Last Dance (22 page)

Gary beckoned to Anne. She moved closer. Gary sat up and patted his knee. Anne perched way out on the very tip of the knee. Gary, grinning, tugged her back against his chest. Then he brushed away her golden hair so he could whisper in her ear.

Con watched without expression.

Beth Rose kept dancing.

Anne sat on Gary’s knees as if she were sitting on a counter somewhere. She made a fist, rested her chin on that, and rested her elbow on her own knee.

Gary made a big production out of whispering the answer in Anne’s ear. Very loudly he whispered, “I made it up.”

Pammy was outraged. She almost broke her pencil in half.

“See, I’ve always wanted to be a con artist,” Gary explained. “I love to say outrageous things and see if anybody believes me. At the restaurant when I wait tables people from out of town ask me if I’m in school. I say, Yes, I’m putting myself through medical school, or Yes, I’m an apprentice in music box repair.” Gary smiled happily. “They always believe me,” he said proudly.

“What’s so funny about that?” Pammy demanded. “After going to all this effort to fill-out our questionnaires, everybody is snagged on number seventeen because number seventeen is a big dumb fib.”

“Yeah, but it’s a big dumb fib that worked,” Gary said, grinning.

Pammy glared at him.

“Aw come on, Pammy,” Gary said. “You’ve been happy all night tracking down the skier. Admit it. You had a terrific time and all because of me.”

Pammy snorted and walked away.

Anne’s large eyes were fixed on Con’s. Her head was tilted in their old trick: they used to match tilts, so that their eyes were always even. Con hadn’t thought of that in months. By the time he remembered their habit, Anne had given up and looked away.

Con loved how her fist was tucked under her chin. How her smooth gold hair fell to cover her face. But it was Gary’s lap she sat on, and Gary didn’t appreciate what he had. Gary actually preferred boring old Beth Rose.

Anne, hidden by her hair, struggled with tears. Why was she on Gary’s lap? Oh, Gary was nice enough, but it was Con she wanted.

And Con, Anne thought, who doesn’t really exist. I made him up. I constructed the Con I want as if he were made out of Legos.

She made herself think of Emily instead, of how she and Emily would talk into the night, and share the things Anne had nobody to share with, and talk of the things that hurt Emily too much to say to anybody else.

The band broke off playing and the DJ’s voice rang out. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner! We can finally give away this beautiful VCR!”

Pammy jumped up onto the little stage, kissed the DJ, patted the VCR on its little display table, and grabbed the mike herself. “I just want to say thank you to everybody here. I just loved talking to all of you and I learned such interesting things tonight! Don’t you just love all that we’ve learned about each other tonight? Aren’t we just having the best time?”

Luckily the DJ took the mike back.

Anne slid off Gary’s knee and on to the far end of the bench. “Well, pooh,” she said. “None of us gets the VCR.”

Emily giggled. “Strong language there, lady.
Well, pooh?
Where have you been that you picked up such questionable language? I am shocked.”

Beth Rose was tired of spying on Anne when she had a romance of her own to attend to. She bowed in front of Gary, extending her hand graciously. “I would like to dance with my favorite con artist. Tell me, did you prefer the slopes in Switzerland or Tibet?” Gary leaped up, and danced her backward until they were right in front of the band, getting their ears blasted out. Speech was impossible, but the dancing was perfect. They went wild, writhing and stomping and twisting to the music, hardly looking at each other, but aware of nobody else.

The L word, Kip Elliott thought.

Aaaah, they’re collecting the wrong questionnaire. Nobody cares who was born on an ocean liner, and nobody cares who won’t eat chocolate. The thing the girls want to know is: who said the L word?

Mike said it to me, Kip thought. She was staggered. She could hardly look at him, but she need not have worried. Mike could hardly look at her, either. They were definitely the twitchiest couple in the ballroom.

Two boys, Kip thought. One of them I know that I am going to be in love with shortly, if I’m not already, and in the kitchen, he as good as told me he’s in love with me! The other one I used to love, and I don’t tonight, but I could fall back in love with him pretty quickly.

Is it possible to love two boys at once?

Is it possible for me, inside me, Kip thought, to love two people?

And just as important, is it possible for two boys to allow themselves to love the same girl?

Kip thought, now there is a challenge for the well-organized woman.

Kip thought, I think I am looking forward to summer.

Anne sat still. She didn’t look at Con. His face would be closed up anyhow, and it wouldn’t tilt to match hers, and he would be a stranger to her, as their own baby would always be a stranger to both of them, and she would start to cry, and he would leave her and go to Molly.

Con said, “Miss Stephens?”

She stared at his waist which was directly in front of her face.

“Excuse me, Miss Stephens, I realize you hardly know me, but I’d like to become better acquainted.”

Anne tilted her head way back until she could see his face. It was expressionless as always. And handsome, handsome, handsome. Her hair fell backward like silk. She could feel it against her bare neck.

Con said, “Tomorrow’s the first day of summer vacation.” He seemed to be very nervous. “Maybe we could have a first date, too. Something casual. You know. Just trying to get to know each other.”

Anne turned her head sideways and looked up at him out of the corner of her eye. “I haven’t been dating much lately.”

Con licked his lips. “I don’t want to rush you. I thought we’d start slow. Nothing emotional. Not even a kiss.”

“I’m not such good company these days,” Anne said.

Con located her hands. One was still tucked beneath her chin, and she was half sitting on the other. “A person can learn how,” Con said. He very slowly tilted his head, turning it away at the same time, so now they were both staring at each other from the corners of their eyes, at angles so great it was hard to focus.

Anne said, “I need to talk. Heavy things. Important things. Things I couldn’t seem to discuss with—with—with my—old boyfriend.”

Con shrugged. “He’s gone now.”

Anne’s hands in his were very hot and very dry. He sat down next to her. Anne whispered, “I can’t even hold hands very well. I’m sort of at the end of my rope.”

Conrad Winters bent over very slowly and took the laces out of his shoes. The laces made thin whipping sounds as they came out of the holes. Con held the cords in his hand. He knotted them together and then made knots at each end. “Maybe,” he said softly, handing her one end, “maybe if you hold your knot, and I hold my knot, we can keep each other up.”

Not from guilt, Anne thought. And not because Molly bores him. Not because his parents said he should.

Con is here because he wants to be with me.

Anne took the knot.

Con turned his wrist, looping the lace around his wrist until he had a bracelet, and her hand, holding her knot, was pulled in close.

“I’m sorry, okay?” Con said, so softly she could hardly hear him. “I should have gone to see you more. I should have called more and written more. But I did volunteer to get married, and you said that would be the stupidest thing we could do at our age, and I was so glad you said that, but I was so mad at the same time! I didn’t want you to say I was the stupidest thing in your life.”

“I didn’t want you to volunteer!” Anne said. “I don’t want somebody to
volunteer
to marry me, like I’m a charity case, or a soup kitchen! I wanted you to
want
to marry me.” Her hand was getting a cramp, hanging onto the knot. “But mostly I couldn’t stand it that we even had to think about it. I wanted to be a happy kid. Not a pregnant woman. I wanted to be worrying about math tests instead of a baby. Oh, Con—I—”

Con said, sucking in a deep breath, “Miss Stephens, I thought we were going to be mere acquaintances for a while. We seem to be losing control.”

Anne began to laugh. It was a real laugh, a laugh that came from inside and welled up and overflowed. She let go of the knot and put her palms on Con’s cheeks and pressed his face together until Con’s lips were all bunched up. She did not kiss him. She let go and took up the knot again, unraveling the cord from Con’s wrist. She slid back from him until the lace was stretched out taut and they were a good four feet apart. “Mr. Winters,” she said, “let us definitely
not
lose control again.”

Con grinned. He said, “Maybe we could sort of pass kisses down the rope. You know, the way little kids try to send messages down fake intercoms? Two paper cups and a string?”

Anne, whom he had adored since junior high, tossed her yellow hair and her eyes teased and her lips curved into a smile.

“Aaah, it’s quicker to use the wind,” said Anne, and she blew him a kiss, and he caught it.

It was midnight.

The Last Dance was over.

Summer had begun.

Turn the page to continue reading from the A Night to Remember series

T
HE FIRST SNOW OF
winter arrived on the last day of the year. Snow glittered beneath the streetlights and lay softly on the housetops and no wind disturbed it.

Five girls, getting ready for a dance, looked into their mirrors. Tonight was New Year’s Eve; in the year to come, they would turn eighteen and graduate from high school. They wanted to begin the year like the snow; lovely and welcome.

Emily, Anne, Beth Rose, Kip, and Molly.

They thought only of their dates, of music, and midnight.

They thought this dance on the twenty-second floor of The Hadley would be just a dressy evening—sweeping out the old year, embracing the new.

They were wrong.

F
ROM HER APARTMENT ON
the seventh floor high on the hill, Kip Elliott could sometimes see the faraway lights on The Hadley’s revolving tower. But New Year’s Eve was one snow flurry after another, and she could hardly even see the roads in Westerly.

Besides, things were far too hectic for looking out windows.

For the first evening ever, there were two teenagers in the family getting ready for a dance.

Kip’s little brother Jamie had been having tantrums since yesterday because he wasn’t one of them. “I want a tuxedo, too!” screamed Jamie, beating his heels against the floor.

Mrs. Elliott believed children having tantrums should be ignored and eventually they would stop. This had been true of her first four children. It was not true of Jamie. Jamie would break his ankles first. Possibly Kip would break them for him.

Over this constant drumming and screaming, Kip struggled to dress herself and put on her makeup. By now her two middle brothers were deciding what weapon to use to kill Jamie with. They had narrowed it down to fists (Kevin’s idea) and squashing (Pete’s idea).

“What would we squash him with?” Kevin asked.

“The piano,” Pete said, smiling dreamily. “We’ll just tip it over and Jamie will turn into a pancake.”

“I want a tuxedo, too!” screamed Jamie, who had heard many threats of death in his time and was not afraid. “I want a shirt with ruffles! I want to stay up all night! I want to go, too!”

I don’t need to go to a revolving restaurant, Kip thought. These little urchins make me so dizzy I’m revolving already.

Then she remembered that her name was not Kip any longer. She was now requiring everybody to call her Katharine. Kip was a name for little kids like Jamie. She was too mature for the nickname.

Nobody wanted to cooperate. Every girl and boy in the senior class moaned and groaned about how “Katharine” was too long, and it didn’t suit her, and they didn’t want to. Kip could take charge of anything: from organizing dances to extinguishing forest fires, but she was having no success whatsoever at changing her own name.

Didn’t do so well changing my life, either, Kip thought, brushing her soft brown hair. It felt so good she brushed on and on, hypnotized by her own rhythm.

Jamie stopped pounding his heels on the floor. “You look like you put your finger in the electric socket, Kip!” he yelled. “Come look at Kip, everybody! Kip looks so funny! Kip, are you going to the ball looking like that? No wonder Lee won’t go out with you anymore.”

Jamie pounded his feet for the sheer joy of seeing his sister look weird.

“Mother, can I throw him out the window?” Kip asked.

“Not tonight, dear,” her mother said.

Kip retreated to the bathroom where she could put on her makeup in peace. Slamming the door helped, too, because now she could no longer hear her brothers.

“Ssssshhh, Jamie,” whispered Kevin. “Pete and I have a plan. We’re going to go to Kip’s ball, too.”

“How can we do that?” Jamie asked, suspecting a plot to stop him from tattooing his feet on the floor. “It’s just for big kids. High school seniors.” Jamie was in kindergarten. High school seniors—except Kip—were unimaginably old. Jamie drummed again, vigorously. His nine-year-old brother said, “We’ll go by taxi. Lee will be there. You’ll have a great time.”