In the Spotlight (24 page)

My mind whirred, trying to throw off the fog induced by the not so virgin margaritas. I watched as Harlow undid a few more buttons on her shirt and then folded the menu and placed it on the table.

I stood up and glanced wildly around the table. My water pitcher was sitting in front of me, so I picked it up. I knew what I was going to do to stop Harlow from embarrassing Grandma and Duke on their special day.

"ʺHey, Harlow,"ʺ I said rather loudly. "ʺThe waitress hasn'ʹt filled your water glass yet. Here, have some of my water."ʺ

And with that, I leaned across the table and dumped water all over Harlow. It soaked her shirt and skirt. She gasped and stared at me like she couldn'ʹt believe what I’d just done. Behind me, Hayley also gasped and then giggled. The entire table was quiet. "ʺHannah!"ʺ Mom admonished. Before she could say anything else, Harlow jumped up and sprinted to where I was sitting.

"ʺRun,"ʺ Hayley cried, shoving me in the opposite direction of Harlow'ʹs advance.

I didn'ʹt have time to get very far, though, because, dang, Harlow was fast. She grabbed me by the shoulder and held on tightly with one hand. Before I knew what happened, Harlow hauled off and punched me in the face. My eye to be exact. I winced in pain and crumpled back to my chair. Dad jumped up and grabbed Harlow.

That'ʹs when all the yelling started. Harlow was furious at me so she was screaming about that. Then Dad started screaming at Harlow about hitting me. Mom came over and she and Hayley helped me to the bathroom where we looked at my eye in the hideous fluorescent lights. It already looked terrible. Hayley went to the bar to get a washcloth full of ice, while Mom started patting the bruise with a cold paper towel.

"ʺThis is going to be a real shiner,"ʺ she said. "ʺHannah, what were you thinking?"ʺ

Tears were still rolling down my face as I replied, "ʺHarlow was going to embarrass Grandma and Duke. I just couldn'ʹt let her do that. It was all I could think of."ʺ

"ʺShe deserved it,"ʺ Hayley said, coming back into the bathroom. "ʺI totally saw what she was doing, Mom. She was unbuttoning her freaking blouse. You know she was mad because Duke was paying attention to Grandma and not to her. She was going to make Duke look like an unfaithful guy. Hannah totally has balls for doing something about it."ʺ

"ʺDon'ʹt use language like that,"ʺ Mom chided.

"ʺWhat? Balls?"ʺ

I took the ice from Hayley, trying not to laugh. Maybe Grandma was a little right about Mom being sort of a prude. Mom was still frowning at Hayley over her language choice when she said, “I don’t approve of what you did, but thank you for thinking of Grandma. I don’t suppose many of us have been thinking about Grandma’s happiness above our own lately. Well, I better get back out there and assess the damage.”

I pulled the ice away from my eye and stood up to look in the mirror. It was worse than I thought. The area around my eye was pink and puffy already, and the discoloration was starting.

Tears pricked my eyes. "ʺThis is awful,"ʺ I sniffled. "ʺHow can I go to prom looking this way?"ʺ

Immediately I felt so stupid. When had I become the girl who cared about how she looked so much that something as silly as a black eye would make me feel ugly? Hayley grimaced telling me that she understood.

"ʺLook, I can fix it well enough for pictures,"ʺ she promised.

"ʺAnd Josh won'ʹt care. You know that. He thinks you’re gorgeous no matter what. I'ʹll bet he'ʹs even proud of you for standing up for yourself, and for Grandma and Duke."ʺ

She was probably right. Still...I had her take a picture of my eye with the camera on my phone, and I sent it to Josh as a text with a brief explanation of what had happened. While I waited for his reply, I stuck the ice back on my eye in hopes that it would at least keep some of the swelling down. Hayley stayed with me. We talked about the time line for getting ready the next day, and I started to feel excited again.

Josh texted me back pretty quickly, and Hayley was right, he was proud of me for standing up to Harlow. He even said he wished that he could have seen her furious and drenched like a wet poodle with Dad hauling her off. Not that I had even seen that part, considering Dad had hauled her off while my eyes were slammed shut in intense pain.

Finally, Hayley and I peeked out the bathroom door.

Everything seemed calm again in the private dining room so we went back. Harlow was conspicuously gone, and everyone was trying to maintain the appearance that everything was normal. It almost made me want to laugh. When we sat back down, Grandma clinked her fork against her glass to get our attention.

She stood up and said, "ʺI want to make a toast. To my courageous granddaughter, Hannah, who only had our best interests at heart when she disrupted the party. It turns out that she isn’t jealous of my amazing sex life, rather she sees the beauty of my love for Duke. Thank you, Hannah, for truly making this a special day. I also wanted to say that Duke and I would be honored if you’d consider singing at our wedding in addition to taking care of my beloved little maltipoo."ʺ

An upgrade. I laughed and agreed. How could I say no to that? The speech was a little bit embarrassing, but I felt the intended sweetness behind her words. So that’s what I tried to focus on rather than her overt references to my lack of a sex life.

The next day, my eye looked worse. It was black with little rims of purple and blue around the outside. I had no idea how on Earth Hayley intended to fix it for pictures without making me look like a clown.

I’d only been in one other fight. In the third grade, Lucy Carson had decked me because we liked the same boy. It had happened at lunchtime. We had assigned seats, and I sat next to a boy named Nathan Jones, who was in the other third grade class. I never would have known him otherwise. He wasn'ʹt super nice to me, but a couple of times a week he would share the cookies his mom packed in his lunch, and I would give him half of whatever sandwich Mom sent me. Plus all the girls in third grade thought he was super cute, so I thought he was super cute too.

Sometime after Christmas break, Lucy decided that she was in love with Nathan, and she announced that the two of them were going to get married. I didn'ʹt know what jealousy was yet, but I suppose that’s what I felt when Nathan started saving his cookies for Lucy to share on the playground. Then one day everything changed. Nathan declared that he was going to marry me because my mom packed better sandwiches than Lucy'ʹs mom.

Lucy had been furious and jumped me out on the playground. She gave me a bloody nose, which got me boatloads of sympathy from the school nurse. I got to go home early that day, and Mom took me out for ice cream while I described my traumatic recess experience. By the next day, nothing remained of Lucy'ʹs fury. My nose looked normal. Lucy and I were friends again. And Nathan had moved on to another girl whose mom sent soup for lunch.

Harlow'ʹs swing was good, but her love of theatrics was really what helped her inflict harm on me. She hated to look like a fool, and I thwarted her plan. Double whammy for me. I was just glad she only got one punch off on me. There was no telling what would have happened otherwise. And in a way, it was sort of cool to have a battle wound from doing my good deed. At least I had a story to tell.

Getting out of bed saved me from wallowing in the event too. I had a lot to get done before we started getting ready for prom. Our bags had to be packed for Las Vegas so that they could be stashed in Josh’s car for the sprint to the airport to catch the red eye. Mom and Dad were leaving after they took our pictures.

Josh'ʹs parents had promised to follow us to the airport to make sure we got there safely. Mike was bringing his bag over to our house later, and we would stash them in Josh'ʹs car. Josh was in charge of the tickets. I was in charge of keeping time.

I hadn'ʹt actually had a chance to process how much fun it was going to be to go dance and goof around with friends and then make a mad dash to the airport to catch a flight to Vegas. Who gets to do stuff like that in real life?

After a quick breakfast, Hayley announced that it was time to start getting ready and shooed me into the shower. We weren'ʹt wasting money on a salon to style our hair, so we were going to take a shot at doing each other'ʹs own. As the suds drained down the tub, I let all the stress of the past few months wash away.

After Hayley took her shower, we set up shop in her room.

We sat on her thick plush carpet poring over magazines to see what styles we liked. Hayley wanted an up-‐-do, but I couldn'ʹt decide. My hair had gotten really long over the semester as I hadn'ʹt cut it at all during the musical. You never cut your hair during a show at our school if you were a girl, and boys had to try to keep their hair exactly the same the whole time, or else you risked freaking out Ms.

Bard. Then came the lectures about costume design and how hair was an integral part of costume design. So anyway, my hair was really long. An up-‐-do seemed like a lot of work to me, so I finally decided on something that was half up and half down. Hayley claimed she could make it look even better than the magazine.

Hayley had a lot of confidence in herself.

By the time we were done with our Barbie party as Hayley deemed it because that was exactly what we used to do with our Barbie dolls, we both looked remarkably good. My black eye was still visible but looked a whole lot less vicious.

I went back to my room to finish packing. I’d made a list earlier in the week so I’d be sure not to forget anything. But as I sifted through the contents of my bag, everything seemed wrong. I hadn’t counted on the fact that it would be so hard to go on vacation with my newly minted boyfriend.

By the time Josh and Mike arrived to take pictures next to the fireplace in our living room, I was a nervous wreck. Hayley was a calm and smooth as chocolate pudding. She let Mike kiss her cheek and slip her corsage over her wrist. His boutonniere was on before I could even blink. Josh lingered too long over a rather chaste kiss on my lips, so Mom actually cleared her throat. I stabbed him with the pin from the boutonniere. We did a strange little dance over which wrist to put the corsage on.

After pictures, we all piled into Josh’s car and drove to school. Once we were there, we were essentially locked in until they let us leave at eleven o’clock. We had to eat dinner in the decorated cafeteria. Then the actual dance was in the gym. I’d heard that at least the dessert would be good. Cheesecake.

Hayley and Mike immediately gravitated toward a huge group of friends with promises to find us at the end of the night.

Josh and I looked around uncomfortably for a table with people we knew. And liked. We finally located Kaylee and Maggie and their dates.

While they were serving the appetizer, Josh leaned over and whispered, “Relax. It’s just a dance.”

I blushed. “I’ve never been to a dance before.”

Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. Freshman year I had gone stag to the Homecoming dance with Kaylee. We’d sat at a table all night drinking flat coke and not being able to talk to each other because the music was so loud. I didn’t count that experience as a dance. I just counted it as an unfortunate night in my high school career and filed it away with other bad memories.

“We eat, we dance, we kiss.” Josh grinned. “Easy as cheesecake.”

I laughed. “In that order?”

Josh leaned closer. “Not exactly in that order,” he said as he kissed me.

A teacher tapped Josh on the shoulder, and we jumped apart giggling. “We'ʹll have to be stealthier later.” Josh winked.

Dinner sucked. The pasta was slimy, and the chicken felt like rubber when I stuck my fork in to cut it into pieces, so I didn'ʹt even attempt to eat that. The broccoli was so limp and overcooked that one bite convinced me airplane food might actually be okay.

Dessert rocked, though. Cheesecake, as promised. Josh and I seemed to have a thing with cheesecake, and he actually fed me some of his. I didn'ʹt realize that anyone else was with us until Maggie and Kaylee started alternately giggling and gagging. I blushed, but Josh just kissed me again before leaning back with a very self-‐-satisfied grin on his face.

The dancing was what one would expect, even a little disappointing for a prom. The DJ played a lot of crap techno music and a lot of weird old country music. Josh and I danced in a little circle with Kaylee and Maggie and their dates to all of the fast music. We swayed in time with the slow songs. Those were my favorites because I was able to lay my head on his chest and inhale his intoxicating scent. During those dances, we snuck little kisses.

Before I knew it the dance was over, and we were sprinting to the car with Mike and Hayley to meet Josh’s parents at a McDonald’s on the edge of town for the forty-‐-five minute drive to the airport. Josh and Mike grabbed food while we waited for Josh’s parents to arrive.

“Get something,” Josh insisted. “You’ll thank me later.

Dinner was nasty and you know it.”

“I am sort of hungry,” Hayley admitted.

We both agreed to eat. Just as we had placed our order, Josh’s parents pulled in, and the nerves jumped up in my stomach.

I was going on vacation to Las Vegas with my boyfriend! With my boyfriend! And yes, it was for my grandmother’s wedding. And yes, my parents would be there. But still, we were going to Las Vegas. We grabbed our food and hurried to the car.

I ate my fries and fruit and yogurt parfait quickly, which only made my stomach hurt worse. Josh’s parents saw us off, and then we were rushing through check-‐-in and security. We made it to the gate with time to spare. It was well past midnight by then, and we were all a little slaphappy. A song from the musical came on over the airport speakers, and we all jumped up and started singing and doing the choreography. The smattering of other people in the waiting area gave us either amused smiles or annoyed glances, but we were too giddy to care.

By the time we got on the plane, we were starting to droop. I put my head on Josh’s shoulder and fell fast asleep before the plane even left the runway. I woke up to Josh gently shaking me. It was still the middle of the night and my extended nap had left me disoriented. But not so confused that I figured out that I probably had rancid morning breath, and I had probably drooled all over Josh’s arm, and my snoring had probably kept him awake.