New Year's Eve
Authors: Caroline B. Cooney
A Night to Remember: Book Three
Caroline B. Cooney
A Biography of Caroline B. Cooney
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 eveningâsweeping 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 seniorsâexcept Kipâwere 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.”
“Lee will be there?” cried Jamie. Jamie catapulted up off the living room rug. He raced to the bathroom door and kicked it open. Just as she lifted the mascara wand, he flung himself on his sister. “Is it true? Lee will be there?”
She wet a washcloth to wipe the mascara off her cheek. “Look at my self-control,” she said to her little brother. “I'm not making you eat the washcloth or anything. Yes, Lee will be there.”
Lee: wrestler, college freshman, former boyfriend. Kip folded the washcloth and pressed it over her eyes to absorb the tears that came whenever she thought of Lee.
“Who's he going with?” demanded Jamie. “Somebody pretty?”
“Mother!” Kip screamed. “I am going to kill him. There's no doubt about it. That's how he's going to start off his New Year. Dead.”
Mrs. Elliott hastily rescued Jamie.
“I just wanted to know if Lee was going with somebody pretty,” Jamie protested.
“Your sister is very pretty,” Mrs. Elliott said.
Jamie sniffed.
Kip's hand was shaking so hard she would never be able to put mascara on now. For Jamie was right. Lee was going with somebody pretty this time. He was going with Anne. Though pretty was not the right word for Anne. She had a golden elegance that took your breath away. Slim and fragile, Anne had translucent skin and lovely shining yellow hair. Lee would never even see Kip tonight, let alone yearn for her. Anne would only have to stand there (what Anne did best anyhow), and Lee would be entranced. Let's face it, Kip thought. He's already entranced. One New Year's Eve more or less won't matter.
Mrs. Elliott removed Jamie, but unfortunately she did not stay to supervise the boys. She and Mr. Elliott were going to a New Year's Eve gala themselves, and she hadn't decided yet what earrings to wear. And of course George Elliott, who had never worn a tuxedo before, never had a date before, never even been on a dance floor before, was taking Beth Rose. Enough people were trying to get in and out of showers, and have mirror time, and get zipped up that Mrs. Elliott could hardly think about Jamie.
Kevin whispered, “Jamie, you're gonna spoil it.”
“Yeah,” Pete said. “Now listen, because I'm in charge tonight. We're gonna take a taxi to The Hadley. That's where George's and Kip's ball is. And we'll go, too!”
Even at five, Jamie could see a lot of problems here. “Does Mom know?” he asked cautiously.
“Course not. Don't tell her or we'll squash you with the piano.”
The three little Elliotts scrunched down by the coffee table and plotted.
Kip had already forgotten that she had four brothers. She was staring into the mirror, thinking of her two boyfriends. It was so easy for Kip to take charge of a dozen projects at one time that, last summer, she convinced herself she could take charge of more than one boyfriend at once, too.
It had turned out that she could take charge all rightâbut not all the boyfriends stuck around.
The history of this was simple: Mike had fallen for Kip a year ago. They'd had two months of perfection. The kind of love that obsessed you; where if you didn't actually write poems, you listened much more carefully to song lyrics. The kind where if you weren't on the phone with each other, you yearned to be. And then Mike lost interest, and went back to baseball. Kip attended a lot of baseball games, but Mike didn't notice her. After a while Kip was asking Mike out, instead of Mike asking Kip. But for whatever reason, Mike barely noticed Kip again. In his case, love had been a passing thing: a strong wind, perhaps, that blew away. Mike didn't even have memories of loving her.
And at the dance at Rushing River Inn last June, she had met Lee Hamilton. Kip was the first girl Lee ever loved and he loved her fiercely. One look at Lee's devotion, and Mike was suddenly able to remember feeling the same way. So on Friday she had nobody interested in her, and by midnight Saturday, there were two boys vying for her attention.
Kip saw no reason to choose between them. After all, she wasn't going to get married, was she? She was a high school senior who wanted to have a good time. And Mike was a cherished old boyfriend and Lee was an exciting new boyfriend.
She would date them both.
At first Kip thought it was going beautifully. Mike took Kip to sporting events, and Lee took her to dinner. Mike bought series tickets to the summer car races, and he and Kip had soda and potato chips while they cheered. Lee took her to every rock concert and Burger King in the state.
This is the life, Kip Elliott thought. Maybe she would write an article for
Seventeen
on the joys of dating more than one boy. She even thought of looking for a third boy to date as well. Variety, thought Kip, is the spice of life. Phone calls from two adoring boys. Turning one down in favor of the other. Mentioning the terrific Sunday afternoon with Lee when she was at the movies with Mike.
Kip had four little brothers and felt she knew all there was to know about boys. It did not occur to her that she had never known her brothers as dates. It did not occur to her that a fight over who got the last of the sugar cereal was not the same as a fight over who got the girl.
Mike and Lee never even discussed their sharing of Kip, let alone fought. For three whole months she alternated boys and thought she was the winner herself.
In September Lee backed out of the game.
Up till then, Kip had not really admitted it
was
a game.
Right up till then, she thought she was simply not tying herself down, and so forth.
But it was a game, and all games have losers, and in the game of two boys/one girl ⦠the loser was Kip herself.
Perhaps that was why she wanted to be called Katharine now. She could distance herself from that awful arrogant girl who played games with Lee and Mike, bouncing them off each other like Ping-Pong balls on a green table. Maybe if she used a more grown-up name, she would be a more grown-up person.
Kip was wearing the same dress she had worn to the dance last fall, more than a year ago. Her parents had five children to clothe, and a formal dress that still fit was good for a second year. It was the color of a dark peach: gold flushed to pink. And it was lovelyâbut not the same as having a new one.
It was a rerun.
Like tonight.
For something had happened that Kip never expected, never even thought of.
Mike was attracted by the fact that she was worth something to another boy. But once she was no longer attractive to Lee ⦠she was also no longer attractive to Mike. It was the duel that excited Mike, and not Kip herself.
Once more, Mike was bored with Kip.
He had bought season tickets to the ice hockey games but had taken her only once. He was going with guys to the rest. “Why not me?” she said, desperately, after Lee was long gone and Mike was fading. Mike looked uncomfortable. “I like to go out with other people now and then, too, you know,” he said.
How many girls, Kip Elliott thought, finally getting the mascara on the way she wanted it, have yearned to turn the clock back? If I could go back to that night in June when Lee first fell in love with me ⦠if I knew then what I know nowâ¦.
In the living room, Pete, Kevin, and Jamie were lying lengthwise on the carpet like logs, squashed between the coffee table and the couch. “Do we have the money for a taxi?” whispered Jamie.