if you were here you’d be dancing around with my mother. Nothing she likes better than another wreck gone. One car sold, seven to go.”

  “That’s great, Matt,” she told him. “Now you’re rich.”

  “Nah. Now I’m poor. I already spent it all.”

  She laughed. No doubt he’d bought another car and the space in the yard would be full as soon as the snow melted. There was an old heap over on Seventh Avenue Matt kept driving by: a rusted out, engineless, 1924 pick-up truck he yearned for with a passion.

  Thinking of Matt was sunshine enough for Emily. Who needed yellow? Smiling to herself, she put the last pin into Anne’s hair switch. “You’ll be the belle of the ball, Anne.”

  Anne stood up, with the delicacy she always managed. Anne in black and Emily in dark crimson. The girls stood together, like sisters, before the full-length mirror in the corner of the room.

  Why am I crabby? Emily thought. I have wonderful friends, and a romantic dress. Matt loves me. What more could a girl ask?

  Full of love, her heart expanding with pleasure, Emily turned to see Anne’s blank expression. Anne could look happy, or content, but she rarely looked sad, angry, or wistful: if she felt bad, she just sank into her beauty and the crummy emotions never showed. She was like a photograph then: perfection without personality. Sometimes it gave Emily the creeps.

  “I wonder what Jade will wear,” Anne said. Her voice gave her away; she was aching all over.

  “Who cares?” Emily said. “She won’t be able to hold a candle to you no matter what.” Nobody had met Jade. They were all a little curious, of course, but—“Anne,” Emily said, thinking the thought for the very first time. “You’re not sorry you broke up with Con, are you?”

  “Of course not,” Anne said. “Con is an immature, shallow, selfish teenager.” Emily
would drink to that. They could box Con up and use him for a living example of immature, shallow, and selfish. “I’m going with Lee,” Anne said, as if she had to remind herself of this because it was so easy to overlook. “Lee’s a good, solid, steady person.”

  Emily did not think that “solid” and “steady” were the most lovestruck words she had ever heard.

  “I’m a grown woman,” Anne said. Her voice trembled like a scared first-grader’s, though. “I’ve had—I’ve had—” Anne looked into her mirror, as if the beauty she reflected might steady her. “I’ve had an illegitimate child,” Anne said. Emily thought that after all this time, it still shocked Anne as much as it had shocked everybody else. Anne was the least likely person in Westerly for that kind of scandal. “Con was a very adolescent boy who didn’t want to think about it,” Anne continued, as if she were giving home-study lessons to herself. Lessons in morals and manners. “It’s over. He’s not part of my life now. He’s going out with Jade. I’m glad.” Anne held a tissue beneath her perfectly made-up dark eyes.

  “Oh, yeah, really glad,” Emily said. “I can tell. You’re thrilled about the whole thing.”

  Anne adjusted the tissue. “It’s just that Jade is such a strange name. Cold. Green. Inhuman.”

  Emily giggled. “Hey, I can hardly wait to meet a girl like that.”

  “Some sister you are. Laughing in the face of tragedy.”

  Downstairs, the doorbell was ringing. “Matt,” Emily happily identified. Matt got excited about almost anything. Punching the bell sixteen times in a row was ordinary for him: he was playing on the chimes, presumably the song he was singing at the top of his lungs on the front steps, but since Matt had a terrible voice, the girls couldn’t recognize the song.

  Emily was laughing now, turning away from Anne and the mirror and the sad thoughts. She ran lightly down the stairs, her well-creamed hands lifting the long velvet skirt—loving the touch and thinking of Mart’s touch—and then he was in the door.

  Wagging like a puppy dog, Anne thought, listening from upstairs. Anne always thought of Matt O’Connor as a dog and often tried to decide what breed, but she could never quite define that tail-wagging, slurpy exuberance of Matt’s.

  Anne stayed upstairs another minute.

  She would trade her beauty to get the sort of love that Emily and Matt had. It could hurt a person, just looking at them. It always amused Anne, in a sick sort of way, that when they bought tapes, Emily always bought the happy ones and she always bought the sad ones. Emily’s life had been so unloving until she met Matt, and yet Emily was always happy. Anne’s life had been perfect, filled with affection, and when she and Con collapsed as a couple, Anne collapsed, too.

  “Stop yearning for Con,” she said fiercely to the photograph of him she kept hidden in her dresser drawer. “You are being escorted to this dance by none other than Lee Hamilton, who is doubtless the most upright, steady, solid citizen in the state. Be thankful.”

  She wondered what flowers Lee would send.

  Con was not a flower person; her own mother had given him his flower instructions over the four years they had dated. Mrs. Stephens had even told Con to bring her flowers when the baby was born, and Con said, “What? You think there’s something to celebrate here?”

  Anne blanked her mind so she would not think of the baby they had given up for adoption. She forced herself to follow Emily downstairs, to giggle and chat with Matt for a few minutes before they left.

  A big, goofy grin covered Matt’s whole face. His eyebrows lowered, his eyes crinkled nearly shut, and his lashes squashed to nothing. He always looked like that when he saw Emily—like a little boy ripping the wrapping paper off a special, wonderful, terrific present.

  “Hello, M&M,” Matt said after he had kissed his girlfriend twice. “Wow, you look great, I love that dress, that’s a perfect dress. Seems to me we’re always going to formal dances, I’ve been to a hundred with you. My tuxedo is too small it’s been washed so much. So, Anne, how are you? Your dress! That’s unreal. Anne, you look thirty! I take it back, you don’t look thirty at all, I didn’t mean you look thirty, I meant you look old. No, no, I meant you look—let’s see—”

  “Stop while you’re ahead,” Anne advised, laughing.

  “I’m not ahead,” Matt protested, “I’m falling down right now. I meant you look mature.” He squinted his eyes, examining all the words he had said so far. “Nope. That’s not right either. You look—hmmmm—you look—”

  “Elegant,” Emily supplied, coming to the rescue. “Sophisticated.”

  Matt was relieved. “Yes.”

  “Washing your tuxedo,” Emily teased, chucking Matt under the chin.

  Matt responded by tickling Emily.

  “You’ve had this tuxedo on exactly once since I’ve known you, Matthew O’Connor, because you and I have been to exactly one other formal dance. And it was dry cleaned after that dance, not washed.” Em backed away from him, warding off his tickling, and he pursued. They circled Anne as if she were a porch post. “If it’s too small,” Emily teased, “it’s because you’ve gained weight.”

  “Gained weight!” Matt yelled. “I have not! I have broadened. My shoulders are wider. That is not weight. That is muscle.”

  Emily decided that putting her arms around him would determine whether it was fat or muscle.

  “A person could suffocate in all this true love,” Anne complained.

  “Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to clutter the air,” Matt said. “Come on, chocolate chip. Let’s roll. Where’s your coat?”

  Mrs. Stephens was lending each girl one of her furs.

  Matt held Emily’s for her. “Wow, taffy, you look great,” Matt said, tilting his head way to the side to admire her. He always called her by candy names: M&M, taffy, chocolate chip. Once he ran up the front steps singing off-key, “Where’s my Nutty Buddy?”

  “Good-bye,” Emily cried. “See you soon, Anne.”

  They dashed off. Matt could not be slow about anything.

  We always moved slowly, Con and I, Anne thought. Aware of the attention we attracted, the school’s perfect couple, basking in the—

  Stop, stop, stop. He’s gone. And you arranged it. You decided Con was taking too long to grow up. It was your choice, it was the right choice, and don’t you forget it.

  There was another knock at the door.

  Who could that be? Anne thought.

  Her mother opened the door and it was, of course, her own date.

  I forgot, Anne Stephens thought. The man is sending me a rose a day, and I forgot he was coming tonight. “Hello, Lee,” she said guiltily. If only she could be honestly excited about him. She laughed in a fake sort of way and Said, “Isn’t this exciting, Lee? Dancing on the twenty-second floor in a revolving room? I can hardly wait.”

  Lee nodded and held her coat for her.

  “How are the roads?” Mrs. Stephens asked.

  I must remember this topic, Anne thought. Road surfaces. Snow. Ice. Yup. The good ones. The exciting, romantic ones.

  Lee said, “A little slippery. No real problems.”

  He took her arm to go to the car and Anne thought, that’s my relationship with him, too. A little slippery, but no real problems. He’s too straight, that’s the trouble: he’s so upright and solid and steady. I must have a hole in my head. I really want Con. I guess deep down I love slipping on the ice.

  “Don’t worry,” Lee said. “I won’t let you fall.”

  It was true. She would never fall with Lee—and always fall with Con.

  Great, Anne thought. I’ve just discovered I’m sick and twisted. And I’m going to start my New Year’s Eve with the wrong boy.

  Lee opened the door for her, folded her mink coat neatly over her knees, and shut the door like a magic footman enclosing Cinderella in her coach.

  I have the life of a princess, Anne thought. I just don’t have the prince.

  Lee got in, began driving, and they made dull conversation. Anne thought, Actually I
do have the prince. Lee is a prince. Only it’s the peasant boy I want.

  How, oh, how, could Anne begin a New Year when her heart was still tangled in the old?

  Buy New Year’s Eve Now!

  A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney

  Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller The Face on the Milk Carton. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

  Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.

  Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

  Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book, Safe as the Grave, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

  Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.