He Loves Me Not: A Cooney Classic Romance

by Caroline B. Cooney

  I considered myself about as liberated as any girl at J.F.K. High School, I earned a living. I mixed with some fairly rough crowds to do it. I handled school and a career. I got to and from places on my own, without help. I had my future planned.

  And I couldn’t—I couldn’t—pick up a silly telephone to chat with a boy I liked.

  Every night I’d stare at that rotten phone and move closer to it (as if it were a trap) and think: eight-six-nine, six-one-seven-eight. And every night I did not dial.

  In each academic class we got our preliminary final grades. Don’t you love Guidance Department jargon? “Preliminary final.” Good grief.

  Anyway, I had all A’s except a B-plus in Latin. I stared at my little cards and wondered why I was doing any of this. Thursday night we had a dinner dance for the Elks’ Club. Friday night, a wedding. Saturday, school dance.

  We got new costumes which I detested: midnight blue satin pants and vest over a white satin blouse. The sleeves of the blouse were tight with squares of lace set in. There was something about the see-through quality of the sleeves that made them sexy, although it’s difficult to think of one’s arms as being sexy. Maybe it was just the whole idea of something half-hidden, half-revealed.

  I fixed my hair in its most complex style, which took me half of Saturday afternoon, but after all I had nothing else to do. For once I didn’t have any homework hanging over my head. I stared at myself in the mirror while I waited for Ralph to come pick me up.

  “You’re beautiful,” said Daddy. He always says that, in just the same tone of voice. It has about as much meaning as Ralph’s kisses. “How come you’re not happy?” he said softly.

  It bothered me terribly that he could tell. I had thought I was pretty good at hiding it. “It shows?” I said lightly. “I’d better cheer up before Ralph gets here. He doesn’t like sad sacks on stage with him. Upsets the customers.”

  “Open up, honey,” said my father. “What’s wrong, anyway?”

  Do you know I didn’t try to figure how to explain what was wrong? I began planning sentences that would hide what was wrong.

  How am I going to solve anything that way? I thought, and my eyes blurred over with tears. “I don’t know, Daddy. I guess I’m just lonely.”

  Daddy sat down on the bed next to me and hugged me fiercely.

  We didn’t say anything after that.

  But just pressing up against each other was comforting. Daddy knew and he understood, and I felt better for confessing. It didn’t change anything. It just made the loneliness easier.

  “This Ted ever call you back?” he said softly.

  “Ted?” I repeated, as if it were a foreign word.

  “You telephoned him, what, ten times? And floated upstairs after you finally got together with him.”

  “I did not float.”

  “Alison, there’s nothing wrong with liking a boy. In fact, I was getting nervous because you didn’t seem to like any.”

  “Oh, Daddy, I like them all. But none of them like me back. Especially Ted. I don’t even know Ted, I…” I broke off then. Confession was fine, but even to my father—maybe especially to my father—I couldn’t say how I felt about Ted.

  “You had that date with him,” coaxed Daddy.

  “It wasn’t a date. It was just an interview.”

  “Oh,” said my father. He didn’t seem to be able to think of anything more to say. I knew the feeling.

  And then Ralph was outside leaning on his horn.

  “’Bye, pet,” said my father. “Have fun anyway.” He grinned at me hopefully.

  “I will,” I promised him. And the odd thing was, I knew I would. I could feel my depression lifting, feel my musical engine gearing up, getting ready to give these customers the best music they could possibly buy.

  I slid into the van next to Ralph. He gave me a very peculiar look, as if I were not the person he had expected. Then he smiled slightly and turned his attention to his driving.

  “What?” I demanded.

  “What, what?”

  “What did you look at me like that for?”

  Ralph smiled again. It was not his usual evil grin, but a nice funny smile. I had never seen him with that expression. I wondered if he planned to fire me and get another, older, more seasoned musician.

  “Someday, Alison,” he said softly. “Someday.”

  “Someday, what?” I really was cross with Ralph. He’d punctured my revving up and obviously he was going to be mysterious and not tell me what his funny look had meant. Men.

  “Someday,” explained Ralph, turning left, “you’re going to knock ’em dead, lady.”

  I made a face. “Someday!” I huffed at him. “Who wants someday? How about tonight? That’s when I want to knock ’em dead. Right now.”

  He grinned at me, evilly this time. I felt much more at ease with the old, mean Ralph and snarled back at him. “You have a chance,” he told me. “We’re going to play for your peers tonight.”

  “Honestly, Ralph, getting answers out of you is like pulling my feet out of day-old cement. What are you talking about?”

  “Western High is having a dance tonight. Remember? That’s why we boned up on heavy rock last week.”

  I remembered. I had thought Rob’s junior high band room would collapse under the vibrations. “Did you say Western High?” I asked Ralph.

  “Yup.”

  Ted’s school.

  Nobody goes to a dance without a date. If Ted were there, he’d be there with his girlfriend.

  I didn’t have enough problems. Tonight I’d have to watch the one boy I’d ever really been fascinated by dance with somebody else. And I’d have to supply the music to be danced by.

  13

  THERE WAS SOME GOOD news and some bad news about the dance at Western High.

  The good news was that Ted was there without a date. When I saw him I thought my heart would flip out of my chest. All I could think of was: How am I going to keep Ralph’s beat when my heart is beating away so loudly at a different rhythm?

  He was better-looking than I had remembered. I had remembered him as tall and strong and warm and comforting. On top of that he was just plain attractive. His face crinkled into a grin when he saw me and he blew me a kiss.

  I was playing at the time. I couldn’t lift my fingers from the keyboard to blow one back, and I couldn’t purse up and kiss the air because Ralph was watching me very suspiciously. I didn’t want Ralph to know what I was feeling about Ted. Ralph is very big on teasing me. I could just imagine how he’d rejoice at the whole new world opening up: He’d be teasing me night and day about dear old Ted.

  So I just grinned back at Ted.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news was that he had a camera, which he treated as lovingly as any mere girl could ever hope to be treated. Between shots Ted actually caressed it. “Yearbook photographer,” he explained to me, grinning. He hopped around, getting good shots of dancers swirling past the bandstand. It was not difficult to imagine Ted dancing with his camera in preference to me.

  You would think a boy alone at a dance would be lonely, but it was depressingly clear that Ted found a camera perfect company. I am very fond of the piano keyboard, but I don’t hug it. I felt like being a Muppet. I’d make the scrunched-up sort of face Kermit the Frog makes when everything turns out wrong.

  Behind the bandstand an enormous backdrop was painted in gaudy rainbow patches—fluorescent, sprinkled with glitter, glistening with bits of mirror. Our faces and clothing changed colors with the lights. Ralph was letting it all hang out and Rob hunched over his drums as if he were beating out his autobiography, and it was pretty seamy reading. Scores of couples rotated past us, completely caught up in the music.

  Everybody but me, as a matter of fact, was caught up in the mood, energized by the rock beat. I was trying to watch old Ted.

  “Ted,” observed Lizzie, “is taking an awful lot of photographs of our keyboard player, Ralph. And she doesn’t even go
to this high school. What kind of yearbook pictures are these, anyway?”

  I ignored Lizzie’s teasing. Was Ted really taking photographs of me? I couldn’t tell. There were so many lights going on and off, so many splashes of color and noise, that I couldn’t pick Ted’s out.

  He isn’t taking any of me, I told myself. That would be dumb. He’s got so many of me already his article can’t possibly use more. Lizzie is just trying to get a rise out of me.

  “How many times,” said Ralph between phrases of melody, “do I have to tell you to keep your social life separated from your professional life?”

  “Twice,” I said with dignity. “That’s the total number of times you have said that and each time I have paid close attention. Consider the subject closed.”

  Ralph and Lizzie snickered like seventh-graders. I got even with them by modulating between verses, which startled them completely and made it much harder for them to get through the piece. I knew it was war when Ralph picked the next number, a piece I’d specifically said in rehearsal I couldn’t play well enough to do at the dance. I glared at Ralph and I was just getting into the glare—just really getting myself organized for a good, long glare—when Ted slipped through a gap in the canvas and sat on the floor next to my piano bench.

  “Hi!” he yelled over our racket.

  My glare slid around and fell off. “Oh,” I said. “Hi, Ted.”

  He had to come up during a piece I couldn’t play even in the best of circumstances. I felt Lizzie and Ralph watching me. If I lost the beat by talking with Ted I would never hear the end of it.

  There wasn’t even time to tell Ted we’d talk after this number. Ralph had us in it, throbbing and moving, and I had to blot Ted out of my mind.

  At least, that was my theory. But when you have a mind like mine and a boy like Ted, it isn’t so easy. Somehow the rock beat disintegrated into eight-six-nine, six-one-seven-eight.

  When the piece was finally over and we broke for fifteen seconds to let the couples applaud, I looked at Ted. He was staring either at an overused extension cord plug or at my ankle. I told myself it was my sexy ankle that was attracting him, but instantly, as if Ralph had told him to do it, Ted unplugged one of the cords and took it off somewhere behind the painted screen to plug into a different—presumably safer—outlet.

  I looked back down at my ankles. They were beautiful, if I do say so myself. (No one else ever has, I must admit.)

  We launched into a slow number and kids began dancing in that slouching, rotating way that isn’t dancing at all, just vertical hugging. The lucky girls were with taller guys and could sort of lean on their chests and let themselves be circled by long, strong arms for the dance. Ted, I thought, is taller than I am. We could dance like that.

  My fingers played along by memory. I didn’t seem to be guiding them at all. I couldn’t decide if I had really hit my professional stride or if I was about to make a horrible series of mistakes by not paying enough attention.

  Ted came back. I guessed I’d be making mistakes by not paying enough attention.

  “No more pictures to take?” I said during a two-beat rest.

  “Nope.”

  Ted began tapping out the rhythm on my left ankle.

  I thought, if I even live through this piece, let alone play it right, that’s all I ask.

  Ralph was giving me some very fishy stares. I stared fishily right back. I really needed my foot back for the soft pedal but I decided in a dance room as big as this a soft pedal would be silly. Better by far to let Ted tickle my ankle.

  “Who are you with?” I said, hoping to be absolutely sure about Ted’s social commitments. “Doesn’t she want to dance?”

  “Not with anybody,” said Ted. “I always mean to invite someone, but I never get around to it. Probably by the time I picked up the phone, the girl would be so insulted by being called so late she’d turn me down anyway.”

  Ted began a long involved story about how his newspaper work kept him so busy he couldn’t manage a social life as well. I could have told him not to bother with the details; I knew them all, but I liked the sound of his voice.

  I began fantasizing about dancing with Ted, since he was alone. Of course, it was a ridiculous fantasy, because without me there wouldn’t be any music to dance to. Still, I had us both out there on the floor, in each other’s arms, doing a slow number, and Ted’s fingers tapping out a rhythm on a more interesting place than an ankle. Ted and I would make this beautiful wonderful couple, and we’d be so nice together that other couples would stop dancing and watch us, the way they do in movies. (I’ve certainly never seen anybody do that in real life.)

  Then I had this horrible thought.

  I no longer knew how to dance.

  Oh, God, I prayed quickly. If Ted asks me to dance, teach me how in a hurry!

  But he would not ask me, I really knew that. He knew I was working. He’d be disgusted if I asked him to go dancing when he was on his way to cover an important fire or something, so it would not occur to him to ask me when I was playing with the combo.

  Though personally, I was quite sure that a dance with Ted would be infinitely preferable either to a fire or a music program.

  Ralph leaned over the keyboard. “Get out of here, Ted old man. We’re working.”

  My stomach turned into knots. Ralph was at his meanest and oldest: He was going to treat Ted like an obnoxious little boy and Ted would hold me responsible. He’d never come near me again all evening.

  “Hi, Ralph,” said Ted. “I’m the one who went and got your electric keyboard at that wedding, remember?”

  Ralph grunted and gestured for Ted to leave. Gestured rudely.

  Ted merely smiled. “I’m not bothering her, Ralph. Just sitting here.”

  Ralph gave Ted his meanest, most vicious smile and Ted gave Ralph his sweetest, most friendly smile. After another minute Ralph sighed and shrugged and went off to play his sax solo.

  “Ted,” I said, “I am truly impressed. Grown men quail before Ralph. Junior League presidents become incoherent. Politicians tremble. But you just sit there and smile.”

  “Some of us have it,” said Ted expansively, “and some of us don’t.”

  I didn’t think I’d get through the next piece for laughing. I was so tickled with Ted. Imagine being able to stand up to Ralph! Ted sort of sprawled on the second and third levels of the bandstand as if he were at the beach, sunning himself, and watched me play. I was very self-conscious and yet I was enjoying every second of it. I was very, very sure Ted wasn’t interested in the music I was providing. He was interested in me.

  In our next little break between numbers, Lizzie said, “At least the kid is making Alison smile, Ralph. She’s worth any two klieg lights up here, beaming away at Ted.”

  “Yecch,” said Ralph.

  I blushed painfully. Was it that obvious that I was so delighted to have Ted up there? I looked over at Ted again. He winked at me and said to Ralph, “Can you do a number without keyboard, Ralph? Alison and I want to dance.”

  Ralph almost choked. He actually sputtered into his mouthpiece and had to grab at Lizzie’s bass for support.

  “I think he means no,” said Lizzie helpfully.

  My ankles began jiggling of their own accord, nervous and excited. Ted had actually asked me to dance! Or at least, he had asked Ralph for permission to let me dance with him. How old-fashioned, I thought. As if Ralph is my father and Ted has to ask for my hand.

  During our next number I tried to watch the dance floor as well as watch Ted and pay attention to the notes. I needed to get clues on dancing. Unfortunately every girl seemed to have her own style. I was much too clunky on my feet to develop instant style.

  What if we actually dance, I thought, and I trip on Ted’s feet and we fall again? I’ve made him fall once and I’ve given him a bashed head once.

  I really would have to quit the combo if that happened. Lizzie and Ralph would tease me unmercifully, and besides, I would be locked up in my
bedroom not forgiving myself for being so stupid and uncoordinated.

  Since speech was impossible during a rock number, Ted passed me a note, holding it so I could read it. Instead of May I have the next dance? Ted had scribbled, May I have the next band break?

  I nodded.

  He likes me, I thought. In spite of everything he really likes me. All the girls here and it’s my company he wants.

  Of course, all the other girls here had dates. I was actually the only girl his age who was unattached, so if I wanted to be cynical about it, what choice did Ted have except me?

  Ted went back to work on my ankles, but he got tired of them quickly and began edging up. Ralph and his sax moseyed over to my side of the piano this time and Ralph stepped on Ted’s hand. Not very gently, either. Ralph and I kept playing. Ted laughed. I said, “Ralph, cut it out.”

  “Ted,” said Ralph warningly.

  “I know, I know. Leave, or you’ll assign me to detention class.” Ted vanished behind the painted screen.

  It was just as well. Ralph was so mad I think he would have broken Ted’s fingers in a minute. “Alison,” he said, “do you have any idea how much these kids had to raise to pay us?”

  “I know exactly how much they paid,” I said. “They’re paying part of it to me, remember.”

  “I remember perfectly,” said Ralph sharply. “Do you?”

  He was really and truly angry with me. My daydreams about Ted faded. I was here as part of a combo, that was true, and I had no right to play personal games and risk ruining a professional engagement. “I’m sorry, Ralph,” I mumbled. My cheeks hurt with a blush so fierce I felt burned.

  “I know you like him,” said Ralph quietly. “But not on my time.”

  Ralph had never been so fatherly. I hated it. My own father would not have bawled me out like that. I felt so public. Five hundred dancing kids were watching us. Of course, they couldn’t hear, didn’t know what Ralph was saying—probably thought he was announcing the next number to me—but I felt spied on. Exposed.