by Carrie Jones
“You are one weird boy.”
He shrugs and gets cocky. “That’s why you like me.”
“True.”
He zooms into my room and comes out with Gabriel. My breath hitches inside my throat. “What are you doing?”
“We’re bringing her,” he says and starts hauling his butt down the hall and zips down the stairs.
“No, we’re not. I’m not going to play Gabriel at the dance.”
“Maybe afterwards,” he says and then yells to my mom. “Good night, Mrs. Philbrick!”
“Good night, Tom!” she yells back.
But he’s already gone. That boy better watch out or I’ll use some duct tape on him.
The heavy rain turns to a much nicer drizzle by the time we get to school and it’s dropped about ten degrees, which means it’ll snow soon. Tom parks in the back lot, because the main lot is already filled. He grabs my hand and says, “Are you ready for this? Our first official-couple event?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Couple?”
“Aren’t we a couple?” He leans away from me, drops my hand, and actually looks hurt.
I shrug and tease him. “I don’t know. I don’t remember if you ever officially asked out a pinko commie girl such as myself.”
He growls and lunges at me. I scream and pretend to try to get away, but I’m not really trying. Actually, everything in my body is trying to get closer, like there’s some monstrous Tom magnet that pulls my body closer. He grabs my head in his hands and his eyes flash in the light of the parking lot. “You are a pinko commie subversive.”
“Yep,” I bite my lip. “That’s me.”
He kisses me then, a long leaning of his body against mine, a slow rush of lips touching my own and everything in my body simultaneously sighs and sings, sighs and sings and it is such a good, good, song.
Someone pounds on the hood and Shawn jerks open Tom’s door, shaking his head. He hauls Tom out and roughs up his hair. “Jesus, can’t you guys even wait until after the freaking dance?”
“Nope.” I hop out of my side of the car. Em smiles at me and twirls around in the drizzle.
“Nice outfit,” I say, pointing at her French-looking swirly skirt and boots.
She smiles and then pouts. “It’s getting wet.”
“Shawn,” Tom pushes him away, roughhousing him almost into the street light. “Your date is getting wet.”
Shawn mutters something I can’t hear. Tom gives him the finger and a smile and then follows Em and me. Because we’ve given up on them we are hightailing it toward the high school. She hooks her arm in mine and we bend our heads against the rain, which has now turned to part snow.
“You look happy,” she says.
Shocked, I stop walking and she pulls me along. “I am.”
“Good,” she gives my arm a little squeeze. The sound of bass-drum beats thud out of the school. The dance is in the cafeteria, like always, real high-budget stuff. They dim the lights, move the tables, and hire this deejay guy named Mike who works at the post office in Franklin and always hits on the teachers.
I’m about to tell Em about the song in my head, which is Cliff Eberhardt singing Bob Dylan’s I Want You, which is really funny when I think about it, because it’s so obvious where my mind is. I don’t get a chance to say it though because Bob comes thundering toward us from the back of the parking lot. His hair’s all over the place and his white pants—yes, white pants on a boy, past Labor Day!—are wet and muddy up the side.
Em’s grip on my arm gets tighter and Tom jumps up to my side and in front of me, not blocking me but ready to. I put my hand against his back.
Bob’s eyes wild over and his breath sounds like he’s got an asthma attack or something. “Belle . . . Belle . . .”
“What? You’re talking to me now? I thought I was a freak.” The words come out before I can stop them, that’s how angry I am.
Tom moves from me and yanks Bob’s arm so he’s not looking at me. Tom’s voice is total menace. “Don’t even think about it, buddy.”
“No. No. You don’t . . . It’s Dylan. Eddie Caron’s about to pummel Dylan,” Bob pants out.
I jerk away from Em. “Where?”
Bob points to the main parking lot, tears rush down his face. My head spins images of Dylan, dead or bleeding in some parking space somewhere.
“Bob, go in the school and get help. Em, call the police on your cell. Where’s your cell?” I ask her, bulleting out instructions like some sort of army sergeant.
“It’s in the car,” she says. She runs back and screams, “Shawn, I need the keys to your car!”
I don’t wait. I run across the parking area, the front of the school, and into the main parking lot. Tom thunders with me and then in front of me, but I keep up. Shawn catches up too.
“Don’t hurt him,” I murmur with every stride. “Don’t hurt him.”
Headlights flick by. The music in the school shifts to a slow song. The rain gets heavy again, but I don’t care. I catch up to Tom and Shawn.
“We can’t let him hurt him,” I yell.
“We’ll handle it, Belle,” Shawn says and stops running. Tom and I stop, too. Because there under the streetlight is not a broken Dylan with the massive Eddie hovering over him, beating him to a pulp. Instead, Dylan pounds away at Eddie Caron, and Eddie just stands there, taking it.
Dylan, my sweet Dylan, has fists that fly like bullets, bashing against Eddie again and again. And Eddie, yeah, he’s twice as big as Dylan, but he’s cowering, his hands cover his head, and he yells, “Stop. Stop!”
Dylan doesn’t stop. He starts kicking. His face is a twisted mask of hate. This is not my Dylan, is it? I don’t know. I don’t know.
I race over and grab his arm. “Dylan.”
He shrugs me off and Tom and Shawn come alive then, grab him, yank him away. Eddie looks up, meets me in the eyes and his first-grade self is the one that stares, a little wounded boy looking to be a knight, searching for a princess. Blood trickles out of his nose.
“Eddie?” my voice is a whisper. He shakes his head. Rain mixes with the blood on his hands, on his nose, lightens it, sends it down to the earth. “Eddie, why didn’t you fight back?”
“He said he never liked me,” he shakes his head again and turns away, shoulders slumped. Then he looks back again and says in an almost whisper, “I’m so sorry what I did to you, Belle. I’m so sorry.”
Then he turns away and shuffles off, one step, two. I don’t understand why he hurt me. Why he let Dylan hurt him. I don’t understand at all. Who is this boy? Who is Dylan? Who am I?
“Hey, Caron!” Tom yells, but I grab his tense arm. It’s wet beneath my hand but I know there’s warmth underneath there, warmth and strength and other good things.
“Let him go.” A look passes between us. Tom understands and reaches out. His hand strokes my cheek. I nuzzle into it, and it calms me a bit, but my heart still races.
“It’s stopped raining,” he says, voice husky deep and full. “It’s just snowing now.”
I lean up on tiptoe, he leans down and then Shawn yells, “Guys.”
We both turn away simultaneously to stare at Shawn. Dylan sits in a puddle in front of Shawn. Dylan’s legs splay out. His hands push against his head. I look at Tom. He nods at me and I go over, reach a hand out toward Dylan’s shoulder, tentatively.
“Dylan?”
His voice breaks behind his hands. “I couldn’t stop, Belle.”
He hiccups and gasps for breath. His hands move and wipe at his crying eyes.
“I know,” I say, squatting beside him. “It’s over now. He’s okay.”
“I couldn’t stop,” he repeats shaking his head, back and forth, too fast. “He hurt you.”
“I’m fine, Dylan.”
He kee
ps shaking his head. “No, you’re not. He hurt you and I hurt you, Belle. I hurt you.”
I grab his head to stop it moving. I will him to look at me. Our eyes meet and something passes between us. It’s not a golden light like that time in the bathtub, but it’s something.
My voice is strong guitar chords sounding across the parking lot and into his soul. “You did not hurt me, Dylan. I hurt you, everybody hurt you because we wanted you to be something you aren’t.”
“I hurt you.”
“You would have hurt me more if you kept pretending to be who I wanted you to be.”
His lips tremble and he grabs at my hands. Big fluffy snowflakes stick to his wet hair, his cheeks. They melt. “I wanted to be there for you, Belle.”
“I know,” I say, nodding. I lift my head up to the sky. A jet plane’s engines roar in the distance. It has left the Bangor Airport and zooms off to destinations unknown. I can’t see its blinking red lights because of the clouds, but I know they’re there. “It’s okay.”
The snowflakes fall down, rushing toward the earth, toward some destination they’ve never seen, but are just pulled toward by instinct. All of them are different, that’s what science teachers tell you about snowflakes, but they really look the same.
Dylan sniffles in. “I wanted to be there.”
I turn away from the white beauty dropping from the sky and stare into Dylan’s eyes. “You don’t need to be.”
I shake my head, pull away one of my hands, glance off at Tom and his strong chest, his tree-bark good hair.
“I don’t need you to be there for me, Dylan,” I say. “I just need you to be there for you.”
It might not make sense, but that’s how it is. I give his hand a little squeeze, kiss the top of his head, and stand up. The snow already covers the parking lot. My Snoopy shoes make prints in the whiteness, tracks that lead me away from Dylan and into the arms of Tom. Like a snowflake, I’m finally pulled toward the place I’m meant to be.
We decide to go to the dance anyways, because we’re already here. It’s pretty mellow inside. The dance-committee people have hooked up some strobe lights and a disco ball, which is so tacky that it’s good. The cafeteria tables have all been cleared away and the lighting is sort of blue. The old red-haired deejay guy, Mike, is pumping out tunes that definitely do not have old white-people beats, thank God. Mr. Raines, our principal, is going around telling people, “No simulated sex acts while dancing! No humping bumps. No bumping humps!”
Basically, it’s all pretty normal.
Andrew is slobbering all over this Brittney girl who is friends with Mimi. Crash is jumping up and down and crashing into people, spinning around, totally out of control and loving it.
We hang out for awhile. Shawn says he saw a cop hanging outside the gym. The cop doesn’t come inside, and it wasn’t Tom’s dad, thank God. Em and I dance while Tom and Shawn basically stand there and slightly sway, looking embarrassed the entire time. Maine boys are NOT good dancers. I should write a list about that some time. I look around for Dylan. He’s sort of hanging back, dancing with Kara and Anna and some Students for Social Justice people. Bob is there too. Bob and Dylan aren’t dancing together. They’re part of one big group and I feel bad for Bob for a second. I mean, they bought condoms together. They like each other. Shouldn’t they be dancing together? They’re probably afraid. I make myself stop staring and focus on Em and Tom.
Then after a little while Shawn yells, “This music sucks!”
“Yep,” says Tom, who winks at Shawn.
I pull on his arm. “Did you just wink at Shawn?”
He shakes his head and puts on this ridiculous “What? Who Me?” face.
Then he points to Andrew, who stops dry-humping Brittney long enough to bump on over to the deejay. I have a horrible feeling. It feels like when you are in an airplane and the wheels have just left the ground, but the plane lurches and it isn’t smooth. Instead, it’s a jarring start to what you know is going to be a rough flight.
“What is . . .” I start to say but then the deejay fades out the music super fast and speaks into the microphone.
“We’ve got a request for a Belle Philbrick tune and since I don’t have any of those currently in the mix, I guess we’re going to have to go live,” he says in a super-smooth radio-guy/porn-star voice. “Belle, can you come on up here?”
I do not move. Tom and Shawn start laughing and push me forward toward the stage. Em takes a picture. Andrew’s smiling and he pulls out Gabriel from behind the deejay desk. He hands her to me and then tosses Tom some keys, I guess the keys to his truck.
“Um,” I say. “I really don’t have anything to play.”
“C’mon, Bellie Button!” Shawn yells. “Play us something.”
I bite my lip and look out at all these faces, all these people I know. Kara and Anna give me a thumbs-up sign. Mimi glares. Em just keeps taking pictures like the goofy idiot she is. Tom smiles and I want to kill him. Shawn starts chanting, “Belle. Belle. Belle. Belle.”
Everyone starts chanting it, everyone except Mimi, who has stalked off to the girls’ room to find her broom.
“Um . . .” I say. I step up onto the little stage that’s in our cafeteria for dances. It’s just made out of plywood and painted black, nothing real high tech. “Um . . . You really want me to play something?”
“Yes!” Emily screams. She’s jumping up and down so fast, I double check to make sure there’s no trampoline under her.
Crash yells, “Rock the house down.”
He makes the silly ROCK ON sign with his fingers and bangs his head back and forth, mocking himself and it makes me laugh.
“Okay,” I say and get Gabriel into position and tune her a little bit, but she’s not so off tonight, not as off as me. I nod. I swallow. I try to get brave. I find Tom. He smiles at me and gives me a thumbs-up sign. “Okay.”
Tom points his finger down, like I’m supposed to look down, so I do. I’m good at following directions in times of stress, I guess. I mean, not that playing is stressful, but it is when you haven’t played for a week. It is when you’ve just seen your ex-boyfriend beat someone up. And even in ordinary circumstances I have stage fright. Still, I look down.
On the floor in front of me, written in block duct-tape letters, it says, YOU CAN DO IT, BELLE.
Tom is obviously insane, but he’s still lovable, ridiculously lovable.
It is silent for a minute and then I ask, “Does anybody have a tambourine?”
The freaky deejay guy has a tambourine. He pulls it out of a big, black L.L. Bean duffel bag, the kind you imagine would hide a bomb. He’s also got a massive water gun in there and a box of condoms, which is just too gross to think about because he’s around forty-eight years old or something. I shove my foot inside the tambourine so I can have a beat every time I press down.
Tom lets out a long, hard whistle. People start chanting my name again. Dylan is standing with Bob off to the side. They are sort of leaning on each other. Bob’s holding Dylan’s weight up. That’s something I could never do. I’m not big enough. As much as I don’t like Bob, I do like that he’s there for Dylan, that he’s what Dylan needs.
There are so many people here. There are my friends. There are my acquaintances who didn’t know what to do about me this week, I guess. So, they stared and they whispered and tried to make sense of things. Now, they’re chanting my name. Bizarre. And then there are the idiots like Mimi. I wonder if they’ll heckle me. I wonder if I’ll care.
“Play for us, Bellie!” Shawn yells.
“Do it, Belle!” Dylan’s melody voice hollers out. He’s smiling at me. Somehow despite everything that just happened, he’s smiling.
If Dylan can smile. I can play. It’s time. I can tell you one thing. I’m not playing a show tune. I’m not playing any Barbra Streisand. It’
s going to be something hard and good and alive.
“Okay. Okay, I’ll play one,” I say to the smile, to the cafeteria, to everyone.
In the dark dance-light of the cafeteria, my body straightens up on the stage, reaching, and my soul, it floats up by the ceiling, watching it all, wondering about this crazy girl with one foot ready to stomp out time on a tambourine, this girl ready to sing some part of herself to everybody, this girl who is me.
My mind is like the river outside Crash’s house, just this vast flowing thing that moves and sways with the music that flies out of Gabriel, but there’s no thoughts going on, no big secrets. It’s just me, my fingers, and music, and eventually words flow out of my mouth, like offerings to the river, floating under those gloomy Maine skies, trying to break up the gray with little bursts of light. Seconds pass. Moment pass.
I play and I play and my fingers remember all the positions, all the notes. My shoulder stretches above the weight of my guitar, but it’s good, it’s so good that for a little bit even my headache goes away. I strum and strum and stomp and sing until the song finally ends.
About the Author
Carrie Jones likes Skinny Cow fudgicles and potatoes. She does not know how to spell fudgicles. This has not prevented her from writing books. She lives with her cute family in Maine. She has a large, skinny white dog and a fat cat. Both like fudgicles. Only the cat likes potatoes. This may be a reason for the kitty’s weight problem (Shh . . . don’t tell). Carrie has always liked cowboy hats but has never owned one. This is a very wrong thing. She graduated from Vermont College’s MFA program for writing. She has edited newspapers and poetry journals and has won awards from the Maine Press Association and also been awarded the Martin Dibner Fellowship as well as a Maine Literary Award. She is still not sure why.
Tips on Writing Acknowledgements:
1. Make sure you thank people who are related to you and put up with you saying things like: I stink. Man, do I stink. What am I doing this for?
a. Thanks to Em and Doug, for always having faith in me when I couldn’t even figure out what the word “faith” meant. Your love means everything.
