Ridiculous/Hilarious/Terrible/Cool (7 page)

The homecoming dance is
on
. Girls totter in first wearing high heels, hair straightened or poofed. Boys in jackets follow the girls. Daniel Patton slips through the front door wearing a stylish gray suit. The atrium fills with students exclaiming how hot they all look.

The lights go down, the music goes up. Girls hit the floor first, followed by the boys. Some dancers are unsure, with moves like al dente spaghetti. Others are sure.

Gwen Stefani's hit “Hollaback Girl” turns on and the girls and boys start bouncing. The dance floor takes on the appearance of a popcorn popper. Out of the popper come three girls, yanking up their fronts, heading to the bathroom. In goes a boy and girl, grinding against each other, unintentionally pinning a small boy beneath them.

Out comes a girl with her breasts spilling out of her dress, dragged by a chaperone who reprimands her for dancing too sexily. Around goes the rumor that the after-party will be at a nearby penthouse (five dollars for seniors, seven for juniors, fifteen for freshman). Out comes an arguing couple. In goes the arguing couple. Out pops a girl, dress straps offkilter, shouting,
“Agua!”

There is one girl in the middle of the floor dancing by herself. She's blond and willowy. She's wearing a slinky backless green dress. Unlike the other girls it doesn't seem as if she's performing. Boys stare at her, and give her space. She's the best dancer here.

After a few sweaty hours, the music skitters to a halt. The Homecoming King is announced and given a velvet crown to a chorus of squeals. Balloons fly up, streamers fall down, and packs of boys, arms wide and fingers pointing, shout the years of their graduating class at each other: “Oh-
eight!
” “Oh-
seven!
” “Oh-
six!
”

Then,
poof,
on go the lights, and in that unconsummated glare everyone picks up their heels and slings their jackets over their shoulders and heads back to the front door.

The solitary dancer in the backless green dress? Her name is Anais Blake. She's a senior, a ballet dancer. Every day after her third-period precalculus class, Anais leaves school and walks three blocks to the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. She takes classes there in the studio, returning to Payton two hours later. Sometimes it seems to Anais that she's living two lives.

Anais has a sweet oval face and straight blond hair the color of vanilla ice cream. She has the body of, well, a dancer. Even when she's not moving—listening to her dance instructor tell anecdotes about how it was back in Russia—she appears graceful. She stands out, just like she did at the homecoming dance. It's hard not to stand out when you are regularly the prettiest girl in a room.

When Anais was two, her mother brought her to a dance performance, and afterward Anais ran up on stage and began jumping around. Dance classes soon followed, with ballet classes starting when she was seven. For as long as Anais can remember, dancing has been her life: classes each day, performances each weekend, camp each summer. This last summer she went to dance camp in New York, at Juilliard.

After high school Anais wants to go either to Juilliard, or to the renowned ballet conservatory at Indiana University. Like any serious dancer, her dream is to join a professional company someday, though that may be a leap now. Leaping has always been Anais's favorite thing.

Walking from the studio back to school a few days after the homecoming dance, Anais unwraps the Kit Kat chocolate bar she grabbed from the jar outside the studio and talks about her dance friends and her high school friends. The differences stress her out.

Dance friends can be intense, often thinking only about dance. Anais feels comfortable with them, though, especially after a performance. They've experienced the same high together, and can reflect in its glow (she sometimes finds it hard to even talk after dancing). Dancers are crazy, but at least it's a craziness they share. She knows she's obsessed with dance. All good dancers are.

Anais's high school friends don't understand. They ask her to go out and are hurt when she says no. Anais knows she needs rest, knows she can't stay out late drinking. Her body is an instrument that must be kept in good shape. She feels guilty for not being a better friend, but angry that her friends don't empathize more. One of the few who does is Maya Boudreau. Maya is one of Anais's best friends. As a performer, Maya understands what Anais goes through. Others do not.

“They don't know what I do. Not really,” Anais says, biting into her Kit Kat bar and frowning.

She has her feet in two worlds. Dance and school. Maintaining balance between the two requires some flexibility, a certain grace. When she stops at the traffic light a block from Payton her feet are turned out perfectly.

The Chicago White Sox are in the World Series. Sox fever has infected Payton. The high school is plastered with big black-and -white signs, lettered GO WHITE SOX in the windows facing the "L.” A clothesline across the atrium is hung with white socks.

As if to celebrate the team, the skinny kid with the big ears in English is flipping his pencil particularly high today, like a cheerleader's baton, even though he's sitting next to Ms. Murphy. As class starts, the skinny kid catches every flip, though as his pencil rises higher toward the ceiling, defying gravity and common sense, it asks a series of increasingly interesting questions: How high can the pencil go, how much time before Ms. Murphy says something, how long can this last? About one minute. With a thud, the pencil falls directly into Ms. Murphy's open book.

Anthony Johnson Jr., the boy who never leaves the cafeteria, is sitting in his turtle shell jacket against the back wall of the room. He's talking with a girl. He is supposed to be in class.

Anthony's favorite word is
situation,
as in, “There was a situation with me and The Girl.” The Girl he's referring to is sitting across from him now, staring at him. As he starts to explain the situation, The Girl picks up her tray without a word and leaves. Anthony watches her go. Last year, The Girl was the girlfriend. Over the summer, things changed.

“There was a certain situation in July, know what I'm saying? ”

It started with a returned gift, a White Sox hat one size too big. Then Anthony got angry when another boy started talking to The Girl too much. Then they broke up. And though Anthony and The Girl no longer are going out, he holds out the hope that they may. They're still best friends, he says. Last
weekend he talked with her from eight in the evening until three in the morning.

“I can't
not
talk to her,” he says, looking up at the ceiling.

Anthony's situation with The Girl affects
everything
. It's the air he breathes. If it weren't for The Girl, he wouldn't come to school. He's not doing well in school as it is. He's failing his classes. Or cutting classes, like right now. Anthony is on academic probation, technically a sophomore, one year behind everyone else.