The truth slowly dawned on me.
“Waaaait,” I said. “Was Bethany’s class the last one to have a dance?”
“Yes,” my mother said. “And with good reason. There was a lot of…”
Her voice trailed off as she struggled for the right phrase. Fortunately—or not—I could fill it in for her. But could I say it without falling into a fit of giggles?
“There was a lot of”—I took a breath to brace myself—“inappropriate body conta-hahahahahahahaha?”
Nope. I could not say it without laughing. It was a valiant effort, though. I made it all the way to the last syllable of the third word before breaking down. And I wasn’t the only one losing it. My mom’s face flushed pink. My dad’s bald head got all sweaty. I think they were more embarrassed by where this conversation was going than I was.
“You have nothing to worry about!” I informed them. “It’s a square dance specifically approved by the administration to reduce opportunities for inappropriate bo-hahahahahahaha.”
That time I didn’t even make it past the first syllable of the second word. This was probably for the best, though, because my parents were visibly relieved by my display of immaturity.
“You’re right,” Mom said to my dad. “She’s not Bethany.”
And I swear, for the first time in my life, my mother wasn’t saying that like it was a bad thing. She was saying it like she was relieved.
“It’s settled, then!” I said, clapping my hands together. “You don’t have to go!”
My parents’ eyes met. “Oh yes, we do,” they said together.
I’d blown it. I knew it as soon as the words had escaped my mouth. I’d made their nonattendance sound too important to me.
Now that they’re going to the dance, I’ll have no choice but to attend, too. Because the only thing worse than seeing your parents embarrass themselves in front of your classmates is NOT seeing your parents embarrass themselves in front of your classmates and having to hear all about it afterward in excruciating, exaggerated detail.
“It’ll be fun!” Mom said.
“Yippee-ki-yi-yay,” I said, unenthused.
“Yeehaw,” my dad said, also unenthused.
I must admit that I felt just the teensiest little bit better knowing someone in my family dreads the idea of a school dance as much as I do. THANKS, GENETICS!
Only this time, I’m not being sarcastic about my gratitude.
Chapter Seventeen
One thing I’ll say about Sara: She won’t hesitate to join forces with foes to get what she wants. But I never, ever could have imagined a scenario that would find her sharing earbuds with cranky old Mr. Armbruster.
And yet that’s exactly what I came upon when I walked into homeroom the next day. Sara was slapping the top of his desk in time with the music I couldn’t hear.
Mr. Armbruster was tapping the same beat with his foot. Both were smiling. SMILING. I hadn’t seen him smile since that time he found out I was on the cross-country team and had to tell me all about his epic race against the legendary Kicky McGhee.
But there he was. Smiling. With Sara. And sharing her earbuds.
I felt all topsy-turvy. Like Australia.
Sara noticed me gawking and called me over. Literally, as in square-dance style.
“One leg, a-two leg, a-three leg, four,” she half sang, half twanged. “Promenade across the floor!”
Mr. Armbruster made “tsk-tsk” fingers and corrected her gently. “It’s not a proper promenade without a partner.”
“Mr. Armbruster here is certified by the International Square Dance Association!” Sara bragged. “A total pro!”
Apparently Sara had brought in song selections to get Mr. Armbruster’s opinion. He was all too eager to lose himself in the banjo, fiddle, and washtub bass.
“He’s given you detention, like, six times,” I whispered in her free ear. “I don’t think he likes you very much.”
“Omigod! He hates me,” Sara whispered back cheerfully. “But he loves square dancing!”
That was an understatement. This unlikely duo spent the rest of homeroom—and the rest of the week!—discussing the merits and drawbacks of traditional versus Appalachian versus modern Western styles of square dancing. Needless to say, Sara easily recruited him to be the official caller of the Pineville Junior High Down-Home Harvest Dance. And Mr. Armbruster had no problem freeing up his teaching schedule to make calls during our gym-class rehearsals, which makes me wonder what dubious educational contributions he’s making to Pineville Junior High when he isn’t telling us to circle left and circle right and pass through and separate and split two and roll away.…
That’s square dancing: a blur of commands and sweaty, sweaty hands. At least Scotty is courteous enough to dry off his palms on the front of his jeans. I’d thank him, but any time I initiate even the tiniest bit of conversation, he interprets that as an invitation for one of his WINKS. Fortunately, square dancing is all about listening and following Mr. Armbruster’s directions. So it’s pretty much impossible to carry on a casual conversation while you’re doing it. Especially on Sara’s watch.
“So, Jessica, what—”
“SILENCE IN THE SQUARE.”
“But—”
“SILENCE.”
Sara is more determined than ever to win the Hoedown Showdown. She had effectively eliminated Manda by exiling her to the misfit square. To no one’s surprise, Manda got another doctor’s note that officially dismissed her from the competition for medical reasons.
“Teen-Onset Extra-Sensitivity Disorder,” she had explained to me and Hope in Social Studies. “I am negatively affected by loud music and unexpected movement.”
As I’ve said, Hope is superhumanly unannoyable. But Manda’s latest excuse was too much even for her to take.
“That’s a made-up diagnosis!” she blurted. “And you’re not even a teenager!”
“I’m an early bloomer,” Manda replied before strutting off to Study Hall instead of gym class.
“Do you think she believes her own lies?” Hope asked when she was gone.
“I think,” I said, “she believes whatever she wants to believe.”
“But how does she persuade everyone else to go along with her?”
Hope has known Manda longer than any of us—since preschool. If she didn’t know the answer to that question, I was certain no one did. And I would’ve said so if Sara hadn’t blown a whistle in our faces.
“Stop yer gabbing! Get to the gym! We’ve got a Hoedown Showdown to win!”
I hate to admit it, but Sara’s coaching is working. Every day we are getting better. The eight of us picked up the moves much faster than any of the other groups. I only occasionally clock Scotty with an elbow or knee, and yet I’m still almost as sore from square dancing as I’d been during my first weeks of cross-country practice. It doesn’t make sense to me.
“Does square dancing make your back ache?” I asked Sara as we traced the outline of a cow on a piece of particle board in Woodshop. “Mine is killing me.”
“Get your act together!” Sara reprimanded. “No excuses!”
She stood up and brusquely marched across the room to check on a wooden horse in progress. That’s when Aleck took it upon himself to give me some unsolicited advice.
“It’s not the moves,” he said. “It’s how you’re doing them.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s all the tension in your body. You hold yourself all rigid, like Scotty is about to electrocute you. It’s no wonder your muscles hurt.”
Okay. I’m willing to admit that he was right. Yes, it’s true I can’t relax around Scotty, because AS I’VE MENTIONED, whenever I let my guard down he gets all winky with me. But I stopped myself short of congratulating Aleck on this observation.
“Are you spying on me?” I asked. “Is that how you know what I look like when I’m square dancing? Because that’s—”
Aleck interrupted my accusations.
“Squ
iggle dancing.”
I had to repeat this out loud, just to make sure I’d heard him correctly.
“Squiggle dancing?”
“That’s what I call it,” he said. “Squiggle dancing is square dancing with wiggle room for creative interpretation.”
“Wiggle room? For interpretation? Sara goes ballistic when our elbows don’t jut from our sides at perfect forty-five-degree angles when swinging our partners.”
“And that by-the-protractor approach to square dancing is why you are going to lose and we are going to win.”
“Aha! So you have been spying on me?”
In truly annoying Aleck fashion, he didn’t confirm or deny. He simply smiled all knowingly.
“Just loosen up. Trust me. It will be more fun and less stressful on your body.”
Then he swung his arms all around as if he were twirling two jump ropes at once.
“See how loose I am?” he asked. “Fun!”
As he solo double-Dutched himself to the back of the workshop, I thought about all the fun I wasn’t having because I’m stuck in Sara’s square instead of his.
And then I thought about how this lesson is the sort of thing I miss out on when Aleck doesn’t come to class.
And then, finally, I thought about why I’d written his name down for dumb trick question #5 and how I was really, really relieved he’d destroyed the Top Secret Pineville Junior High Crushability Quiz before anyone had a chance to see it.
My feelings for Aleck are too complex for such a dumb test.
Chapter Eighteen
Saturday mornings are for sleeping. Except today.
“Jessie!” My mother knocked on my headboard. “Your friend is downstairs waiting for you.”
“Who?” I rasped. “What?”
And before I even opened my eyes, I got my answer.
“Omigod!” Sara yanked away my duvet and flung it to the floor. “We’re going shopping for dance dresses!”
“When?”
“Right now!”
A horn honked in my driveway to illustrate her point.
“Come on, my brother won’t wait for long!” She pulled on my arm. “It’s a good thing you go for the natural look. No one will even notice you just woke up!”
I pulled a pair of jeans off the floor and put on the T-shirt at the top of my basket of clean laundry. Sara literally pushed me out the door and down the stairs.
“What’s the rush? The mall isn’t going anywhere, is it?”
“Um, no. But any dress worth having will be gone before you can say ‘Daddy’s Amex’!”
She flashed what I assumed was her father’s American Express card.
For the record, I didn’t have my parents’ plastic. I had eleven dollars balled up in my front pocket. And it was a ten and a single, so I couldn’t even pretend to be flush with cash. The only place I could afford to splurge was Cinnabon. This, by the way, got my vote for the first stop on our shopping trip because Sara had dragged me out the door without any breakfast. She didn’t even let me put my sneakers on. I was still barefoot when she shoved me into the backseat next to a bunch of shopping bags. Sara slid in beside me and started shouting commands at the teenage boy behind the wheel. Or rather, teenage man. He had a beard.
“To the mall! In a hurry!”
“Yes, your majesty,” the teenage man replied sarcastically, tugging on the brim of his Pineville High School baseball cap.
“Is this your brother?”
Sara has a brother who is a senior at Pineville High School. I waited for her to introduce us, like how Hope had introduced me to Heath.
“Allegedly,” Sara replied, checking the messages on her cell phone.
“Unfortunately,” Sara’s brother replied.
She did not introduce us. And neither did he.
“Hope’s meeting us at the mall,” Sara said instead, not looking up from her phone.
Whew. What a relief. I’d never hung out with Sara all by myself before, and I wasn’t sure if I could handle being the sole target of her intensity.
“What about Scout?” I asked.
“DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON SCOUT.”
“Whoops,” Sara’s brother muttered under his breath. “Shoulda warned you.…”
“You know what she told me? She’s wearing her uniform on dance day. HER UNIFORM. That completely wrecks the color scheme for our square.…”
“Color scheme?” I asked.
“Of course we have a color scheme!” Sara said. “We want to win, don’t we?”
You want to win, I thought, but I knew better than to say it.
“Sara,” I began tentatively. “I’ve only got eleven dollars. I don’t think I can afford your color scheme.”
“Omigod! Duh! Daddy’s Amex!”
And before I could even begin to argue, Sara’s brother—named Joe I think?—pulled up to the entrance of Ocean County Mall.
“Grab the returns.” Sara gestured toward the Chic Boutique bags stacked next to me. She turned to her brother. “Be back here at four o’clock sharp.”
“Yes, your majesty,” Sara’s brother said, barely waiting for us to get to the curb before peeling out of the parking lot.
“Four o’clock? That’s six hours from now!”
“Actually, that’s five hours and thirty-eight minutes from now,” Sara corrected. “Because someone couldn’t get out of bed and threw off my whole schedule.”
With Daddy’s credit card in hand, Sara was literally and figuratively ready to take charge. To make up for lost time, she powered her way through the front doors, zooming past a pack of tracksuited senior-citizen mall walkers. I’m a fast runner, but I struggled to keep up because I was weighed down by four Chic Boutique shopping bags.
“Is your brother always so, um…” I searched for the right word. “Slavish?”
“He is when I have major dirt on him that he doesn’t want my parents to find out about,” she said. “Which I totally do.”
I imagined a teenage man like him could get himself into all sorts of trouble.
“Ooh.” I was intrigued. “What did you catch him doing?”
Sara came to a sudden stop. She pressed her hands on my shoulders and got all intense and Mr. Wall–like.
“My brother is off topic! Get your act together! Focus! We only have five hours and thirty-six and a half minutes left to shop.”
I doubt I’ve shopped for five hours and thirty-six and a half minutes in my entire life, let alone in one day. Sara relaxed her grip.
“Omigod! Are you ready to shop till you drop?”
“I’d have to actually wake up first before I’d be capable of dropping,” I said. “I’m still seventy-five percent asleep.”
Sara stopped again.
“I don’t think you heard me,” she said, barely containing her frustration. “ARE YOU READY TO SHOP TILL YOU DROP?”
There was only one acceptable answer.
“Yes,” I replied. “I am ready to shop till I drop.”
“Excellent. Because we have arrived.”
She swept her arm in front of the Chic Boutique window display of featureless mannequins who were attending a formal dance that looked a lot like Sara’s original description of the Glamarama Gala: black-and-white dress code, floor-length formals, tuxedos, crystal accents, orchids and roses and lilies, and that silver carpet—not red carpet, because red can be so harsh in photos…
Sara pointed to the mannequin right in the center of the crowd. It was decked out in a shiny black-and-white polka-dot dress that poufed out at the bottom. More important, it wore a homecoming-queen sash and crown.
“My dream dress!” she squealed. “You make the returns while I scope the store to find dresses that will go with it. It’s the best use of both of our time.”
She handed me Daddy’s Amex and nudged me toward the register.
“How many dresses do you need to buy?” I asked.
“Omigod! For all of us in the square.”
Wait. What? W
hoa.
“You’re buying dresses for the whole square?” I asked.
“Yes! Even Scout! Because there’s no way she’s getting away with wearing her uniform. Why do you think I’m so stressed?”
Curious, I opened one of the shopping bags and pulled out a dress that looked like it fit me, and I mean that in every way. Like, it suited my figure AND my personality because it was basically a greenish-blue T-shirt but longer. Sara had done a better job shopping for me than I ever could have done for myself. Then again, this shouldn’t be such a surprise. She is a professional spender.
“Why are you returning these?”
I held up a long, flowy dress in the same greenish-blue color. It looked perfect for Hope.
“Because they just won’t work anymore, that’s why,” Sara snapped.
“But they’re cute and they all match.”
If Sara had had Mr. Wall’s whistle, she would have blown it right in my face.
“LOOK HERE, SLEEPYHEAD. We’re down to five hours and twenty-eight minutes, and I’ve got the practically impossible task of finding flattering outfits for all of us. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a dress for Hope that won’t come up too short on her or clash with her hair? Or anything that gives some sort of shape to your…” She vaguely gestured in my general direction, as if there were no words to describe the absence of shape that is my body. “You do your job and I’ll do mine. So make! Those! Returns!”
Sara took off and immediately started pulling black-and-white dresses off the racks. A salesgirl scurried behind her, struggling to keep up.
I timidly approached the register. Where was Hope when I needed her?
“I’m… um…”
I didn’t know how to go about returning hundreds of dollars of clothes, including a dress more expensive than the contents of my entire closet that I hadn’t even known Sara had bought for me until she’d ordered me to send it back. Thankfully, this was business as usual for the salesgirl behind the counter.
“Welcome to Chic Boutique I’m Kirsten are you making returns for Miss D’Abruzzi.”