Chapter 10
The days leading up to Beltane passed quickly. She kept busy practicing her duet with William and discussing plans for the dance with Maddie. The next Saturday they took the shuttle to the mall in Asheville to shop for accessories. In Belk they passed posters advertising the impending release of Melisande’s herbal skin-care line, and the sight of the pale commanding beauty cast a shadow on Joy’s good mood. She wished she didn’t feel like she was helping Tan cheat on Melisande. She had never expected to be the other woman. Not that Tanner’s relationship with Melisande was something worth respecting, but still—
“Joy, come help me decide what shade of black goes with my dress,” Maddie said. “I’m having trouble picking out a purse.”
“What shade of black?”
“There’s a blue-black, and a rusty black, and a sort of dull black. And my dress is more of a true black.”
“I thought when you gave up being a goth you could stop worrying about that sort of thing.”
Maddie gave her a reproving look. “Always match your blacks,” she said severely. “It’s as important as not wearing white shoes after Labor Day.”
Then Joy caught sight of something and gasped. “Oh, Maddie, look at that dress.”
She already had her dress, of course—one she had bought on clearance because she knew the Sumner budget was being strained enough by her father’s medical treatment. But this dazzling vision gave her a pang of longing. Sheer, flowing fabric in a watercolor pattern of leaves overlay a nude lining dotted with gold sequins. The effect was like coins of sunlight glinting through a canopy of leaves in an enchanted forest.
“That would look good on you,” Maddie decided. “It’s not all poufy and froufy. I kind of like it.”
Joy reached out with trepidation for the tag and winced when she saw the price. There was no way she could justify buying this.
Not unless she used some of the money she had been saving up for a plane ticket to Oklahoma.
She struggled briefly with herself. She no longer felt the urgent need to fly out to her father, maybe because he was so insistent that he didn’t need her. That plan had receded to the back of her mind recently, and she knew why: Tanner. Maybe she should have felt guilty that he had come to be of such importance to her. But when she imagined herself in that dress, dancing with him...
“It’ll be miles too long for me,” she said, trying to be realistic. “I wouldn’t be able to get it hemmed in time.”
“Don’t be silly. Becca down the hall is a sewing whiz. She can alter it for you.” Maddie poked through the rack and found a likely size, and handed it to Joy. “Try it on,” she ordered.
Joy told herself she shouldn’t. But she let Maddie steer her to the fitting room all the same, and when she emerged to look at herself in the three-way mirror, the dress was too lovely to resist. It would take a huge bite out of her plane-ticket money, especially when she added the new shoes she’d need to buy to match, but after all maybe her father would want her to buy the dress instead of flying out to join him. He’d certainly tried hard enough to talk her out of that plan.
She turned in front of the mirror to make the dress twinkle, and her mind was made up. Oklahoma could wait a little longer.
The drive back to Brasstown took two hours, so the shuttle didn’t return to campus until well after the time when Tanner had picked up Joy the last two weekends. She wondered if he had come and missed her, or if he might even be having second thoughts about the dance and would have bowed out if she had been there. She understood his caution about traceable communication between them, but she still wished that she had a way of getting in touch with him.
But Jim Brody called her over as she followed Maddie through the dorm lobby. He was good-looking in a shy, scholarly way, and tended to stay in the background. “You have a message,” he said, and handed her a piece of folded graph paper that must have been supplied by Jim himself. Inside was scrawled only “Missed you. See you next Sat. —T.”
“It’s from him,” she said to Maddie, too happy to keep it to herself. “We’re still on for the dance.”
Maddie was still less than enthusiastic about Tanner, but she had stopped bad-mouthing him in Joy’s presence. “At least he’s not trying to blow you off,” she said. “Maybe he’s not a total jerk.”
“Coming from you,” said Joy, “that’s practically gushing.”
William and several other Ash Grove music students would be providing live music for the dance. Joy had protested that this was unfair to them—they wouldn’t get to do any dancing or relaxing—but William assured her that they were there by choice. “Not all of us are comfortable dancing in public,” he said. “And this way I know I’ll actually enjoy the music. Also: no wearing a tux!” He pumped his fist in victory.
“You’re going to break Clark’s heart,” said Joy in amusement. “I know it hurts him deep in his soul to see you wearing those faded old shirts and worn-out jeans. I’m amazed he hasn’t tried to give you a makeover.”
“Oh, he’s tried,” said William airily. “I can be stubborn too, you know.”
The day of the Beltane festival was a perfect spring day: sunny, bright, and warm, but with enough breeze to prevent anyone from overheating on the temporary outdoor stage where the student performances took place. The marquee for the evening dance had already been set up adjacent to the stage, so that audiences had a sheltered place to sit. The maypole had been set up close by, in the center of the playing field, and at noon the senior girls danced the ribbons around it in a tradition far older than Ash Grove High.
Joy had what she considered a medium-sized case of nerves. She was anxious about her playing, even with William to disguise the mistakes she knew she would make; she wanted to do right by her mother’s legacy and make her father proud. And she was also on edge wondering if Tanner—and Melisande—would be watching.
In that respect, at least, she found she had nothing to worry about. When she walked onto the stage after the piano had been wheeled out by two sophomore boys who had been drafted for that purpose, she had a full view of the audience, and neither of them was there. She was pleased to see the Hartwells, though, and gave them a nervous smile. In the front row was Mo, next to the student monitoring the digital video camera; after the performance he would post the footage online so that absent family, like Joy’s father, would be able to see it.
Maybe it was because she wanted him to be impressed with her, or maybe it was because she was so happy about seeing Tanner that night. But for whatever reason, Joy played better than she ever had before.
It was almost as if she were sitting outside her body watching someone else operate it. It was still her fingers, but they darted over the keys with less effort than ever before; it was still her ear finding the way through William’s accompaniment, keeping time with him so perfectly that he flashed her a surprised grin. But she felt as if a new energy was humming through her body, heightening her skill and awareness so that she had only to mentally reach out for the music and draw it out of the air.
The next thing she knew, the audience was applauding, and she was smiling breathlessly as she and William took their bows. Then, performance worries behind her, she was free to enjoy the rest of the afternoon’s entertainment.
The highlight was Maddie’s performance as the title character in a scene from Antigone. In the showdown with the king, her uncle Creon, she was fierce and vivid and shatteringly real. At the end of the performance Joy applauded until her palms were stinging, and William, at her side, turned a dazed face to her. “She’s amazing,” he said, and she could only agree.
After dinner, Tasha joined Maddie and Joy in their room for pre-dance primping. She looked like a goddess in a shimmery gold gown and hammered gold jewelry. “You two are so sophisticated,” said Joy, admiring her and Maddie. Her roommate was wearing a black sheath dress that was cut to show off the tattoo in the middle of her back: a Victorian vampire bat with outstretched wings. But Joy didn?
??t envy their glamour. The enchanted-forest dress, expertly hemmed by Becca, floated around her in a mist of mysterious greens and glints of light. It was a magical dress. The only jewelry she wore was jade drop earrings that had belonged to her mother.
“Have you thought about putting your hair up?” suggested Maddie from the mirror where she was applying an elaborate eye makeup. “It would be a little dressier, and show off your earrings.”
“I’d love to, but I don’t know how. It never behaves for me.”
“Here, I’ll do it,” offered Tasha. “I think a French twist would be really flattering on you. Mads, you have bobby pins, don’t you?” As she brushed and pinned, she asked too casually, “Does your dad know you’re going to the dance with Tanner?”
“I mentioned it, yeah.” She had only given the barest details: that Tanner was a former Ash Grove student, that he was out of school now but visiting. Her father hadn’t pressed her for details, but she wondered now if that was suspicious; was he so laid-back because he thought he could pump Gail for more information? Or maybe she was just being paranoid. “He’ll expect me to give him a full report afterward,” she said.
“That’s kind of sweet, that he’s still looking out for you from far away,” said Maddie, starting on her second coat of mascara.
“I guess,” said Joy. “It’s just that things are so complicated, I’m not sure what to tell him.”
She thought for a second Maddie was going to suggest something, and it wasn’t going to be flattering to Tanner. But she glanced at Joy in the mirror and kept quiet.
Soon Tasha was finished with Joy’s hair, and when she looked in the mirror, she was delighted. “It’s so elegant,” she said. “I hardly recognize myself.” She wondered what Tanner would think of it, and of her dress. She was more nervous than she had expected to be on their first real date.
Maddie would be escorted by her current boyfriend, Jeremiah, although, as she pointed out, it was hard to think of it as a date when he was just going to walk her from the dorm to the marquee before taking the stage to play in the band. Tasha had turned down a couple of guys so that she’d have the luxury of dancing with everybody she wanted to and nobody she didn’t, she said. “Or maybe I’ll just stand on the sidelines and ogle all the guys,” she added. “Anyway, my options are open.”
At about a quarter of eight, Joy got a call from Gail. “Your date’s waiting for you in the lobby,” she said demurely.
Joy grabbed her purse and checked her lipstick one last time. “See you there,” she said to Maddie and Tasha, and didn’t wait for a reply before darting out the door.
When she descended the stairs into the lobby and saw him, all the air seemed to leave the room. He was wearing a tuxedo that had surely been tailored just for him, as it fit without a crease. He had tamed his hair and combed it away from his face, and he looked so handsome and sophisticated that she felt a moment’s panic. Why was this amazing guy here with her? It didn’t make sense.
“Hi,” she said, very aware that Gail was watching them from across the room.
“Hi.” He held up a clear plastic box with a bloom in it. “I wasn’t sure if corsages were the done thing, so I brought you one in case. You can always pitch it if you don’t want it.”
“No, it’s lovely.” It was a white rose—not a wild rose, but florists weren’t likely to carry those. She noticed that he wore a white rosebud as a boutonniere. Had he been thinking of that night in the graveyard when he chose them? She pinned the corsage to her shoulder strap and took his offered arm.
“You look beautiful,” he said, and she felt the smile slide off her face. He noticed at once, but said nothing until they were outside and the door had closed between them and Gail.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
The groundskeepers had laid down a strip of Astroturf as a path across the playing field, so that the girls’ high heels wouldn’t sink into the ground as they made their way to the dance. Luminaria were already lit along the edges of the path, even though there was still some light in the sky. Joy drew him off to the side of the path so that others could pass them.
“Look,” she said. “Wherever this is going, I want you to always be honest with me. Promise me that.”
“Sure.” Then, as he took her meaning, “Wait, you think I was lying?”
“I know I’m not beautiful, Tan. I’ve known it for a long time. So please don’t say it just to try to make me feel good.”
“I meant it.” He could see that she didn’t believe him. “I wasn’t saying you have perfectly proportioned features, or whatever. I just meant that I enjoy looking at you.” He reached out to touch one dangling earring, setting it swinging, and smiled down at her. “Okay?” he said softly.
This was an entirely new way of looking at things, and with his eyes so steady on hers she couldn’t come up with any reason to object to it. “Okay,” she said faintly.
Inside the marquee, the dance floor was rapidly filling. The faculty chaperones were at their stations, and the band was doing a last-minute sound check. William, onstage standing behind a keyboard, saw them and gave Joy a wave. Students turned to look, and then they were gathering around them, asking to have their picture taken with “Tristan.” But he said placatingly, “I’m just here to have a good time, like all of you. I’m sure you understand that I’d like a night off from photo ops.” He managed to charm them all so thoroughly that in a short time the crowd had dispersed.
Sheila and her cohort hadn’t joined the stream of fans; they just hung back and glared at them—glared at Joy, certainly. She was feeling so euphoric that she blew them an impudent kiss. At that, they huffily turned their backs. But as soon as the music started, Joy stopped paying any attention to them at all.
She loved dancing, slow or fast, and didn’t care when her hair started falling down and her makeup melted off. The fast songs she danced with friends, as Tan just waited them out; evidently he didn’t like fast dancing, which came as a disappointment. But whenever she looked across the floor she saw him waiting for her, turning down any girls who approached. He danced all the slow numbers with her, and the student band played a lot of them—so many that she wondered if William had arranged for there to be more slow songs as a favor to her.
Dancing with Tanner was a little tricky, since he was so much taller than she was, and she found that she was a bit shy at first at being so close to him. When he put his arms around her she felt her pulse jump in her throat, even though he held her lightly, not crushing her. Being held by him, resting her hands on his shoulders and feeling their strength even through the tuxedo jacket, she felt suddenly very feminine, even dainty—not a feeling she was used to, but one she liked.
He didn’t talk much, but whenever she sought his eyes she found him watching her. I enjoy looking at you, he had said, and the pleasure of remembering that brought warmth to her cheeks that had nothing to do with the heat of the crowded dance floor.
“You’re very quiet tonight,” she ventured finally, raising her voice to be heard over the music.
Again those intense eyes gazed into hers. “I’m just enjoying myself,” he said, and bent his head to speak closer to her ear. “And nothing I want to say lends itself to shouting.”
Maybe she was just imagining that there was a special meaning in the way he said that. But a rush of euphoria almost made her lightheaded. And she even thought she could see some of that joy reflected in his eyes. He was happy. With her. Because of her?
Somebody nudged her, and she looked around to find Clark close by dancing with Blake, who had evidently decided to explore his bicurious side. Swaying with their arms around each other, they made a handsome couple. She made questioning eyebrows at him—how’s it going?—and he gave her a covert thumbs-up, followed by a congratulatory nod in her and Tanner’s direction. She couldn’t restrain a huge grin. She couldn’t have disguised how happy she was even if she’d wanted to.
At the first break, though, she found Maddie bearing
down on them with purpose in her eyes. Joy groaned inwardly. Of course her roommate would check up on her.
“Hey, Zoolander,” was Maddie’s greeting to Tanner. “Almost didn’t recognize you with a shirt on.”
“Almost didn’t recognize you without the surly scowl,” said Tan equably. “It’s Maddie, right? Joy’s drill sergeant—sorry, roommate.”
Maddie narrowed her eyes at him. “I’m just looking after her. You’d better treat her right, or I’ll split your lip, and then all your fancy clients will have to find a new slab of beefcake.”
He grinned. “Sorry, Maddie, but you’re just not that scary. If you’re trying to frighten me off, you’ll have to break out the flying monkeys.”
She put her hands on her hips. “Laugh all you want, pretty boy, but I’m not going to stop looking out for her.”
“Maddie, come on,” Joy protested. This was worse than having her father grill him would have been.
“I get it,” said Tan, still unruffled. “I know you don’t trust me. But I don’t have to prove anything to you. The only opinion I care about is Joy’s.”
Joy expected her to blow up, but instead Maddie seemed to thaw a degree or two.
“Well played, Fabio,” she said grudgingly. “Maybe there’s actually a spine underneath those washboard abs.”
“Pure steel, just like my gaze.” Tanner arched an eyebrow and gave her a mock-smoldering look.
“Hmph.” But for a second it looked like she was fighting off a smile. “Just don’t forget I’ve got my eye on you, and if you step an inch out of line—”
“He gets it, Maddie,” exclaimed Joy. “We both get it, already. Won’t Jeremiah be looking for you?”
“Okay, I’ll leave you two alone.” Maddie leaned in to hug Joy, and asked in her ear, “Having fun?”
Joy just beamed and nodded yes.
Then it was back to dancing—lots of dancing. It was the most fun she’d had in ages. But after a couple of hours, even she had to admit that the heat and the noise were starting to get overpowering.
“Can we get some air?” she shouted to Tan over the music, and he nodded.
It felt good to get away from the hot and crowded dance floor and be able to hear each other again. They wandered around the fringes of the field, then toward the woods. They could hear crickets and cicadas. “They’re getting an early start on summer,” she said. “Do you feel like just walking for a bit?”
“I’m fine with whatever you want.”
The grass had grown high between the trees, and it made a shushing sound against their legs. She stopped to take off her shoes, because her heels made walking awkward on uneven ground, and dangled them from one hand. It was such a beautiful night that she was glad to be outside enjoying it instead of crammed into the marquee. The woods looked unearthly in the moonlight, and their path was dappled with the shadows of leaves.
“Thank you for tonight,” he said, out of the silence, startling her. “It’s great to be around real people. To be real myself, and not have to pretend.”
“It’s just a school dance,” she said awkwardly, to hide how much his words meant to her.
“It’s not just that. It’s being with you.”
She felt again that quick dizzying belly-drop of surprise and pleasure, and couldn’t find anything to say. How was it that the more open he became, the more tongue-tied she was? The things that really mattered seemed the most difficult to talk about.
“Can I ask you something?” she finally said, after they had walked for a time.
“Sure, anything.”
“Why did you remember me, that night in the graveyard? It’s not like we hung out together when you were a student here. I had to think hard before I knew who you were.”
At first she thought he wasn’t going to answer. “It’s going to sound stupid,” he said finally.
“That’s okay.” Now she was intrigued.
“Back before I left, I used to cut class a lot and hang out in the dining hall and play my guitar. Good acoustics, free food. I was there one day when you were finishing up your lunch, and on your way to turn in your tray you passed a table where some kids had left a mess—spilled ketchup, dirty napkins and stuff. You stopped and cleaned it up before you turned in your tray.”
Joy waited for him to get to the important part. Then she realized that he was finished. “That’s it? I don’t see what’s memorable about that.”
“It wasn’t just the one time. Over the next few days, I saw that you always picked up the messes other kids left behind. No one but me ever noticed, so you obviously didn’t do it to be thanked. You just did it because it was the decent thing to do.” He glanced over at her to see how she’d react to this, but surprise held her tongue. She hadn’t realized she had even registered in his mind in those days, let alone that he’d been paying that much attention. “It may sound dumb, since it was just a little thing,” he said, “but it made an impression on me.”
Knowing that she had remained in his thoughts sent a dart of pleasure through her. She had mattered to him, even if it was just a little bit. “Why did you get so angry with me in the graveyard, then?”
He rubbed the back of his neck in a self-conscious gesture that went straight to her heart. He seemed more human and less sophisticated when he was embarrassed. “That night I was hating everything about myself and my life,” he said. “I went there to be alone to cuss and yell and break things and, well, feel sorry for myself. And then you showed up, and—”
“I was intruding. I see.”
“That was a big part of it, yeah. But then I realized I knew you, and you looked at me with those big eyes of yours and I thought...”
This time she waited for him, not interrupting. When he spoke again, his voice was so low she almost couldn’t hear him.
“...and I thought how different my life might have been if I’d stayed at Ash Grove, and asked you out, and never gotten mixed up with—with her.”
“Tan,” she exclaimed in astonishment. Never would she have guessed that he would have considered asking her out.
“I guess you’ve figured out by now that models are total drama queens,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. “I sure acted like one, anyway.”
“You weren’t a drama queen; you were miserable. I just hope things don’t look as hopeless to you now.”
He didn’t answer at once. They had made their way up the ridge into the thick of the woods, and the campus felt quite distant now. A breeze stirred the leaves with a hushing sound, and some early-blooming mountain ash trees showed small white blossoms like snowflakes in the dark, scenting the air with sweetness. Down on the playing field, spread below them, the luminaria shone like stars, and faintly the sound of a ballad came to their ears. “I wish I didn’t have to go back,” he said abruptly.
It was like the toll of midnight for Cinderella, the reminder that their time together was temporary and all too brief. The night was suddenly less perfect. They stopped walking and stood silent.
“I smell roses,” she said suddenly. “Do you?”
He gave her a startled look. Their florist roses had no fragrance. Then he said, “Look up ahead. I wonder—”
A few yards further up the slope, through some straggling branches that he held aside for her, and then suddenly the way was clear and they stepped out of the forest. Into a rose garden.
The lost rose garden.
Impossibly, the moonlight revealed tidy paths between hedges all in bloom, winding out of sight into the darkness. At the center stood an arbor that was a mass of roses. Red as wine or spilled blood, they clustered over the beams like velvet shadows. Their fragrance was heavy in the air.
As if of their own will their hands found each other and joined.
Silently, they entered the path, walking past waist-high hedges heavy with red blooms that nodded in the soft breeze. It had to be a trick of the moonlight, but the roses they wore suddenly looked red as well. She could no longer hear the music of the da
nce. Even the night creatures seemed hushed.
When she looked at him she saw the same wondering, solemn joy that she knew must be in her face as well. Still silent, they moved into each other’s arms, and their kiss, sweet and lingering, was both question and answer.
Inside the arbor the darkness welcomed them, sparing the need for modesty or shame. The night air was soft against bare skin, and the bed of grass made a yielding cushion. When he touched her, she found that he was trembling—with love or fear or desire she did not know, but she held him close, comforting him with her body, until his lips were sure against hers. And when he met her joyous eagerness with his own, she felt both triumph and awe that she could give him this. Delight thrilled through her like starlight rushing through her veins, and he whispered her name as together they learned to be one.