Dedication (6 page)

“Every man’s got his patience and here’s where mine ends.”
I shake my hips from side to side as we speed in a circle around the gym at the September Skate Social. Dancing one wheel in front of the other, I spin about and glide confidently backward until I lock with Laura’s wide eyes. Seeing the bead of sweat on the tip of her up-sloped nose, I spin around Tom Finkle attempting to robot dance and take her hand. Her damp fingers clutch mine as her blond curls jerk back and forth with her geisha steps.

“You’re so good at this,” she says in tense puffs, clutching my arm with her other hand for additional support.

“First time I’ve ever
not
hated being in here!” I arc my arm on the beat at the gym walls dotted with a few halfhearted construction paper leaves and pilgrim hats courtesy of the PTA.

“Help me off so we can talk without being run over?”

Nodding, I guide her through the whirring wall of jeans and mock turtlenecks to the unfolded bleachers. “Easy.” I help her down.

“Look,” JenniferOne nudges her front wheels into my lower back. I follow her pointed finger jutting over my shoulder to where Stephanie Brauer has glided in wearing yet another brand-new Limited sweater. “It’s insane.”

“I wish my dad bought me new shit every time he missed a weekend,” Michelle says from behind us as she unlaces her skate and taps it against the bleacher, a tiny grain of gravel tumbling out.

“Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!”

“Tip forward to brake: Brake!” I cry as Maggie comes barreling into us. Laura and I grab her waist as she ragdolls over our shoulders into JenniferOne’s lap.

“This is
bullshit,”
she gripes as we flip her around to sit between us. “The only person who doesn’t look totally retarded out there is you,” she accuses me.

“I used to take lessons with my dad when I was little, on ice.”

“Why can’t we just have dances, like a normal school?” Laura unclips her rhinestone earrings, her lobes indented with red rectangles.

“Middle school graduation dance in May,” JenniferOne says as she peels off her nail polish. “It’s gonna be awesome.”

“And the best is everyone goes with dates. It’s a couple-thing,” JenniferTwo says like she’s supposed to be at a couple-thing right now and her parents just dropped her off at the wrong gym.

As though the DJ overheard her, the electronic drumbeat of “Lady in Red” comes on and half the lights flicker off. I lean into Laura and make fluttery eyes. She returns with kissy fish lips.

“Girls’ choice,” the DJ’s voice breaks into the song. Everyone looks around the emptying wood floor, charged with held breath.

“You should ask someone.” Laura nudges my shoulder.

“No way,” I murmur, watching the It Girls glide carelessly over to their chosen, bracelet-laden arms outstretched. My stomach drops.

“Holy crap. That’s Kristi Lehman asking your Jake Sharpe,” Maggie murmurs as a hand takes his sweatshirt sleeve.

“Not mine,” I say automatically. But I don’t look away. We’re all watching. As a girl, The Girl, just goes right up and grabs him.

“Sure his parents didn’t pay you to move their son up the food chain?” JenniferOne quips.

They round toward our end of the bleachers, slipping in and out of pockets of light and shadow. Jake, ever so slightly moving his lips along with the song, Kristi popping a bubble and sucking it back in, her white-blond hair sprayed into a banana clip. As they move past us my eyes are caught by his free hand, thin fingers slightly curved, moving in time with the synthesizer.

“Are you so jealous?” Michelle Walker sticks her head between us, her Impulse body spray clogging my throat.

“You must be. Kristi can be pretty slutty.” Jeanine leans over from where she sits with the head-banger clique as Kristi releases Jake to his It friends. “I’d be jealous.”

I try to tap my wheels like I could give a crap, meanwhile allowing myself in the half-darkness to study this boy who has gone from nobody in stupid Jams to top tier in under a year, which is fine—I mean, whatever. But now to become a couple-thing right in front of me….

The lights flicker back to full wattage as the opening bars of “Lean on Me” drown out the last beats of the slow song. As if hearing a whistle blow, the boys blast out of the moving circle, skating where they please, owning the floor, snapping bra straps as they fly past. What would it be like to be so…not-caring?

At the reggae bridge Kristi awkwardly tries to move her hips in a way she must think looks Jamaican and just as the boys are about to laugh Jake loops around her and smiles. She grabs the hem of his shirt and trails him to the drinks table.

Yes. It would be amazing to have a boy beside me. Everyone watching as I’m transformed from a desk-scaler into someone enviable, fabulous, free. It would be…

“Well,” Jeanine scowls, her split-end inspection completed. “Are you?”

I nod. I am.

Laura tiptoes in her ankle-socks, pivoting side to side under the buzzing lights of the Lord & Taylor dressing room. I automatically do the same, pulling the almost extra foot of bodice satin behind me, struggling to fist it all tightly together where the zipper drapes away from my spine. “You don’t think it looks just like the new wallpaper in my dining room?” she asks, lifting her boobs up in the snug corset.

“Uh, no.” I clench the tent with my elbows while I hook the flat fan bow over her butt. “It’s really pretty.” I drop my heels and step back to lean against the Formica wall. “Who are we going with that we have to be so tall?”

“Katie?” Dad beckons from where he’s trapped on the threshold and I hoist up the voluminous folds to follow his voice. “There you are.” He steps back into the racks of evening suits crowding the dressing room entrance, holding an armful of V-neck sweaters, corduroys dangling off his elbows and a peach dress swinging from his hooked finger. “I found
this.
Any good?”

“I’ll give it a whirl.”

“Great.” He looks me up and down. “Because I know you’re fond of large and shapeless, but I think you may be rather taking it to extremes with that one.”

“I know, Daddy. It’s headed for the reject pile.”

“Your mother’s rifling the sales racks in the men’s department. We’re going to play Lions Romans Christians with these jumpers. Holler if you need a third and fourth opinion.”

I point at my head, my sign for him to smooth his hair, which has duck fluffed in the mall static. Carrying the peach candidate, I find Laura flopped on the carpeted pedestal in a pitiful flowery pouf.

“Who do you think I should ask?”

“Michael J. Fox?”

“In school,” she completes our routine as I turn sideways, wondering what I’d look like with cleavage.

“You gonna ask Jake?”

“Uh,
no.”

“Don’t get defensive.” She lifts her palms. “And your mom’s busty—they’re coming.”

I crouch on the floor in front of her. “I can’t ask Jake. It took forever for all that to die down. Besides, he’s always hanging out with the Kristi girls. Are you asking Rick?”

Her nose wrinkles.

“So, there you go.” I stand back up.

“What do you think of Craig?”

“Craig, your-lab-partner-Craig?”

“Yeah.” She pulls the scrunchie out of her fading perm, shaking the limp waves to her shoulders as she slips the burgundy velvet onto her wrist. “I think you guys would look cute together. He’s tall and blond. You’re tall and brunette.”

“Aw.” I pat the top of her head and, momentarily forgotten, the bodice drops to my waist. My hands fly to my bare chest. “Yeah, both of us and our grandbabies could get in here.”

She stands, taking the peach one off its hook, and turns me toward my stall. “Try this. I think it’ll be really pretty on you. Plus it has straps. Which maybe is a good idea.”

“So, you’re admitting I have no boobs.”

“I’m saying your boobs would be extra flattered by straps.” She smiles sweetly before shutting my door. “So, what about Craig?” she calls.

I think about him as I kick off the heavy satin and unhook the hanger straps of the Gunny Sax. “He’s cute, I guess.”

“And
nice.
And
smart.”

I step into the scratchy crinoline. “I just never really thought about him that way.”

“What way? The Jake Sharpe way?”

I swivel my head around the door. “Yes.”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Katie, we can’t let everyone get boyfriends but us just because of Rick Swartz and Jake Sharpe. We have to move on.” She looks down to double wrap the scrunchie around her wrist. “I’m asking Randy Bryson.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I think his eyes will look good with these flowers.” She lifts her skirt and relays it gracefully around her legs. “So get that dress zippered and let’s move on already.”

I concentrate every ounce of my energy on the one hair that refuses to lie flat with the others sprayed and twisted in the peach satin bow clip. I’m about to rip the flyaway right out of my head when the door to the bathroom opens and loud music pours in, followed by Kristi Lehman.

She pushes into a stall door, tugging layers of white lace in behind her. “You’re here with Craig, right?” she calls out.

“Yup!” I stop with my hand on the girls’ room door, not sure if she’s finished talking to me, not wanting to slight the Queen.

“He’s nice. He used to live down the street.”

“Yeah, yes. He’s very nice,” I say, though he is not very anything else as far as I can tell. He checked the
yes
box on a note during Social Studies and here I am with a boy who has, other than smiling shyly, said nothing but, “Please pass the rolls,” since 7
P
.
M
.

The stall swings open and she steps out, adjusting her strapless dress over her infamously large breasts. “Yeah, I’m here with Jake. Oh, crap, you like him, right?” So I’m told. “You don’t hate me, do you?” Answer irrelevant, she turns to the mirror to reapply her lipstick. “We’re going out now. You know, officially.”

I take this like all ten of her Lee press-ons have just lodged in my rib cage. “That’s great! No, I—that’s great.”

She pauses for a moment in the mirror, the ridged silver tube poised above her lips, studying me in the reflection. “You’re sweet.”

“You guys look really good together,” I hear myself add. “Well, have fun!”

I shove back into wailing guitar and walk straight to the drinking fountain. Leaning over, I press my hand against my chest to keep any of the pervs from staring down my dress and pretend like I’m getting a drink, but instead just watch the water circle into the drain. So Jake Sharpe has gone all the way to the top. Without so much as a word to me.

I release the metal button and straighten, broadening my shoulders so that the whole of the cutout back is exposed, and step around the huddle of blazer-clad teachers to look for Craig among the boys whipping each other into a frenzy with their liberated ties. The staff quarters in
Dirty Dancing,
this is not.

Immediately giving up, I find Laura and the other girls who’ve also given up, dancing by themselves in a circle by the picked-over buffet. Laura tugs me to her and cups my ear.

“Jake Sharpe told Randy your dress looks hot.” She pulls back to study my face, holding down both my arms as if I might fly away.

“Seriously?” I scream through the music. She nods emphatically.

“But I just heard he’s going out with Kristi.”

Laura shrugs, her drop puffed sleeves lifting and lowering. I look over the tan line on her bared shoulder to see Kristi return to her gaggle, all of them in flounces of shiny lacy white. As Benjy careens into Kristi, she tugs the tie from his hand and flicks him, cleverly pulling her girlfriends into the frenzy. Then Jake comes up behind her and wraps his arms around her waist, lifting her up, her legs bent. She flails, waving the tie like a gymnastic ribbon as her giggling friends join the boys in their roughhousing.

“Dance!” Laura commands me back.

I shake off any momentary urge to be locking eyes with him, a tie whipped between us like a bullfight cape. My dress is hot. I am…hot. I AM HOT! Giddy, I throw my head around with utter abandon, walking like an Egyptian. A
hot
Egyptian.

Laura and I descend the hill into town surrounded by the lulling buzz of sunshine-fueled cicadas. Given our summer of serial sleepovers, we’re bleary eyed as our laceless Keds scuff the pavement in unconscious unison. Our gas-station sunglasses doing little to cut the glare, we both squint in the flat noon brightness.

I replay the last few minutes of
Sixteen Candles
in my mind’s eye, my chest rising as I imagine what it must be like to sit atop a glass table while the Hot Guy of Your Dreams leans over to give you a birthday kiss. “Think high school’ll be like that?”

“Like what? Shit!” Laura’s hand goes flying to her purse. “Thought I forgot the video. Sorry, keep going.”

“Like, the hot guy you like finds out, and then just shows up, and wants to kiss you,” I mull as we cut across the school’s playing field.

She lifts her ponytail and pats her hand across the back of her damp neck. “I’ll say a prayer every night if you will.”