“Mom. I was just over there not one hour ago. Trust me, she doesn’t want to come with us. Steve has rented his own car. He’ll probably be here any second now.”
~~~~~~~
On the ride over, the mood in the back of the limo reverberated into the front. None of them knew anything about proms, or even particularly cared about going. But here they were, all dressed up, sharp as penguins and spring flowers. The reservation about admitting they wanted to go contributed no small pleasure to the event. When they pulled into the high school parking lot, Emily wanted their attention.
“Everybody vote for Amanda and Steve for King and Queen, okay?” Looks of incomprehension greeted this request. What did she mean by it? A practical joke? “I mean it, guys. She worked really hard on this thing. We owe her that much. Right, Mel?”
“Yeah. I suppose so,” she replied with unimpressive conviction. Perhaps she wanted to be Prom Queen herself. Emily noticed.
“Okay, new plan. Everybody vote for Melanie. Whatever. But definitely do not vote for me. I don’t want to give Amanda another excuse to be pissed at me.”
“No, you’re right, Em,” Melanie finally replied. “It really is Amanda’s show. Let’s do that for her.” The boys grunted. They clearly didn’t care about it one way or the other. How could they, being boys? But if Emily wanted it to go to Amanda, they’d go along. Wendy agreed, too, but she looked like she’d just swallowed a frog when she said it.
The gym shimmered in a thousand reflected lights, tables covered almost half the floor, a stage sat opposite against the far wall, leaving plenty of room for dancing. They arrived to find most of the tables already occupied. One off in the corner appealed to the Wendy.
“But it’s so far away,” Melanie moaned.
The others acquiesced. What did they care where they sat?
“It’ll be okay, Mel,” said Emily. “I don’t think Wendy’s ready to be in the spotlight yet.”
“At least we’ll be together, I suppose,” she conceded.
Wendy looked over at Melanie, her own face contorted as she argued with her demons, who no doubt urged her not to draw attention to herself.
“Oh, fine. Let’s sit over there,” she said reluctantly, gesturing to a table by the dance floor.
Melanie beamed, the boys shrugged, Emily smiled and kissed her on the forehead.
“Don’t you girls look lovely, “said Mrs. Abernathy, who was a chaperone for the evening. “Did you plan out the color scheme, all in blue?”
“Yeah, kinda,” replied Wendy.
“My dress is sort of a hand-me-down from my cousin,” said Melanie, in a sheepish voice. “But these guys decided to match it.”
“Well, however it happened, you all look lovely. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of you is voted Queen.”
Emily stood abruptly and pulled Mrs. Abernathy aside.
“You have to make sure that doesn’t happen… please.”
“What? Why not? Anyone of you would deserve it.”
“No. None of us want it. Amanda did so much work organizing this. She deserves it. Not us.”
“I thought you and Amanda didn’t get along.”
“We don’t. But being Queen would be a big deal for her. And I don’t want to give her another reason to hate me.”
“Well, I don’t know what I can do about that. It is an election after all. I can’t rig the results.”
“I know, Mrs. A. But can’t we decline in advance without, you know, anyone having to know? I think this is kinda important.”
Mrs. Abernathy said she’d discuss it with the principal and walked off puzzled.
~~~~~~~
This conversation did not escape Amanda’s notice from a couple of tables away. She wondered what Emily was up to. That girl was somehow wrong, she just didn’t know exactly how.
“Hey, Amanda. You in there?” said Steve.
He’d been her steady boyfriend all year, quarterback on the football team and pitcher on the baseball team, tall and handsome, some money in the family. She had the better boyfriend. Why wasn’t that enough? Why did it irritate her so much that Danny liked Emily? If she’d been able to pose these questions to herself in a real way, perhaps her resentments would fade away like morning fog. But as it was they merely hovered in the background, never quite achieving full consciousness.
“Wha… oh, yeah.”
“You were staring again? Is it Melanie? Why don’t we go over there and say hello?” he proposed innocently.
He didn’t really know the girls over there, but he liked Danny well enough, and Billy too. Wayne was a bit of a question mark for him. How was he not on one of the sports teams?
“No, I don’t think so,” she began
But he was already leading her over there by the hand before she could resist. It was too late now. No way to stop without making a scene.
“Hi, Mel. You look really nice,” she said when she finally arrived at their table.
“Amanda, you look fabulous,” Melanie giggled out.
“And you’re all so... coordinated,” she said in a saccharine tone.
She wanted to be cruel, and a few nasty jokes were percolating in her brain, but she caught herself to avoid hurting her friend.
“You look good, too, Emily,” she said grudgingly. “I’m glad the bruises are gone.”
She desperately wanted to ask how she got them, but somehow couldn’t bring herself to that trespass.
“Thanks, Amanda,” said Emily. “You look fantastic.”
“What were you guys saying to Mrs. A.?” she asked with as innocent a tone as she could muster.
“Just that we thought you should be Queen,” Emily said.
“We’re all voting for you,” Melanie blurted out. “It was Emily’s idea!”
“Oh… thanks. I guess.”
Amanda didn’t quite know what to do with this news. She really wanted the recognition for all her hard work. She deserved to be elected Queen. But why did Emily care? What was she up to? She walked off with Steve, shaking her head.
The dinner was delightfully uninteresting. Nothing about the food to distract anyone from the pleasures of seeing and being seen. Then there were the toasts. At first they were about teams and organizations. Amanda started it off with a toast to the cheerleaders. Others followed with toasts to the football team, the baseball team, the glee club, the A/V club, the camera club, the school paper. Some kids toasted favorite teachers, eventually others toasted fellow students. Steve toasted Wayne and Melanie “for finally finding each other.”
Then Marty stood up to make a toast. “To Emily,” he began. “For showing me something real.”
He seemed a bit flustered. Perhaps his toast didn’t come out right. Amanda wasn’t sure what he meant? Was he insinuating that they’d had some sort of sexual encounter? She could see Danny had taken it that way and was ready to leap out of his seat, until Emily touched his wrist and settled him down. A dull murmur made its way around the room.
A diminutive young man Amanda barely knew existed before this evening toasted her next: “To Emily, for being so cool.”
More toasts of Emily followed, each more fatuous and infatuated than the last, until they became open, ridiculous declarations of love. Amanda grew more annoyed with each one. Was this part of some scheme to humiliate her? Could Mel really be part of it?
Emily stood up to offer a toast of her own. Since all eyes were already upon her it only took a second for the room to go silent.
“As much as I appreciate the sentiments, and the touch of mockery behind them, I think it’s time to offer a real toast. To Amanda and the Prom Committee, for all their hard work in putting this wonderful evening together.”
The room hung silent for another moment as everyone digested the seriousness of her tone.
Melanie stood up next: “To Amanda, my oldest and dearest friend. Thank you.”
Wayne saw his moment and bellowed “Hear, Hear.”
Steve toasted her next, singing he
r praises, extolling her virtues, closing with “…and it doesn’t hurt that she’s smokin’ hot!”
Amanda basked in the glow of attention as a few more toasts rolled in. But at the core of her pleasure a nagging doubt beavered away, gnawing at the heart of it. If Emily hadn’t put a stop to it, would they still be toasting her? Did she owe any of this to her? What an annoying thought.
~~~~~~~
Once the toasting died off, and the tables were cleared, the band rumbled to life. The first few songs were fast numbers, and the first kids on the floor liked the flailing movements the music seemed to invite. None of them would probably still be on the dance floor once it got crowded. But for now they were happy to be throwing themselves around to the beat.
By the time the rest of the kids made it onto the floor it had become considerably warmer and more crowded. Even though the floor could accommodate everyone with room to spare, for some reason the music invited them to cluster together. They became a single mass moving together, perhaps yearning to become a single consciousness. But this would always be denied to them.
Emily preferred the slow dances. The first few were with Danny, just leaning on his shoulder. She danced with Billy, but he was too restless for her taste, not able to relax with the music. Dancing with Wayne was really just a matter of holding on to something much larger than herself. She found a deep comfort in it.
Other boys wanted to dance with her, boys she didn’t know, or barely knew. She felt the exhilaration of being at the center of so much attention. Perhaps this is what Amanda feels all the time. She saw how it could be addictive, how she might fight to protect it from an interloper… like herself. For their part, the boys just wanted a chance to be near her, to touch her, innocently, but also with curiosity. What was she like? She seemed so hard. It was surprising to discover this, since the bruises led them to think she would be soft.
When Marty asked her to dance, and she seemed willing, Danny became overheated. He wanted to step in, shoo him away, but Wendy pulled him back into his seat. Undoubtedly the worst thing from Danny’s point of view, it was a slow dance. He would be touching her.
She placed her hands on his shoulders and let him place his on her waist. He shouldn’t have been surprised to find how hard her body was, how strong. He had, after all, sparred with her once. But the concrete reality was so much more striking than any expectation could ever prepare him for.
“That toast came out wrong. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful. But you did show me something real that day.”
She looked him in the eye with a sudden intensity he wasn’t prepared for.
“What about that day at the dojo. What’s your excuse for that?”
“I don’t have one. Somehow we just thought it would be fun to mess with Danny and Billy.”
“Did Amanda put you up to it?” she asked with particular emphasis.
He hesitated before responding, perhaps to gather thoughts scattered by her glare.
“No. Well, not exactly. She’s always badmouthing you guys. But she didn’t ask us to do anything in particular. Though Jeff certainly thought it would impress her if we did something like that.”
“And did it?”
“What… you think we bragged to her about getting our asses kicked by you? I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t impress her.”
“I wish I knew how I made her into such an enemy in the first place,” she mused.
“Well, whatever it was, stealing her best friend didn’t improve things.”
“Hey. I didn’t do that on purpose. Mel just likes Wayne. What am I supposed to do?”
“Mel also likes you. When she’s around you it’s like she glows. Don’t think Amanda hasn’t noticed.”
Marty turned out not to be as stupid as he looked. At least he notices things about someone other than himself. She pushed off his chest and walked back to the table. Enough dancing for now.
Before she could get off the floor she had to get past Teddy Wilchuk. Ordinarily she wouldn’t even notice him, a little guy, member of the A/V club, perhaps an inch or two shorter than her. Somehow he reminded her of Rhee Sung, the little man.
“May I have this dance,” he asked with an excessive formality born of nervousness.
She sighed, and then hoped he hadn’t noticed. Her hand touched his and she let him lead her back to the middle of the floor. A slow song, he seemed not to know what to do. She pulled his hands onto her waist and rested hers on his shoulders. He moved stiffly to the beat of the music as he looked up into her face. She smiled.
“Why haven’t we ever spoken before, Teddy?”
“Oh, you know. Guys like me don’t get to talk to girls like you.”
“Girls like me?”
The simplicity of her question caught him off guard. What kind of girl was she after all? She smiled again.
“You know, before my father died last year, I never had any friends,” she said. “Afterwards, when I began to feel how important they are, anyone could have been my friend.”
He was sorry he’d opened his mouth so stupidly. This talking-to-girls stuff was harder than he imagined.
“I wish I’d understood that then,” he said with a heavy sigh. “We all knew who you were. I don’t know why I didn’t talk to you.”
“I must have been exuding something pretty forbidding in those days.”
“Well, I feel like an idiot now,” he said with a laugh. He continued after a moment. “You know, a bunch of us found videos of you on the web, of you fighting in a tournament.” She sighed. “At first we were kinda freaked out by them. But it became a kind of thing in the A/V club to look for them.”
“You guys should get a better hobby,” she said with growing impatience.
“We didn’t find any new ones until today,” he continued, oblivious to her rising irritation with this subject. “But this one’s really weird.”
Emily pushed him away, and shook him by the shoulders.
“What are you talking about?”
What new video could they have found? She hoped it wasn’t the one Michael showed her. What else could it be?
“Show me,” she demanded.
He took out his phone as they stood in the middle of the floor and called it up. The title read “Do you know this bitch?” She recognized what it was from the first few frames: that night at Bolar Beach. One of the biker women had a camera. The entire video lasted only thirty five seconds. That’s how long it took to wreak so much havoc.
“That’s you, isn’t it?” he asked. “The other guys say it isn’t, but I’m pretty sure it is.”
He looked up from the phone to see her walking back to the tables. She found the video on Billy’s phone and sent it to Ethan, then walked out to the limo in the parking lot.
“Oh My God, Em. That’s you. When did this happen?”
“A few weeks back. It was a nasty scene.”
“That last image of you is pretty striking,” said Connie. “It looks like these guys want payback.”
“That’s what they say now,” snorted Ethan. “But if the girl in that last image shows up on their doorstep, they may regret it.”
“Well, I’m gonna have to pay them a visit soon enough. But not tonight. That video is bound to attract a lot of unwanted attention.”
Back inside the boys sat slack-jawed around the table, ready for something new. Wendy and Melanie wanted one last dance. Emily came up behind Danny and pulled his head back. He looked up into her nostrils as Mrs. Abernathy stepped to the microphone.
“May I have your attention, everyone. I am pleased to announce this year’s Queen and King of the Prom: Amanda Terwilliger and Stephen Bristow.”
Emily kissed him as the room rose to celebrate the royal couple. Amanda beamed and Steve waved to the crowd. The band launched into a slow ballad and the two of them led the crowd back onto the dance floor. Her friends got up to join everyone as Emily pulled Wayne aside.
“Don’t let Mel see the video on Billy’s phone tonight, oka
y?” He nodded. “I just don’t want it to spoil her evening.”
She repeated this request to Billy and Wendy when she got the chance.
The prom wound down quickly after the last dance. Scattered pockets of kids formed and dispersed in the parking lot as they worked out what to do next. Ethan drove his charges to an exclusive club in Charlottesville popular with prom refugees. They danced and shrieked and giggled for another few hours, until Ethan and Connie finally took them all home exhausted.
“Thanks, guys, for keeping an eye on us tonight. Ethan, can you track down an address from that video?”
“We’ll have something for you in the next couple of days, don’t worry,” he said with a smile.
Connie stepped out of the limo and pulled her into a hug.
“I didn’t go to my prom. Seeing you tonight, I wish I had.”
Emily gave her an extra squeeze, said her goodnights and went upstairs to bed.
-back to top-
Chapter 30
Swordplay
Sensei knelt opposite her on the floor of the dojo, saying nothing, eyes closed, only breathing. He had already taught her his most important lesson, to find her qi by listening to her breath. It had been some weeks since he began to suspect she had learned more than he had to teach, much more. She showed him the video from Kamchatka, the fight with Ba We, when she came in this morning. She wanted him to know everything, but also to see her actually fighting for her life. The images shook him, and the prospect of her being beaten to death, which they threatened so vividly, made him almost nauseous. He was appalled to see her being struck so hard, and deeply regretted ever teasing her about being able to take a punch.
When she turned Ba We, when he opened his eyes to her, Sensei knew exactly what had happened. He knew from the first day in the dojo, so many years ago, that this girl’s qi, her life force, was open to others in a way he had never seen. Now she seemed to be reaching out to him, inviting him to meet her somewhere. But where? Could he really follow? He felt his own breath move in and out, pressing against his ribs, beating through his heart. He felt the room resound with the sound. It was not restful at first, not peaceful. He was nervous in a surprising new way, an unexpected sensation for him.
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