The rest of the week passed quickly and quietly. Nell continued her trend of pretending that I didn’t exist. Although we had a lab in Chemistry at the end of the week, Liza managed to get through it with a minimum of interaction with me. Ms. Lacusta didn’t mention her invitation to the chemistry club, and I was very relieved.
Cara continued to eat lunch with us. I didn’t see anything odd about the way she reacted to Michael, and this too was a relief. She began to chat with the others who sat at our table, and I thought I noticed that Dan Hillinger, one of Michael’s friends, seemed to particularly like her. I wondered if he would ask her to the upcoming dance. Michael had told me that through high school, the six of them usually went to the formal dances in a group, although now and then one of them would include an outside date.
I knew that Brea was toying with the idea of inviting a boy from my class to be her date. She thought he liked her, but he didn’t seem to have the nerve to actually ask her out. Brea was so much the opposite of Anne that it was sometimes hard to believe that they had been best friends for years. Brea was tall and athletic, and although she might have been considered striking, she was not exactly pretty. She eschewed any makeup or hair fussing, which annoyed Anne to no end. I knew that Anne and I had more in common when it came to primping and cosmetics, but Brea didn’t seem threatened by me at all. While we didn’t have the instant rapport that I’d felt with Anne, Brea was kind to me, pleasant to talk with, and very secure with her role in the group around the lunch table.
I had observed too that Jim Shuller seemed to rest his eyes on Anne more than on anyone else. I remembered her telling me that he had been the one to warn her about Nick, the loser who’d broken her heart last summer. I wondered idly if Jim had had a greater motivation than Anne realized for wanting her to stay away from Nick. It was tempting to listen to his mind for a bit in order to get Anne the inside scoop, but I knew meddling could be dangerous. I decided to watch only with my eyes and hope that Jim would act on his feelings toward Anne sooner rather than later.
Craig Donalson was the quietest of the group. He was a football player, and Michael had told me with pride that Craig had won a scholarship to a Florida state school. Apparently, he was not only an athlete, but also an excellent scholar. He and I had had our longest conversation to date about Shakespeare; I was amazed that he knew the plays so well.
It was mind boggling for me to realize that I actually had a small group of friends. Michael had definitely helped by introducing me to Anne and the others, but Cara I had found on my own. Or rather, she had found me, thanks to Nell. Irony abounded.
We had come to the end of October, and the weather was still beautifully warm each day. The daily afternoon thunderstorms that I had come to expect had disappeared. I missed the changing of the leaves and the chilly evenings that were common in the north this time of year, but I knew I wouldn’t miss the long winters.
I broke the news of the Harvest Moon Dance to my mother after school on Friday. Michael had dropped me off on the way to work, with the promise to pick me up before lunch the next day for our date at the nursery.
My mom was sitting at the kitchen table having iced tea and flipping through the mail. She had been preoccupied lately with one of her projects; it was a more involved children’s book, with lots of intricate illustrations. She loved the work, but sometimes she seemed to be in another world.
“So…” I cleared my throat as I wandered into the room. “Ummm… there’s a dance at school, some kind of harvest dance, I guess, and Michael asked me to go with him.”
My mother shook off her absent look immediately. “A dance? Like a real, dressy dance?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I mumbled, hoping against hope that she wasn’t going to let her excitement get too out of hand.
“Oh sweetie!!” My hopes were dashed as her voice rose several octaves. “That’s wonderful! We’ll have to go shopping for a dress and shoes… I haven’t found a good hair place yet, but maybe I can ask around. . .”
“Mom!” I needed to nip this in the bud. “Listen. We can get a dress and shoes, that’ll be fun, but no hair appointment, no big deal, okay? I want to keep this low key.”
“Why?” The vibes of excitement and giddiness were still rolling off her, and I felt guilty once again for not being the daughter I could have been.
“Because… just because. This is my first dance, and I’m looking forward to it, but in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that big a deal.”
She looked at me in exasperated confusion. “Every other dance, at every other school, I got the feeling you wanted to go. I always thought it was Daddy and me keeping you from getting involved.”
“No… not exactly. I wanted to be asked, because I wanted to be… normal. Even when I knew I couldn’t be. Maybe it was easier to blame you than to admit that I was never going to be like the others. But now here, for the first time, I’m part of things. I don’t need a dance to make me feel that way.”
My mother was still slightly puzzled, but she nodded anyway. “So then why are you going to this dance, if you’re not really excited about it?”
I still wasn’t sure of the answer to this one myself. “It’s important to Michael. It’s something we can do with his friends. It’s not that I don’t want to go, it’s just that I don’t want to make a big production of it.”
“Okay. No hair. Just dress and shoes. When is the dance, anyway?”
Good question. “I think it’s next Friday night.”
My mother shook her head and sighed. “Doesn’t give us much time. We’ll have to hit the mall this weekend…”
“Actually, Mom, I’m spending Saturday afternoon with Michael out at the nursery, if that’s okay.”
“Oh…” Momentarily deflated, she frowned, and then brightened. “Well, how about Sunday afternoon?”
“Umm… yeah, I think I can do that,” I agreed, trying to tamp out the reluctance and feign some enthusiasm.
“Good! We’ll go early enough to have some lunch out, just the two of us; we haven’t done that in forever.” My mother’s happiness made up for a little of my own lack, and I smiled in spite of myself.
Alone in my room, I thought about the dance and why I wasn’t as giddy with excitement about it as other girls seemed to be. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to go; it was more the idea that I might be terribly out of place and embarrass both Michael and myself. And of course, I was also worried about my parents and the fuss they were bound to make. I knew it was a big first for them too, but the thought of flashing cameras and doting parents made me want to cringe.
I wondered if Anne would give me some pointers on what happened at the Harvest Moon Dance, just so I could be somewhat prepared. It seemed like a good idea to ask her.