Rachel had followed us there with Josh’s parents, and the three of them stood together at the edge of the room. I had met Josh’s parents a couple of times before. They were smiley people, and I could see why they were good friends of Sam and Rachel’s. They greeted me warmly, and Josh’s mom reached out to give me a hug.
For the next half hour there was a scramble to get every possible combination of poses. Then the adults herded us over to the big curved staircase, and we all staggered ourselves up the steps for a last group picture, the parents looking up at us from the floor below, their cameras flashing.
It was finally time to go. We spilled out of the house amid good-byes and hugs and last instructions from the parents about safety. Josh had his father’s car—he had still not managed to gather enough money to buy his own—and Valerie and Greg climbed into the backseat. It was a short ride to the high school, and a cheerful sentiment of expectation flowed around us.
After leaving the car in the crowded lot, we filed through the open door and lined up with the other couples, all admiring each other in our dressy clothes. Everyone was stepping up to a long table, behind which sat three adults who looked sharply out of place. As the students approached the table, they presented the adults with a ticket and showed a little card with their picture on it. Josh had two tickets in his hand, along with his picture card, and he held them forward when he got to the table. “Hey, Mr. Rozey,” he said, as the man behind the table took his tickets and nodded at his card.
“Hello, Joshua,” he said. Then he looked at me. “ID, please?”
“She’s my date,” Josh said. “She doesn’t go to school here, so I registered her when I bought the tickets.”
The man nodded. “Then I’ll just need to see an ID from your school or a driver’s license.”
I looked at Josh. He was shaking his head, concern on his face. Around us, I could hear some murmurs. Greg and Valerie glanced behind them when they saw we weren’t following. “We’ll meet you in there,” Josh called to them. “Save us seats.” Then he turned back to the teacher. “Mr. Rozey, can we talk over there for a minute?”
The teacher pushed back his chair, and we stepped over to the side. My chest was warm with discomfort.
“I thought everyone understood the rules, Joshua. Guests from other schools have to show their ID. It’s for security.”
“This is my girlfriend, Eliza,” Josh said. “I registered her, but she doesn’t have any ID because she doesn’t drive, and she doesn’t go to school.”
The teacher looked at me, startled. “How old are you?”
“Sixteen,” I said.
“Are you homeschooled?”
I shook my head. “No, sir. I work as a nanny for a family in the area.” I felt heat rising to my cheeks from all the scrutiny.
Josh reached his arm around me and curved his hand around my hip. “I guess I should tell you that Eliza is Amish. Can we find a way to make this work?” Mr. Rozey’s eyebrows lifted. “I know,” Josh said with a smile. “She doesn’t look Amish, right? But there’s no way I could make this up.”
“Well, that doesn’t mean she can’t follow the rules. Doesn’t she have any kind of ID?”
“Mr. Rozey, today before the dance was the first time Eliza’s ever had her picture taken. Can’t you make an exception?”
The teacher stepped back to the table and leaned over to talk to a woman. They were both glancing at me, as were the other students waiting to check in. It might have been my imagination, but Josh seemed to be enjoying all the attention. “Don’t worry,” he said. “That’s my French teacher. She’s chill.”
The woman teacher came over to us. “Hi, Madame Harvey,” Josh said. “Can you give us a break here?”
She smiled at me. “We just need the name and phone number of the people you work for,” she said. I wrote Rachel’s information on the paper she handed me.
“Okay,” she said. “You can go right in.”
I breathed my relief and Josh squeezed my hand. “Sorry about that,” he said.
Inside the gymnasium I was catapulted into a different world. Billowing sheets of black paper covered all the walls, and the round tables throughout the room were draped with black tablecloths. The lights were dim, and all of the dark decorations added to the sense of gloom. The noise was piercing. It reminded me of the club we had gone to, but in addition to the loud music was the chatter of hundreds of voices. It took me a moment to get my bearings and make sense of the place. Along one wall, I was startled to see a long box that resembled a coffin. I looked away quickly. Hanging all around the room were mesh bags filled with what looked to be cloves of garlic. Josh was leaning toward me, trying to tell me something. I could feel his warm breath in my ear. “I forgot to tell you,” he said. “It’s a vampire theme.”
Now it all made sense. At home, some of my friends secretly passed around books about a girl who is in love with a vampire. Annie and Kate would want to hear about this.
Greg was waving to us from the other side of the room, and we wove our way through the thick sea of people to get to him. He looked particularly handsome in his black suit and colorful tie. Valerie patted the chair next to her, and I plopped into it gratefully. She pointed to the floor, where her black high-heeled shoes were thrown, and then to her stocking feet. I took off my shoes, replacing them with the white socks from my purse. Jill and Steve waved to me from the other end of the table.
Greg leaned over to us. “Did Rozey give you a hard time?”
“Yeah,” said Josh. “I had to play the Amish card.” Everyone laughed, and I joined in. “Do you want to dance?” Josh said into my ear. I looked out at the crowded dance floor. The couples weren’t dancing slowly, holding each other, the way we had at the club. They seemed like one big group, moving in a way that was vaguely keyed in to the music. I looked back to Josh uncertainly. “Come on,” he said. “You’ll get the hang of it.”
I took his hand and let him lead me. When we stepped onto the dance floor we became part of a swarm of people, bodies close together. Here I discovered that dancing meant moving in small ways in some sort of rhythm, swaying from one foot to the other, swinging the arms just far enough not to bump a nearby dancer. I relaxed a little. It wasn’t hard to look like the rest of them. Then the song changed and everyone reacted with whooping sounds and slow clapping with their hands high in the air. They looked like they knew the song and wanted to be a part of it, and I wanted that too. So I raised my hands high and clapped with them.
We stayed on the dance floor through the changing songs and tempos, and friends danced their way over to say hi to Josh and introduce themselves to me. We kept dancing through the introductions. I smiled my greetings, and tried to attach names to faces so that if I saw them again I would know what to call them.
One girl with cascading yellow hair looked me up and down. “I didn’t think you’d be allowed to dress like this.”
I didn’t know how to answer, and then Josh stepped in. “I think she looks beautiful. Is that what you meant to say?”
The girl danced away and Josh whispered, “Sorry about her. I should have warned you about the mean girls.”
Before I had time to think about that, the tempo of the music slowed, and the chaotic mayhem on the dance floor shifted as everyone coupled up, and the large crowd became a set of pairs. I slipped easily into Josh’s arms and reached my hands around his shoulders in the now-comfortable way. His hands pressed into my lower back, tugging me closer to him. My head rested against his chest. I drank in the closeness and wanted it to be forever. But it wasn’t. In a few minutes the music was loud and fast again, and the pairs melded back into one big crowd. Josh nudged me away from the dance floor, and we moved to the other side of the room, where food was being served.
We filled our plates with pasta and salad, and grabbed blissfully icy bottles of water and went back to the table. Occasionally, other people came over, and the girls would jump up and hug each other as though they hadn’t b
een together in a long time, even though they all were at school yesterday. There was much complimenting of dresses, and then the inevitable introductions to me. The girls were mostly friendly, but I sensed a curiosity as well. It was clear that everyone knew about Josh’s Amish girlfriend and wanted to get a closer look.
At one point, Josh was nearby talking to Steve when a leggy girl with billows of black hair, and skin that looked like it had been overly bronzed by the sun, sat down in his seat. “I’m Courtney,” she said. I started to introduce myself, and she interrupted. “I know all about you. We all do.” I looked past her and saw that two other girls were standing a bit behind her. They were wispy girls with long hair that fell in perfect waves, and a lot of makeup. They didn’t introduce themselves to me. I guessed they were Courtney’s audience.
I set down my fork. I wasn’t sure where this was headed, but she seemed to have come over to make a point. “So,” she said, flicking her hair back with a shake of her head, “you guys are the ones who shun people, right?”
I flinched, feeling more shocked than angry. “That happens sometimes, but not very often.” The girls behind Courtney were still watching us.
“Well,” she said, “that’s basically what your boyfriend did to all of us. So it seems fitting that you found each other.”
Just then, I felt a hand on my shoulder, gentle and warm. “What the hell, Courtney,” said Josh, standing behind me. “If you’ve got issues with me, tell them to me. Eliza doesn’t even know who you are.”
Courtney shrugged. “Now she does,” she said, before flouncing off, followed by the two girls.
Josh sat down in the seat she had just left. He was shaking his head, speechless.
“What made her so mad at you?” I asked. My voice sounded wobbly.
“Remember when I told you about the girls I used to date? Well, she was one of them.” He smiled. “My taste has definitely improved.”
I knew I should have been warmed by these words, and by Josh’s protectiveness of me. But there was something unsettling about this contact with Courtney. It was a reminder that maybe what Valerie had said was true. Maybe I was just that bit of difference he was looking for. I sipped from my water bottle and looked around the room, wondering if any more of Josh’s old girlfriends were waiting to have words with me.
After dinner, Josh took me to a corner of the gym where a little area had been set up for pictures. A curtain hung in the background, and couples posed in front of it. Some put on vampire capes that the photographer provided. Each picture came instantly out of the camera, and each was placed in a shiny black frame.
When it was our turn, we stood in front of the curtain and Josh put his arm around me. “Look at the camera,” said the photographer. But at that moment we were looking at each other, turned inward just enough to face each other fully. Josh’s smile reached up to the corners of his brown eyes. I knew that no matter who his other girlfriends had been before me, this smile was mine alone. A light flashed and then another. “Next!” the photographer called out, and we moved slowly to the side, still smiling, both of us knowing that it was a private, personal smile.
While the photographer posed the next couple, a woman handed each of us a picture inside a frame. I stared at the couple in the picture, staring at each other. It was my graven image, my stolen soul, and it was beautiful. I couldn’t turn my eyes away from it.
Outside, I breathed in the cool fall air and let the quiet seep into my skin. When the dance had started and everything was brilliant and lively and new, I hadn’t wanted it to end. Then, when the lights came on and a group of students set to work taking down the decorations, I was ready to move on to the next events, the party at Valerie’s house, the girls’ sleepover.
This was a getting to be a familiar sensation. I was always anxious for the next new thing. I briefly wondered how I would feel once I’d experienced everything and there was nothing new to look forward to, but I brushed the thought away.
Back at Valerie’s house, we all headed to the basement, which was more like a downstairs living room—so unlike the dingy cellars at home. Here, comfortable furniture faced a big TV screen, and music fell into the background of our conversations.
I looked around at the group that had gathered and realized that we all looked far less fine than we had when the night began. The girls had taken off their high shoes and were walking around barefoot or in white socks. Some of them had pulled their hair back into ponytails, and their faces showed makeup smudges. The boys had taken off their sport coats and ties, and their once-crisp shirts were webbed with wrinkles. I went into the bathroom and slipped off my panty hose and unclipped my earrings. My hair was a bit disheveled, and some specks of mascara dotted the area around my eyes. I wasn’t as smooth and glossy-looking as I had been when Josh rang the bell a few hours ago, but I still enjoyed the fancy reflection that stared back at me.
I rummaged through the pile of overnight bags in the corner of the room, and slipped the panty hose and earrings into my bag. Jill and Steve were also searching through the bags. Oscar came to join them. There seemed to be a lot more overnight bags than six girls would need.
I settled next to Josh on the couch. “The girls brought a lot of bags,” I said.
“It’s not just girls. We’re all sleeping over.”
I pulled away from him, surprised, and took a big breath to calm the mix of feelings settling over me. I remembered Rachel’s concern when I had mentioned the sleepover, and now I wondered if this was what she had suspected.
“It’s okay, isn’t it?” Josh asked. “This way we’re not out after curfew, and no one’s driving.”
“Do the parents know?”
“Yeah, there was some negotiating about it, but all the parents agreed eventually,” he said. “Valerie’s parents are upstairs, but they promised us our privacy.”
I turned this information over in my head, trying to remember how it had been presented to me. I was pretty sure that Josh had said, “The girls are sleeping at Valerie’s after the dance.”
I was caught in two places now. I knew I should call Rachel and have her pick me up so I would be following the rules I had agreed to. But I wanted this place, the big downstairs living room filled with boys and girls I hoped would be my friends.
I decided to worry about it all later. Tomorrow I would tell Rachel that I didn’t know the boys were staying over, and when I found out it was too late to call her. That was almost true. And all of the other parents had agreed, so maybe this was a common occurrence here. When I felt the light tickle of Josh’s fingers roaming through my hair, I knew that I was supposed to be right here with him.
Then Jill came toward us with a large clear bottle in her hands. Oscar followed with a similar-looking bottle. At a tall table in the corner, bottles were being deposited one by one as they were pulled out of the overnight bags. So, I thought, my lies would be growing. Still, I wanted to stay. My brother’s words came back to me. Try everything, do everything. This is the only chance you’ll get.
“Who’s tending?” asked Valerie. Oscar raised his hand as though he were in school, and sprinted to Valerie’s side. She was busy gathering things from a box and setting them on top of the table. A tall stack of plastic cups and a long spoon. Bottles of orange juice, cranberry juice, and Coke. From an unseen place around the corner, Greg appeared with a big bag of ice.
“The bar’s open,” announced Valerie. Everyone assembled around the table, calling out their requests to Oscar. Josh turned to me. “What do you think?” he asked. “One drink?”
I was feeling mightily tempted, and I did not want to be on the outside of this occasion. “Okay,” I said. “One drink.” Josh smiled, and I knew I had made the right choice.
He got up from the couch and joined the group around the table, where Oscar arranged the blue plastic cups in a row, dropping ice cubes into each. In the next few minutes I watched from the couch as Oscar poured from one of the large bottles, added some juice or Coke
, stirred the contents with the long spoon, and handed the cup to someone’s outstretched hands. When it was Josh’s turn he said, “Two vodkas and cranberry juice.” Oscar nodded and mixed the drinks.
Back beside me on the couch, Josh handed me the blue cup and I looked inside. The red drink, with ice cubes swimming along the top, looked sweet and appealing. All around us couples settled on couches and chairs and big cushions on the floor, holding blue cups and grinning at the contents. Greg slapped a deck of cards on the coffee table and said, “Who’s first?” I wasn’t sure what cards had to do with these drinks we were holding, so I waited to see what would happen next.
“I think we should let the bartender start,” said Valerie. “He’s been working hard.”
Oscar smiled and reached for a card, turning it over on the table so that everyone could see what he picked. “Four!” shouted Valerie. Oscar raised his cup to his lips and everyone around me counted aloud. “One, two, three, four!” During the counting, Oscar drank greedily, his Adam’s apple moving up and down with his swallows. At “four” he lowered his cup in a way that looked a bit reluctant.
There were a few cheers before Ashley reached forward and picked a card. She looked disappointed that she had drawn a two. “One, two!” everyone shouted, as Ashley took a short drink and brought the cup down. Next was Josh’s turn. He reached forward and showed everyone his card, a seven. He raised his glass and drank while we all counted to seven.
“Are you ready?” he asked me. I nodded and reached for the top card. When I flipped the card onto the table and saw the number ten, there were excited murmurs in the group. I knew now that I would be drinking for longer than anyone else had, and I felt a jumble of excitement and nervousness as I raised the cup to my lips. As everyone counted to ten, I took big swallows of the red liquid. It tasted like a mix of sweet and tart and something else I couldn’t name. Something pungent and sharp that stayed in my throat after the chanting around me reached ten and I took the last swallow. I drew a shaky breath. “Are you okay?” asked Josh. I smiled in response.
A World Away Page 24
