Saturday Night (19 page)

Gary said nothing.

She was not surprised. How was he supposed to make an intelligent remark after
that
outburst? “I’ll never be able to face you in school again,” she said. “I’ll have to wear a mask in the halls. It’s a good thing we don’t have any classes together.”

“What makes you say that?” Gary said. “I thought it was interesting hearing about your Aunt Madge, and when the lights come on I’ll look at the dress again.”

“You don’t remember the dress?”

“Sort of. I remember you stood there looking really pretty and fragile and the roses were on one side and the pumpkins on the other, and I wanted to move away from the pumpkins and have you stand where you fit in.”

Oh, Gary, she thought, the gifts you have given me tonight! I know I can be beautiful. I know I can be desirable. I know I can dance. I know I can be good company. What more can I ask?

Well, I
could
ask you to love me forever and take me out seven hundred days in a row, but you won’t, and I’m going to love you, anyway. “Thank you for coming over to me,” she said.

For several minutes they were quiet. People scuffed by in groups and patches. Bits of conversation floated by. “… repair truck in the parking lot.” “Kip’s in there throwing pumpkin around.” “… most wonderful dance I’ve ever been to.” “… pumpkin pulp in my hair, I’ll kill him.” “And now I have a crush on Stephen as well as a crush on Michael.”

Gary said to her, “You were the only girl who came alone.”

“The only one dumb enough.”

“Brave enough,” Gary corrected.

She shrugged, but he couldn’t see this in the dark. His hands were no longer on her shoulders, so he didn’t feel the shrug, either. After a while she realized Gary didn’t know how to end their conversation. You’ve given me so much, it’s only fair I should give you a way out, Beth thought sadly. “Let’s work our way on down the hall, Gary. Then I can phone my mother.”

“If you want to stay until the end of the dance, I’ll give you a ride home,” he said.

Her heart skipped beats. “Gary, you don’t have to feel obligated to me.”

“I don’t feel obligated. I just said I’d be glad to give you a ride home, that’s all.”

“Thanks. I’d like that.” She did not pretend that he’d kiss her good-night in her driveway; if he wasn’t going to kiss her now in the dark when their arms were around each other, then he never would.

“Mind heading back to the cafeteria?” Gary said. “Kip may need some help in there if kids are having pumpkin fights.”

Great, Beth thought. I get to wade in mashed pumpkin in this dress. Aunt Madge will love it.

And then she thought—but Aunt Madge
will
love it. She wanted the dress to have one more romantic adventure—and it has. I’ve had my first; the dress has had its second. And who could ask more of a Saturday night than that?

Christopher’s steps became shorter, his lurching more pronounced. Molly was far too small and slim to support him, so she kicked his ankle instead, to shock him awake. Christopher looked at her in pain and astonishment, but he did navigate the stairs without falling.

When they reached his car, he put up something of a battle because he didn’t want to sit on the passenger side. “You can’t drive!” she spat at him. “I’m not going to get killed for your sake.”

“I’m not drunk anymore. It wore off.”

“Then why can’t you walk and talk?”

“I’m tired. I haven’t slept in days. Caught up to me.”

Under her breath Molly called him all the names she knew. But they were standing very close, and no matter how softly she muttered, he heard them all.

“You lose, Molly,” he said, words he knew would hurt her more than any mere insult.

Christopher felt a strange satisfaction in the night. Having failed at college, where everyone expected him to shine, he had come home and failed again publicly. It was more attention than he’d had all those months at Harvard, where consistently he was ordinary among the other stars. In some warped way, Christopher felt he had achieved something: The loss of respect of everybody at the dance was more of an accomplishment than anything else he could think of recently.

Christopher stared at the unfamiliar dashboard of the passenger side of his car. He tried to turn the radio on, but his radio didn’t work unless the engine was going and Molly hadn’t started the car.

She slid behind the wheel and eyed him with disgust. He was falling asleep with his mouth open, his hair flattened against the window, and the door handle pressing into his ribs. The lights in the parking lot suddenly went out. She was mildly startled, but it did not occur to her the entire dance was now in darkness. She simply started her engine and put on her headlights to see by.

So you think I’m a loser? she thought.
Never!

Without nervousness she drove Christopher’s unfamiliar car. Molly had never met the car she couldn’t drive. Stepping hard on the gas, she hydroplaned over an immense puddle that was the result of blocked storm drains. Laughing to herself, Molly began to take corners very fast, letting the car do what it would. It soothed her to be in and out of control of the car; it was a reflection of her own soaring and falling evening.

She got on the highway, letting the speedometer climb way past the fifty-five limit. You had to say this for Christopher, his car had power. Shame he didn’t match it. To humiliate her in front of the whole school, so that Sue and Caitlin and Kip and everybody else could throw it back in her face! I hate them all, she thought.

Knowing that they had won was too much for Molly. She could not stand it that Saturday night would end, and they would have a boy, and she would have a drunken jerk. She got off the highway, circled, and went in the opposite direction, headed back to Westerly High.

Anne saw the electric company trucks pull into the student parking area. She saw the huge cherry picker, and heard the chain saws buzzing, as the crews cut away the immense limb and the smaller branches and freed the electric cables. She saw the crowd of kids who stood in the drizzle watching, and the policeman who herded them away because of the danger.

None of it registered on her mind. She was simply cold.

Behind her the lights went on. The band began playing again. The kids began screaming again.

Anne stared at the crews. They wore thick gloves issued by the company that prevented current from going through them. She thought, If I were to go over and pick up the end of that cable and not have those gloves on, perhaps it would kill me. I could end it right now. Walk out there and die.

She tried to decide if dying would be easier than facing her mother and grandmother; if dying would be easier than knowing every day of her life—and every day of this baby’s—than Con did not love her enough to stay. Blue with cold, unaware of it, Anne stood watching a live wire.

She did not notice the television crew, complete with cameras, strong lights, and microphones. She shifted out of their way from instinct, not recognition. She never saw the two kids in blue jeans at all.

In the foyer, the few kids who hadn’t rushed back to dance again gasped when they realized the tv station was there. They raced after the crew, yelling, “Film me! Film me!”

Anne didn’t race anywhere.

Oh, Con, she thought.
Con
.

T
HE MOMENT THE LIGHTS
came on, Kip Elliott began circling the cafeteria. Think of me as a panther hunting her prey, she said to herself. I know my flashlight friend is out here somewhere.

But he wasn’t.

She began to wonder just how well she had seen him behind the eerie shadows of the little flashlight. What if she didn’t even recognize him when he turned up? But
he
knew
her
—surely he’d walk over when he saw her, to talk about their short adventure.

But he didn’t.

I could call George right now, she thought. Ask him who this Kate is. Get a last name. But I know George. He hates girls. He probably won’t admit that Kate exists. He’ll tell me there’s no Kate in the entire junior high and if there were he wouldn’t speak to her, anyhow.

She scanned the crowd eagerly—and there was Roddy.

Their eyes met.

Oh, no, Kip thought. If I have the same puppy-wagging-its-tail-look that Roddy has, my flashlight friend will stay in the shadows and I’ll never lay eyes on him again.

Roddy beamed at her.

She had no choice but to smile back. He bounced right over to her. “You were looking for me?” he asked happily.

After all the things she had said to him, he was forgiving her, and handing her the cue line she needed to make up for some of it. “Yes,” said Kip. Her smile came easily now. “You were great, Roddy. I was the pits. I’m really sorry. I was in a foul mood and I took it out on you and I hope you can stand me after this. I missed the fight with Christopher, but everyone tells me you were fantastic.”

“Oh, sure,” said Roddy. “No problem. And I didn’t do a thing with Christopher.”

“Except knock him over. That’s quite a lot, a football type like that. Don’t be modest.”

“Okay,” said Roddy, willing not to be modest. “Listen, Kip, you’ve got pumpkin on your cheek.”

Kip began to laugh. “Ah, romance. Thy name is pumpkin.”

“What?” he said blankly. “Here. Here’s a handkerchief.” He handed her a nice clean folded square of cotton and she mopped her face while he watched intently. “No, farther over,” he said. “Now you’ve got it.”

“Maybe I should go to the girls’ room and check.” She thought she would check the halls for the flashlight friend while she was at it.

“No, no. You look fine now. They’re starting another number. Come on, Kip, let’s dance. We came together and we haven’t even danced yet. Come on, Kip, let’s dance, okay?”

“I’d love to,” she said helplessly. Yet in a way, she meant it. Roddy was nothing to her, but he had brought her here. She had seen her own dance, and more importantly, seen herself. Some of it wasn’t as nice as she expected, but she knew it was there now, and she could deal with it.

She danced with Roddy. He wasn’t good. He twitched instead of dancing. But he was having a good time. In fact, thought Kip, filled with both surprise and envy, he was having a
great
time. What a wonderful attribute: to be able to have fun after such a rotten beginning.

I could learn from Roddy, she thought. I could learn to forgive and forget.

Occasionally they touched, but mostly they danced separately. Couples circled the floor, flushed with the excitement that comes from exhaustion, and change, and unexpected events.

The cafeteria doors swung open.

Two men with shoulder cameras marched in, and immensely powerful dazzling lights scored through the dancers. The kids broke apart and stared.

Television?

At their ordinary old school dance? There was nobody famous at their school, and nothing interesting was happening.

“Maybe it’s the superintendent of schools,” somebody said, “trying to show off how liberal he is to let us have a dance again.”

“Maybe it’s the mayor, showing how well he acts in a crisis, getting power back to his children stranded in the dark.”

Kip’s heart leaped. Could they possibly be covering her dance? Showing off what kids could do when they put their minds to it? But her decorations had all been moved! There was a pumpkin mess and no rose arbor and—

Everybody was pushing forward to see better. They became part of a crowd instead of couples. The band stopped playing. The cameras inexplicably turned away from the dancers and faced the doors.

In almost complete silence, they waited for some grand entrance.

“But it’s nobody,” Caitlin whispered, confused.

Some boy they’d never seen, wearing old clothes that didn’t fit very well, and some girl who didn’t look as if she had much to offer, either. The girl was laughing, and hanging onto the boy as if her feet hurt, not as if she loved him. She was wearing
jeans
.

“Jeans!” said Kip, honestly annoyed. Her formal dance? They were going to film some couple wearing jeans? If that isn’t just like television! Featuring the one couple that’s out of it, instead of the dozens who really represent Westerly High, she thought furiously.

The cameramen slowly followed the laughing couple inside.

“I know who that is,” Jimmy said in astonishment. “That’s Emily Edmundson.”

“Never heard of her,” said Sue.

Jimmy shrugged. “She’s nobody. In my math class. I don’t think she ever talks. She’s just there.”

“I never saw her before,” Kip said. It irritated her that she could be totally ignorant of some kid in her grade who merited television coverage.

The teenagers were watching as if they were at home in front of the tube. It was even more mesmerizing to see a filming; they could not take their eyes off the demands of the cameras. Very very bright lights focused on Emily and her boyfriend. The crew motioned everybody else out of the way so that the reporter had a clear field.

“Her hair looks awful,” Kip muttered to Beth Rose. “She could at least have gone to the hairdresser’s if she’s going to be on tv.”

The reporter turned, and faced into the cameras, and smiled. Now they recognized him. “I remember those teeth,” Gary said. “Those are eleven-thirty newscaster teeth.”

Beth laughed. She never stayed up late enough to see those teeth. That’s how you know you’ve led a boring life, she thought. When eleven-thirty is beyond imagining. It made her yawn to think of it.

“Tonight’s fierce electrical storm,” said the reporter in a very broadcasting sort of plummy voice, “caused more than annoying power shortages. In the western end of town, high winds brought down trees, and one of those trees caused a brutal car accident on Mink Rock Road. Very seriously injured was Jasper L. Chase, owner of the largest fuel company in the greater metropolitan area. He was a lucky man tonight, because the other car struck by this tree was driven by this young man, Matt O’Connor, whose passenger is this lovely young lady, Emily Edmundson. Matt and Emily left the safety of their car, crossing live electric wires and downed trees to reach Mr. Chase. While Matt performed lifesaving techniques, Emily ran through the lightning more than half a mile to telephone for help.”