The Dance

The Dance

By Christopher Pike

Final Friends - Book 2

Final Friends

01
- The Party

02
- The Dance

03
- The Graduation

“I can’t wear glasses to school,” Jessica Hart said. “I’ll look like a clown.”

“But you can’t see without them,” Dr. Baron said.

“I don’t care. There’s nothing worth seeing at Tabb High, anyway. I won’t wear them.”

The eye examination was over. Beside her best friend, Sara Cantrell, Jessica was seated on a hard wooden chair in front of Dr. Baron’s huge walnut desk. Jessica had been coming to Dr. Baron since she was a child. A slightly built, kindly faced man with beautiful gray eyes and neatly combed gray hair, the ophthalmologist had changed little throughout the years. Unfortunately, neither had his diagnosis. He continued to say her eyesight was failing.

“Jessie,” Sara said. “Even with your old glasses on, you almost ran over that kid on the bike on the way here.”

“What kid?” Jessica asked.

“I rest my case,” Sara muttered.

Dr. Baron, as patient as when Jessica had been six and didn’t want to peer through his examination equipment because she feared her lashes would stick to the eyepieces, folded his fine hands on top of his neatly polished desktop. “You may be pleasantly surprised, Jessie, at the number of attractive frames this office has obtained since your last exam. Glasses have recently become something of a fad. Look at the number of models wearing them on magazine covers.”

Models on magazines aren’t worried about being voted homecoming queen,
Jessica thought. “How about if I try the soft contacts again?” she asked. “I know last time my eyes had a bad reaction to them, but maybe they’ll be OK now.”

“Last time you started bawling whenever you had to put them in,” Sara said.

“That’s not true,” Jessie said. “I didn’t give myself a chance to get used to them.”

“A few people,” Dr. Baron said, “less than one in a hundred, have hypersensitive eyes. The slightest bit of dust or smoke makes their eyes water. You are one of those people, Jessie. You have to wear glasses, and you have to wear them all the time.”

“What if I sit in the front row in every class?”

“You do that already,” Sara said.

“What if I only put them on when I’m in class, and take them off afterward, at lunch and stuff?” Jessica asked.

Dr. Baron shook his head. “If you start that, you’ll be taking them off and on between each class, and your eyes will have to keep readjusting, and that’ll cause strain. No, you are nearsighted. You have to face it.” He smiled. “Besides, you’re an extremely attractive young lady. A nice pair of glasses is hardly going to affect how others see you.”

Sara chuckled. “Yeah, four eyes.”

“Hardy, ha,” Jessica growled. Homecoming was only two weeks away, and she was beginning to have grave doubts about the “attractive,” never mind the “extremely.” If not for the piercing headaches that had begun to hit her every day after school—and which she knew were the result of eyestrain—she wouldn’t even have stopped in for an eye exam. She would simply have waited until after homecoming. But now she was stuck. Sara would hassle her constantly to put on her glasses.

“One thing I don’t understand,” Jessica said. “Why has my vision gone downhill so rapidly in the last few months? I mean, I don’t have some disease that’s making me blind, do I?”

“No, definitely not,” Dr. Baron said. “But some-times a stressful period can worsen an individual’s sight at an accelerated rate.” He raised an inquiring eyebrow. “Have you been under an unusual amount of pressure?”

The memory of Alice’s death needed only the slightest nudge to flood down upon her in a smothering wave. Red lips around a black gun. Red blood dripping through beautiful yellow hair. Closed eyes, forever closed. Jessica lowered her head, rubbed her temples, feeling her pulse. It was hard to imagine a time when she would be able to forget. Alice had been with her the last time she had visited Dr. Baron’s office. “I suppose,” she answered softly.

The good doctor suggested she browse through the frames in the next room while he examined another patient. Jessica did so without enthusiasm, finally settling on an oversize pair of brown frames that Sara thought went well with her brown hair and eyes. Before they left, Dr. Baron reappeared, promising the glasses would be ready the following Monday. Only four days, and it used to take four weeks. Jessica thanked him for his time.

They had left Polly McCoy waiting in the car; Polly had wanted it that way. She was listless these days. Often, she would sit alone beneath a tree at school during lunch and stare at the clouds until the bell rang. She ate like a bird. She had lost twenty pounds in the last two months since she had lost her sister Alice. It was weird, she looked better than she had in years—as long as one didn’t look too deeply in her faraway eyes and ponder what might be going on behind them. Jessica worried about her constantly. Yet Polly insisted she was fine.

“Do you need new glasses?” Polly asked, shaking herself to life in the backseat as Jessica climbed in behind the wheel and Sara opened the passenger door.

“She’s blind as a bat,” Sara said.

“I can see just fine,” Jessica said, starting the car with the window up. It was the beginning of December, and after an unusually long, lingering summer, the sun had finally decided to cool it. Heavy gray clouds were gathering in the north above the mountains. The weatherman had said something about a storm in the desert. Flipping the heat on, Jessica put the car in reverse and glanced over her shoulder.

“Watch out for the kid on the bike,” Sara said.

“What kid?” Jessica demanded, hitting the brakes and putting the car in Park. Then she realized Sara was joking. “I was going to put them on in a second,” she said, snatching her old glasses from her bag.

“I seriously doubt a single potential vote is going to see you on the way home,” Sara said.

“That’s not why I hate wearing them,” Jessica said, putting on the specs and wincing at how they seemed to make her nose stick out in the rearview mirror.

“I heard Clair Hilrey’s a patient of Dr. Baron, too,” Sara said.

“Really?” Jessica asked. The talk around campus had it that it was between Clair and her for homecoming queen. Jessica wondered. The results of the preliminary homecoming court vote wouldn’t be announced until the next day, Friday. Wouldn’t it be ironic if neither of them was even elected to the court?

It would be a disaster.

Sara nodded seriously. “He’s prescribed blue-tinted contacts for her to make her eyes sparkle like the early-morning sky.”

Jessica shoved her away. “Shut up!”

Sara laughed, as did Polly, although Jessica doubted Polly felt like laughing.

They hit the road. Sara wanted to go to the bank to get money from the school account. She needed cash, she said, to pay for the band that was to play at the homecoming dance. A month earlier, acting as ASB—Associated Student Body—president, Sara had cleverly talked a local car dealer into donating a car to the school in exchange for free advertising in Tabb’s paper and yearbook. The car had been the grand prize in a raffle put on to raise money for Tabb’s extracurricular activities. The raffle had been a big success, and Sara now had several grand to put into the homecoming celebrations.

Jessica, however, did not want to go to the bank. She was getting another headache, and besides, she had someone to see. With hardly a word, she dropped both girls off at Sara’s house. Sara could always give Polly a ride home. She’d finally gotten her license back. These days Sara was always quick to help Polly out.

Things have changed.

But life goes on—Jessica knew it had to go on for her. She had mourned Alice for two months. She had gone directly home after school each day. She had spent most of her time in her room, neither listening to music nor watching TV. She had spent the time crying, and now she was sick of crying. Alice was gone. It was the most terrible of terrible things. But Jessica Hart was alive. She had to worry about her looks again, whether Bill Skater found her desirable, whether she was going to pass her next chemistry exam. She had to live. But before she could properly start on all those things, she had to heal the rift between Michael Olson and her. It was time they talked.

She had obtained his address from the phone book. She preferred seeing him at his house rather than speaking to him at school. She hardly saw him on campus, anyway. He came and he went, he said hello and he said good-bye. It was her hope that he would feel more sociable on his own turf.

With the help of a map, she located his place, parking a hundred yards up the street from the small white-stucco house. The late-afternoon sun was ducking in and out of drifting clouds. She looked around: secondhand cars leaking oil on top of broken asphalt driveways; backyards with weeds instead of pools. This wasn’t her kind of neighborhood, and she realized the truth of the matter with a mild feeling of self-loathing. Nice things meant too much to her.

His garage was open, but she didn’t see his car. She briefly wondered if he was at work, but remembered that he always took Thursdays off. She decided to wait. After pulling on a sweater, she reached for her SAT practice test book. The real test was to be a week from Saturday. With all her studying, she had only begun to score over a thousand. Compared to the average college-bound student, this was a respectable score, but next to the typical Stanford freshman—which she hoped to be this time next year—she was at the bottom of the pile. The math sections were what was killing her. She could figure out most of the problems; she simply couldn’t figure them out quickly enough.

They raise us with calculators in our hands and then take them away precisely when we need them most.

Jessica picked up a pencil and set the timer on her dashboard clock. She vowed to run through as many math tests as it took for Michael to show up.

She dozed briefly in the middle of the third round, but a couple of hours later, when Michael Olson’s beat-up Toyota pulled into his garage, she was still there. However, she did nothing but watch as he climbed out of his car and stretched in the orange evening light for a moment before disappearing inside. She remembered eight weeks earlier when he had cursed her for assuming Alice had committed suicide. And she remembered her inability to defend herself, to explain how it couldn’t have been any other way.

Suddenly she was afraid to see him. Yet she did not leave. She simply sat there, staring at his house.

“How much cash did you get?” Polly asked as Sara returned to the car from a quick stop inside the bank.

“Three grand,” Sara said, closing the door, setting down her bag, and reaching for the ignition. She never wore a seat belt. If she was going to be in a major accident, she was already convinced her car would explode in flames. She had that kind of luck. The last thing she wanted was to be tied in place. “I have to pay the band, the caterer, and that circus guy who’s renting us the canopy.”

Homecoming would be a lot different this year, Sara thought, and a lot better. She again complimented herself on insisting at the start of the year that the dance be postponed until basketball season. The delay had given her time to raise the money necessary to put on a wild celebration that everyone could enjoy for a nominal fee, rather than a stuffy party that only a few could afford.

The plan was to have the dance at the school immediately after the first home game, outside, on the practice basketball courts. When she had initially proposed the idea to the ASB council, they had all told her she was mad. “We come to this goddamn school every goddamn day,” the beautiful, bitchy vice-president Clair Hilrey had said. “We can’t stage an event as crucial as the crowning of the new queen between the peeling gym and the stinking weight room!”

Naturally, the negative reaction had only strengthened Sara’s belief she was on to something. Yet the idea had its potential problems. What if it rained that night? And equally as bad, how could they create a party atmosphere when they would be surrounded by nothing but dark?

It was then Sara had thought of renting a giant tent. What a genius! With a tent the whole school could come; everybody, whether they had a date or not. And they could decorate it any way they wanted, and have a live band with the volume turned way up. Clair had loudly booed the idea, along with every other so-called hip person on the council. But the others in the room, those who figured they wouldn’t be going to the dance, had nodded thoughtfully at the suggestion. That was enough for Sara. She hadn’t even put it to a vote—she had simply gone about making preparations.

“You were able to get all that money on your own signature?” Polly asked.

“No, it’s a joint account,” Sara said. “I needed the treasurer’s signature, too. Bill Skater signed a check for me this afternoon.”

“Before you wrote in the amount?”

“What’s your problem?” Sara snapped, before remembering she had promised herself she would be nice to Polly until Polly was fully recovered from Alice’s suicide. Polly turned away at the change in tone, nervously tugging on a bit of her hair. Except for a streak of gray that had mysteriously sprung from beside her right ear, she looked—in Sara’s truly unbiased opinion—downright voluptuous. That was what happened when fat girls got skinny. Why did anyone pay for breast implants? Probably pigging out for a few months and then going on a fast would work just as well.

“I was only asking,” Polly said defensively. “It’s not safe carrying around that much cash. It’s better to pay people with checks. That way you get a receipt, too.”

“I realize that,” Sara said patiently. “But take the band. None of them want to declare this money on their income tax. I can dangle the cash in their faces and tell them to make me an offer I can’t refuse. And they’ll make it.”

“Isn’t that against the law?”

“I don’t know. Who cares? Hey, has that engineer at your parents’ company finished designing the float?” Another plus, in Sara’s mind, of having the homecoming dance in a tent was that simply by pulling aside a flap, a special platform could be driven in for the crowning. The old custom of having the princesses cruise onto the track surrounding the football field with their papas had struck Sara as—well, old-fashioned. She had envisioned a castle float, with a central tower that the queen would ascend after the opening of the secret envelope. She had stolen the concept from a video on MTV.

“You mean Tony?” Polly said. “Yeah, he called last week. He has it all worked out. He said he can use one of the trucks at the company to build it on.”

“Great.” That was one thing she wouldn’t have to pay for.

“It’s going to have to be towed to the tent,” Polly said. “And Tony warned me that we’ll need a good driver. It’ll be hard to see, and the float won’t be real stable.”

“I’ll think of someone.”

“I don’t want to do it,” Polly said quickly.

“OK.”

“I don’t.”

“That’s fine.”

Polly nodded, relaxing. “All right.”

Sara gave her a hard look and sighed to herself. Who was she fooling? Polly was never going to get over Alice. None of them were. Sara hadn’t even told Jessica this, but she could no longer stand to be alone. Occasionally she wondered if some sick impulse would suddenly strike her, like a demon whispering in her ear. And, like Alice, she would grab a knife, or maybe a razor blade, and cut open a vein, and bleed all that blood Alice had…

But, no, she was not suicidal and never had been. She was in no hurry to leave this world. Yet she would have given a great deal to see Alice again, even for a few minutes. Two long months, and still her grief was an open wound.

Before pulling away from the bank, Sara noticed the teller had forgotten to stamp the new balance in the ASB council’s checkbook. A dash back inside remedied the situation.

On the way to Polly’s house, they talked about Polly’s guardian aunt. The poor old lady had had a mild heart attack immediately after hearing about Alice, and had only recently returned home. A nurse watched her during the day while Polly was in school, but Polly took care of her the rest of the time: cooking her food, rubbing her back, helping her to the bathroom. Sara admired Polly’s charity but didn’t understand—with the bucks Polly had—why she didn’t hire round-the-clock help. She’d get a lot more sleep that way.

After Sara dropped Polly off, she stopped by the market. Only this market wasn’t just any market. It was six miles out of her way, below par in cleanliness, and had an employee named Russ Desmond. She had asked around campus—discreetly, of course—where he worked. This would be her fourth visit to the store. The previous three times he had either been off or working in the back.

Naturally, she saw him practically every day at school, but being ASB president, she thought it beneath her dignity to go chasing after him there.

Starting in produce, her bag in her hand, she went up and down every aisle until she came to the meat section. She didn’t see him. More disappointed than she cared to admit, she was heading for the exit when she spotted him wheeling a pallet into the frozen-food section. He had on a heavy purple sweater, orange gloves, and a green wool cap that was fighting a losing battle with his bushy brown hair.

What a babe.

She didn’t know why he looked so good to her. Most girls would have thought he had too many rough edges and was too sloppy to be handsome. Actually, she thought that herself; nevertheless, she always got a rush when she saw him. She liked the curve of his powerful shoulders, the insolence in his walk. Yet she didn’t for a moment believe she was infatuated with him. She was too cool to be suffering from something so common.

She wanted him to notice her, to call her over. Acting like an ordinary, everyday shopper, she began to browse through the ice cream and Popsicles, drawing closer and closer to where he was working. She had approached within ten feet of him, and still he hadn’t seen her. Feeling mildly disgusted, she finally spoke up.

“Hey, Russ, is that you?”

He glanced up. “Sara? What are you doing here?”

She shrugged. “Shopping. You work here?”

“Yeah.”

“I didn’t know that. I come in here all the time.”

“Really? I’ve never seen you before.”

“I usually don’t stay long. In and out—you know how it is.”

“Huh.” He returned to unloading his pallet, bags of frozen carrots. “What are you looking for?”

“What?”

“What are you buying?”

“Oh—Spam.”

“Aisle thirteen, lower shelf on the right. You like Spam?”

“It’s all right.”

“I can’t stand it.”

Neither could she. “I like the cans.” Brilliant. She cleared her throat. “So, what’s new?”

“Nothing. What’s new with you?”

“Oh, just putting the homecoming dance together. You know I’m ASB president?”

“I remember you said that, yeah.”

“It’s in a couple of weeks.”
Hint, hint, hint
. She didn’t exactly have a date yet. Actually, no guy had even spoken to her in the last month. For all he cared. He finished with his carrots and went on to broccoli. She added, “I’m going.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, I have to. I open the envelope that announces the new queen.” She paused, swallowed. “Are you going?”

“Nah. What for?”

“To have fun. We’re going to have a neat band. They’re called the Keys. I heard them a few days ago. They play great dance music. Do you like to dance?”

“Sometimes, yeah. When I’m drunk enough.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. Booze wasn’t allowed at the dance. She stood there feeling totally helpless for the next minute, reading and rereading the label on a bag of frozen cauliflower—“Ingredients: Cauliflower”—while Russ finished with his vegetables. He began to collect his empty boxes, stacking them on his pallet. “I’ve got to go in back, he said.

“OK.”

He didn’t invite her to accompany him, but she followed him anyway. Fortunately, there wasn’t anybody else in the back, not beside the frozen-food freezer. Sara could hardly believe the cold rushing out of it or how Russ could work inside it. He began to restock his pallet, his breath white and foggy. He was a superb worker. He never stopped moving. He had excellent endurance. She remembered something she wanted to bring up.

“I hear you’re going to be in the CIF finals,” she said. It was extremely difficult to even qualify for the CIF—California Interscholastic Federation—finals.

“It’s no big deal,” he said, going farther into the freezer, disappearing around several tall stacks of boxes. She took a tentative step inside, feeling goose-flesh form instantly. She noted the huge ax strapped to the inside of the frost-coated door.

“Sure it is,” she called, hanging the strap of her bag around a dolly handle, cupping her fingers together. She couldn’t even see him.

“Lots of people qualify,” he called.

“But I bet you win,” she called back.

“What?”

For some reason, shouting in the dark—particularly when you were repeating yourself—had always struck Sara as one of the most ridiculous things a human being could do. “I said, you’ll probably win!”

“That shows how much you know about cross-country,” he said, reappearing with his arms laden with boxes.

That sounded like an insult, and here she was trying to compliment him. “I know something about it,” she said. She had been closely following his performances in the papers. He had won his last ten races, improving his time with each meet.

“Sure,” he said.

“I do.”

“What do you know?”

“That if you break fourteen minutes, you’ll win.”

He snorted. “Of course I’d win if I broke fourteen minutes. But the finals are down in Newport, on the hilliest course in the city.
Fifteen
minutes will be tough.” He dumped his boxes on the pallet, muttering under his breath, “I’m not going to win.”

“Don’t say that. If you say that, you won’t win.”

“Who cares?”

“What do you mean, who cares? Don’t you care?”

“Nope.”

She had begun to shiver. Another minute in there and her hair would turn white. But at the same time she could feel her blood warming—or was it her temper? “What are you saying?”

“That I don’t care.” He pulled off his gloves, rubbed his hands together. “It’s just a goddamn race.”

“A goddamn race? It’s the city championship! If you win, they’ll give you a goddamn scholarship!”

He shook his head. “I ain’t going to college. I can’t stand going to high school.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said, disgusted. “Here you have this tremendous natural talent that can open all kinds of doors for you and you’re just going to throw it away? What the hell’s the matter with you?”

He looked at her, frowned. “Why are you always shouting at me?”

“Shouting at you? When have I shouted at you? I haven’t even spoken to you in two whole months!”

“Yeah, but the last time you did, you were shouting at me.”

“Well, maybe you need someone to shout at you. Get you off your ass. The reason you don’t care is because you drink too much. You’re seventeen years old and you’re already a drunk!”

“I’m eighteen.”

“You’re still a drunk. I’ve seen you run. If you didn’t down a case of beer every evening, you’d probably be in the Olympics.”

He didn’t like that. “Who are you to tell me what I should do? You’re as screwed up as anybody.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

He stood. “You’re insecure. Every time I talk to you—it doesn’t matter for how long—you tell me you’re the president of the school. All right, I heard you the first time. And who cares? I don’t. I don’t care if you’re the Virgin Mary.”

Sara couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Insecure? She was the most together teenager since Ann Landers and Dear Abby had gone to school. She was so far out that she had been nominated for school president when she wasn’t even running—Well, that was only one example of how far out she was. There were dozens of others. “Who are you calling a virgin?” she demanded.

He laughed. Why was he laughing? She’d give him something to laugh about. She stepped forward, shoved him in the chest. “Shut up!” she shouted.

He laughed harder. “That’s it. That’s your problem, Sara. You don’t need a date for homecoming, you need a good roll in the hay.”

Sara clenched her fists, her fingernails digging into her palms. She clenched them so tightly she knew she’d be able to see the marks the next day. If she hadn’t done this, she probably would have ripped his face off. Only one other time in her life had she ever felt so humiliated: the last time she had spoken to Russ, at the end of their ill-fated date. She sucked in a breath, taking a step away from him rather than toward him. “What makes you think I don’t have a date?” she asked softly.