He left me, she thought. He didn’t even know who I was, and he knew I was a loser.
The next group poured out of the cafeteria. “I guess there won’t be a King and Queen of this dance,” said the first voice. “You have to be able to see who you’re voting for.”
“I thought maybe Beth Rose and Gary would be it. They looked so wonderful.”
“Yeah, but they didn’t come together. She came alone. That’s why he was with her. They were just the only two people who didn’t have dates.”
The voice and the body that owned it crawled over Beth at that very same moment.
No, Beth thought. No, no, no, no, don’t let me hear that!
But she had heard it, and it was true.
Her dress was nothing. Her special aura didn’t exist. Her personality had not changed. She was nothing more than the only girl there that Gary could bother with. And that was all.
It was a knowledge too terrible for tears. It lay on her like one of her mother’s smirks. Oh Bethie, you can’t do that. Oh Bethie, you’re no good at that. Oh Bethie, nobody will think that’s interesting. Oh Bethie, go back and try again, you’ve failed this time, too.
I am truly Cinderella, Beth Rose thought. The lights went out like the clock at the palace striking midnight. I’m no longer dancing with Prince Charming. My dress isn’t magical and neither am I. The dress is just cloth and I’m just Beth Chapman.
She walked dully toward the phones, not worrying about hitting anything in the dark, just stumbling forward.
There would be no coach and four to take her home, either. Just a mother very annoyed because she had to stay up so late waiting.
Two of the junior high girls, leaping about in the dark in their long black maid skirts, bumped into the carefully stacked pumpkins. There was a clatter as heavy invisible pumpkins tumbled over each other and hit the floor. The boys, horsing around next to the girls, bent over to identify the strange sounds and felt split pumpkin on their fingers.
“All right!” shouted an eighth grader. “Let’s have a pumpkin fight!”
Kip, across the cafeteria, screamed at the top of her lungs, “Don’t you dare have a pumpkin fight!”
The kids paused momentarily. “What can she do to us?” pointed out a seventh grader. “She can’t even find us.”
“I’ve got a handful of wet disgusting pumpkin pulp!” yelled an eighth grade boy. “First person I catch I’m going to rub it in her hair.”
“Sexist,” shrieked one of the girls. “Rub it in a boy’s hair.”
“No fun in that,” said the eighth grader, feeling his way over the fallen pumpkins.
His best friend began jumping up and down on the pumpkins to split the rest of them open.
Kip, shouting, “I’ll kill you! You ruin my dance and I’ll kill you!” came tearing across the room. She forgot about the wooden swing and ran into it full speed. There was a couple sitting happily making out in the dark and she landed right on top of the boy.
“Kip, give me a break,” said the boy.
“How do you know it’s me?” she said.
“You’re the only one dumb enough to get involved in a junior high pumpkin fight instead of enjoying the dark,” he told her. He helped her to her feet, but not from charity. It was because he wanted to get back to his girl friend.
Kip headed toward the squelching sounds. The junior high kids were screaming with delight. Kip began grabbing any arm she could feel. The first person cried, “Ouch! It wasn’t me. I’m just standing here. I promise. I didn’t throw any pumpkin!”
“Stand somewhere else then,” said Kip.
She worked her way forward and found a definite culprit. He was slimy with pulp. Kip’s fingers dug into his arms. “Gotcha.”
“What are you going to do with me?” he said. “You don’t even know who I am and you don’t have any lights for detective work, either.” He yanked free and she could hear his feet hitting the pumpkins. What a mess it would be, tracked all over the room!
“Here’s a flashlight.” A voice in the dark shone a light right in her eyes, blinding her. She felt past the glare and grabbed the handle. “Where’d you get it?” she demanded. But she didn’t wait for an answer, because she recognized the junior high boys. “Evan and Brock!” she screamed. “I’ll kill you. I’ll call the principal. I’ll call your fathers.”
“Come on,” said Evan. “We’ll clean up. Promise. Don’t tell on us. Good clean fun.”
Kip turned to her unknown benefactor. “Are there any more flashlights where this came from?”
“Custodian’s closet. No, I checked. Just that. Some kid threw up in the bathroom and I went to find a mop.”
“Oh yuck. You truly are a saint. Cleaning up that. I think I would draw the line.”
“I would, too, except the kid was my brother. If he wasn’t in the bathroom getting sick he’d be out here tossing pumpkin pulp.”
“I know the type,” said Kip. “I have four brothers of my own.”
“I know. Your brother George is in my sister Kate’s class.”
Kip flashed the light all over him. “Who are you?” she said. He was certainly nice-looking, but not the least familiar.
“I’m a senior,” he explained. “We moved here this summer. I wanted to murder my folks for making me miss my senior year back home. I’m not crazy about Westerly High, but it’ll do.”
“So you’ve been here—what?—eight weeks?”
“Including summer, four months. A long four months.”
“I’m glad to know you,” Kip said.
“You don’t know me. I haven’t told you my name. And if you don’t stop blinding me with that flashlight I never will tell you my name.”
Kip screamed at two more boys attempting to find pumpkin pulp to throw. “You ruin my dance and I’ll ruin you!” she yelled. “I have four younger brothers and if there’s one thing I do well, it’s stomp on junior high boys. Line up over here, you lousy seventh graders! I’ll finish you off. Don’t be cowards. Line up.”
The band leader came over to her. “You’re easy to find. If not by flashlight, then by voice. Flash the light over here, will you? We need to get up all our cords. They’re tripping people.”
“We’re going to be stuck here for hours,” said the senior cheerfully. “I read it in my horoscope.”
“You read horoscopes?” Kip said in disgust.
“Certainly. But only after I’ve read all the comics and Ann Landers. I suppose you do important things like read the articles.”
“No, but I read the headlines. And I never look at horoscopes. They’re trashy.”
Being the one with the flashlight made Kip the source of all attention, the focus of all eyes. People wanted to see where they were, who was with them, what they crunched under their feet. Girls who had tucked their shoes under some bench wanted Kip to locate them. Chaperones wanted the rose arbor moved away from the door so it wasn’t a safety hazard. Kip got people to do this by the simple technique of shining her light in the nearest eyes and saying, “You! Do that!”
Fifteen minutes passed before she remembered her flashlight friend. He was nice, she thought. And cute. I liked him a lot. And he admitted to me that he’s lonely here. And of course, with all my feminine intuition I acted on it right away. Asked him to go out with me, sat and flirted with him. That guy I fell on top of was right I am the only girl in the world who would break up a pumpkin fight instead of necking.
The battery in her flashlight died.
She was instantly anonymous.
The demands upon her instantly stopped.
If his sister Kate is in my brother George’s class, I could telephone home and ask George. … George? Ridiculous. He’d never tell me anything. He’d make me pay. But then, it might be worth it.
Anne found her tears strangely strengthening.
What chemical property could tears have, lying there on her cheeks, that absorbed agony? How could sobs that wracked her chest become peace that lay on her heart?
> Not peace, no. Calm was a better word. The volcanic explosion was gone, and the dreadful panic was gone, and even the grief. She felt that whatever was coming, she could handle.
For whom have I always been perfect? she thought. Not for Con. It wasn’t Con I was so afraid of telling. It’s my own family.
I’ve lost Con.
But you don’t lose your mother. No matter what you’ve done, your mother is there. And she’ll love me still. She’ll yell and sob and maybe throw something, and call Daddy up in Europe and he’ll fly home and they’ll all feel betrayed the way I feel betrayed by Kip and Con … but they’ll love me still.
Time to go home. If I have to face the music alone, so be it
Anne began feeling her way around the cafeteria toward the front lobby. It took less time than she expected. Kip’s decorations and props were not against the wall, but arranged to make the huge room into small areas. She walked into the hall. It was filled with people placing bets on when the electricity would come back on.
The front foyer doors had been propped open. Altogether there were six huge doors, of which usually only two were used. Now all were open. The rain was over. Clouds had been blown away by the wind. An almost full moon gave a ghostly light to the steps and filtered slightly through the six doors.
There were three pay phones. Each was busy, and each had a line of people waiting to use it.
Anne walked out onto the steps in front.
The cold did not bother her. It iced her heart, making her strong (or possibly frozen) and she stood, waiting until the phones were free, so she could call her mother and put the whole dreadful sequence into action.
Chapter 17
“I’VE CHANGED MY MIND,” said Mr. Edmundson. “I’m not taking you kids to the dance. We’re going home.”
“Daddy!” Emily cried. “Daddy, come on. After all we sacrificed we deserve the dance.”
“No. Your feet are bandaged, and there could be more wires down, and you’d endanger your lives a second time. We’re driving home.”
Emily burst into a flood of tears.
Never before had she seen proof of what a splendid weapon tears were. Her father was so alarmed he almost drove off the road. “Emily, really, I’m making the right choice,” he said frantically.
“No, you’re not,” Matt said. “You should let us go. The storm’s practically over. The town is crawling with utility company trucks. And now we’re on the main highway, not a stupid back road like Mink Rock.”
Emily, seeing the effect on her father, wailed more loudly. I never knew I was such a scheming woman, she thought. Matt squeezed her hand. “I know you’re faking,” he whispered in her ear. “I’ve seen real tears from you and your eyes are dry, woman. You can’t con me.”
Her father said, “Well. …”
“Daddy, please, please, please? It’s only fair. And Matt’s arguments are good.”
“You didn’t need to say that,” Matt said. “It’s redundant. Everything I say is reasonable and logical. He knows that.”
“I don’t know it,” said Mr. Edmundson. “You’re the lad who sent my daughter through a lightning storm among live wires.”
“I didn’t have anybody else to send.”
“Nobody sent me. I went by myself. Daddy, stop turning. The high school is straight.”
“You’ve missed half the dance, Emily.”
“And that means half the dance is left,” Matt told Emily’s father. He turned to Emily. “How do you like that for mathematics? I guess I should be a computer wizard, and not a disc jockey. I mean, with a numbers skill like that I could take over the world. Lee Iacocca, move over.”
“Lee Iacocca is in cars,” said Mr. Edmundson.
“If that’s not higher mathematics, I don’t know what is,” said Matt.
Mr. Edmundson frowned at the wet road ahead of him. “You know, Emily, this kid is pretty lippy.”
“Isn’t it fun?” Emily agreed.
They all began to laugh.
Matt said, “Concentrate on your driving, Mr. Edmundson. Emily and I have something to attend to.”
“Okay.”
Matt said, “Let’s kiss.”
“I can’t kiss you in front of my father.”
“Why not? He knows how it’s done. Anyway, he’s seen us before. Look what truck is ahead of us, Emily. It’s the television station. Probably covering the storm. Let’s flag them down and tell them what we did. I want to be a hero.”
“You are a hero,” Emily pointed out.
“They already know,” said her father. “I telephoned them. They’re headed for the high school to interview you. I was just giving them a chance to get there. This way you can make a grand entrance.”
Emily and Matt twisted in their seat to stare at him.
“My daughter risks her life and you think I’m going to let it slide by as if it’s nothing?” he said.
Emily began shivering.
“You cold?” Matt demanded. “What’s the matter? Turn up the heat, Mr. Edmundson, she’s cold. You cold, Emily?”
“I’m boiling. The vents are all pointed at me. I can’t go on television. My hair is a mess. I’m wearing blue jeans. You can’t go on television in blue jeans.”
“Sure you can. President Carter did it all the time,” Matt said. “Anything he could do, you can do.”
“I’ll throw up,” Emily said. “I’ll be so nervous I’ll throw up on their feet.”
“If you were going to throw up you’d have thrown up on Mink Rock Road,” Matt said. “You’re fine. You look lovely. You’ll be the hit of the eleven-thirty local news.”
“Especially if I throw up on their feet.”
“Stop worrying about their feet,” ordered Matt. “Worry about your feet. Here. Lean on me.” He leaped out of the car in front of the high school steps and held the door for her.
Emily got out very carefully, and touched the ground as if touching china. But her feet were still anesthetized. She was standing without standing, or at least without feeling. “Emily,” said her father, “get crafty. Lean on the boy.”
They all laughed.
The television crew went on into the building to find the young people they were going to interview.
“Hurry up,” said Mr. Edmundson. “You think my daughter went through all this just so you could be late for your television deadline, Matthew?”
“I’m going to like this family,” Matt said. “You guys are all crazy. I like crazy people. No, I’m going back to my original idea. I’m going to be a disc jockey. Come on, Emily, we have to get in there and shine.”
“I won’t shine. I’ll be awful. I’m not going. Daddy’s right. We should go home.”
“Nope,” said Matt. “People who run through lightning are also good on television. It’s a known fact. Find it in any almanac. Pick up your feet, Emily. Or you want I should carry you?” He beamed at her, his big goofy smile crinkling his eyes and then fading back to normal.
“I want you should carry me,” she said.
Mr. Edmundson said, “I think this relationship is progressing a little faster than Emily’s mother and I had in mind.”
“Happens in lightning storms,” Matt told him. “Known fact.”
It was while they were shifting the rose arbor that Kip’s flashlight was momentarily shone down the hall to the foyer. The light lasted for only a second or two, and then turned back to the heavy barrel in which the white birch clump was planted. Several boys took hold, grunted, and moved it far to the left. They dismantled the arbor and moved the potted silk roses over by the birches. Now you could enter and leave the cafeteria without smashing into the arbor.
In the fraction of a moment that she had light, Beth Rose saw the drinking fountain ahead of her and decided to have a sip of cold water before she phoned her mother. In the same fraction of light, somebody behind her recognized the pink and gray of her gown.
“Beth?”
It was dark again. She turned and saw nothing bu
t velvety black.
“Beth, it’s Gary. Stand still. I’ll catch up to you.”
She stood still.
Very still.
Except for her heart.
It beat like the drums of a thousand troops.
It was too dark even to see his profile. The hall was surrounded by classrooms and these doors were locked, so they couldn’t even open the classroom doors and get a glimmer of moonlight from those windows. Gary’s fingertips located her shoulder, and crept slowly around her back until he had a hand on each shoulder. Beth said, “Hi, Gary.”
“You all right?”
“The dark shook me up a little at first. Now I’m used to it.”
“Were you on your way outdoors?”
“No. Going to the phone to call my mother to come pick me up.” Why am I not saying something flirty? Why not pretend I was looking for him? Why did I have to remind him that I came alone, uninvited, and my mother has to drive me around instead of a boy who loves me?
Gary said, “I don’t suppose the power will be off very long. They won’t want five hundred kids stranded in the dark over here. The utility company will have trucks out by now.” He talked about power outages he had known, blackouts the restaurant had suffered, and a brownout that had ruined a computer program of his.
You dummy, Beth thought. I don’t care about electricity. Except whatever’s between us. We’re standing here in the dark and you’re holding my shoulders? Get your act together, Gary. Fall in with my fantasies. Kiss me.
Out loud she said, “You don’t realize how important electricity is until you lose it.”
The absurdity of her remarks compared to what she was feeling made her laugh. Beth tried to squelch the laughter because she didn’t want to explain it, but to her horror she cried instead.
For some people tears and laughter are very close and for Beth Rose they were inseparable. Sometimes she could not even tell if she felt grief or joy, because her body reacted with the same tears and laughter no matter what.
“What’s wrong?” Gary said in alarm.
Well, if he won’t move his hands and put his arms around me, I’ll move mine at least, she thought. I can’t lose because it can’t get worse. She put her arms around him and rested her head on his chest and sobbed.