The Poison Apples (21 page)

“It's really your favorite book?” I asked. My nervousness was ebbing away and actual curiosity was taking over.

“Yeah. I've read it like seven times. And I
love
Walt Whitman.”

I looked straight into his eyes and smiled. “Weird.”

Suddenly he leapt up out of his seat. “Shoot. I forgot to give Jamal back his iPod. I gotta go.” He kissed Reena on top of her head, eliciting an indignant “ew!” and then he darted away.

Even though I felt as if I'd just been inside a dream, I attempted to act normal. “I didn't know your brother was a big reader,” I told Reena.

“Yeah, yeah. He's always—”

“Did he say
Jamal
?” Alice interrupted.

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Pradeep is friends with Jamal Chapman?”

“I guess.”

Alice stared at Reena, her mouth open. “You didn't tell me.”

Reena's fork clattered down to the table. “You are such a psychopath! I didn't know until
five minutes ago
that you had a crush on Jamal Chapman!”

“Shh!” Alice shrieked.

I stood up. We were all starting to go a little crazy. Maybe the high altitude was affecting our brain chemistry. I headed over to the buffet table and started spooning steaming lumps of roast beef and potatoes onto my plate. I looked to my right. There was Pradeep again. Helping himself to a generous portion of butterscotch pudding.

“Dessert for dinner,” he commented.

“Mm-hm.” I nodded and, wielding a pair of silver tongs, attempted to pick up some Brussels sprouts and deposit them on my plate. They fell onto the white tablecloth, making a horrible little thump.

“You gonna be at the dance tonight, Miller?” Pradeep asked. He pointed to a banner hanging above the entrance to the dining hall.
WINTER WONDERLAND BALL
, it read,
FRIDAY NIGHT, 9:00 PM
.

I nodded. “Um. Right. The dance. Uh … well … I'm not like a really big dancer or anything.”

He shrugged. “Well, me neither. But it'd be nice to see you there.” He awkwardly patted me on the shoulder and then walked away, joining a table of laughing juniors and seniors.

It'd be nice to see you there.
I kept repeating that to myself while I stood, frozen in place, over the steaming tray of Brussels sprouts.

Was it the high altitude?

Or was Pradeep Paruchuri interested in me?

*   *   *

The three of us
lay on our three red beds, swinging our socked feet off the edges of our beds and staring at the ceiling.

“Dances are stupid,” Reena said finally. “They're so … adolescent.”

There was a long pause.

“But we
are
adolescents,” Alice said.

“I just wish they could have come up with a more grown-up activity.”

“Like what?” I asked.

Reena crossed her foot over her knee, tucked her hands behind her head, and thought for a while. “Fine,” she said after a while. “I don't know. We'll go to the stupid dance.”

Alice sat up and clapped her hands. “Yay! It'll be so much fun! We'll all dress up!”

My stomach sank. I didn't have anything to wear. Well, that wasn't true. I'd brought the awful orange maid-of-honor dress Candy had made me wear to the wedding.

And Volume XI of the Oxford English Dictionary.

But you can't wear the OED to a dance.

Alice peered over at me from her bed. “What are you gonna wear, Mol?”

“Uh … just this, like, hideous orange puffy thing.”

“You don't like it?

I shook my head. “Whatever. I'm fine.” A complete and total lie.

Alice gave me a long look. “Hmm. Hold on a sec…” She leapt off the bed and ran over to her suitcase. “Just try something on for me, okay?”

An hour later, the three of us were standing in front of the mirror, our arms around one another's shoulders.

Reena was wearing a crimson red strapless minidress with matching high heels and lipstick. Her hair was swept up in a messy bun, and she'd sprinkled—to my shock and awe—tiny bits of red glitter over her entire head, so in certain lights her black hair literally sparkled.

In keeping with her all-black-clothing-all-the-time theme, Alice was wearing a black peasant dress with embroidered flowers around the collar and little embroidered vines around the cap sleeves. She wore pale pink lip gloss and a shimmering of gray powder over her eyes.

And then there was me.

Alice had lent me one of her mother's old dresses. It was maybe the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me. Alice had saved it from her mother's closet just before her dad and R. cleaned out the brownstone in Brooklyn Heights and threw everything away. “This was her favorite dress,” Alice told me. “She always wore it when I was a kid. It reminds me of her.”

The dress did fit me perfectly. It reached my calves, so I didn't look dowdy or like I was trying too hard. It was made out of a soft, simple cotton, but leading up to the high collar was a line of tiny brass buttons—“Very neo-Victorian,” Reena had informed me. The sleeves were ever-so-slightly puffed, and they tapered out just before my elbows, making my arms look unusually slender.

I made eye contact with my reflection and then, not able to help myself, I smiled. Reena had insisted on applying “just a touch” of mauve shadow to my eyelids, and wielding a beige stick of foundation, Alice had pinned me to the bed and covered up a few of my worst pimples.

I looked good.

“We look good,” Reena announced.

Alice blushed and grinned, then looked around the room. “Wait a second. Where's Kristen? I haven't seen her in like three hours.”

Reena shrugged. “Who cares? The dance already started. Let's go now.”

We descended the stairs. The dining room had been completely transformed in the two hours that had passed since dinner. Tinsel and glass icicles hung from the chandeliers, and mountains of cotton were piled up in the corners, simulating snowdrifts. The lights were dimmed to a low, pinkish hue that reminded me of the times when I'd wake up in the middle of the night in North Forest and know, just from looking at the color of the sky out of my bedroom window, that there'd been a snowstorm. A dozen or so people had started slow dancing, but most of the students were lined up against the walls, murmuring nervously to one another.

“Ew,” Reena commented as we paused in the doorway. “
So
cheesy.”

Clearly this was nothing compared with the dances at Beverly Hills High. On the other hand, it was the most beautiful dance I'd ever been to. The North Forest High dances were always held in the gymnasium under a broken disco ball and usually involved shaving cream attacks on underclassman.

Alice and Reena and I made our way over to an empty section of wall and tried to look like we weren't obsessively scoping everyone else out. Or at least Alice and I did. Reena, confident as always, let her eyes pass critically over the room, and then narrated her impressions to us while we leaned against the wall and stared at our hands.

“Oh my God. Look at Millie Fitch.
Look
at her.”

Alice and I refused to look at her.

“Her dress is so short you can see her butt, I swear to God. Oh, no. Judah Lipston is wearing a purple tie. And I think it's a clip-on … wow. Rebecca Saperstein must have spent like three thousand dollars on her dress and she still looks incredibly strange. Sad. But … but … you guys … Jules Squarebrigs-Farroway is walking over to her. I think he's gonna ask her to dance. Yup. It's happening. Man. She's had a crush on that guy since their sophomore year, apparently. Well, good for her. Wow. They're actually dancing.
So
awkward. Anyway.”

Abruptly Reena stopped her monologue.

“Keep going,” Alice whispered.

Reena shook her head. “I can't.”

We both looked at her. Tears were brimming around the edges of her perfectly made-up eyes.

“Reen?” I asked. “Are you…?” I couldn't even say the word. I'd never seen Reena cry before. Or even come close to crying.

Reena wiped the tears from her eyes with her red fingernails. “I'm fine. I'm fine. I just realized … um…”

Alice rested her palm on Reena's shoulder. We waited for her to continue.

“I just realized,” she said, gulping a little, “that I'm always, like, standing on the sidelines and criticizing everybody.”

“That's okay,” I said, “that's what great artists do.”

“But I'm not an artist.”

She had a point.

“It's just…” She tucked a tendril of hair behind her ear and sighed shakily. “I just … I've never had a boyfriend. Like, I've kissed people, but I've never had a boyfriend.”

“Well, neither have we,” Alice said. “We're all in the same boat here.”

“I've never even kissed anyone,” I said cheerfully.

Reena gawked at me. “Oh, my God. That's terrible.”

“Reen,” Alice chided her.

“Sorry,” Reena said. “I just wonder if … like, if I'm really honest with myself … if sometimes I make fun of people who make me jealous. It's just … look.” She gestured toward the dance floor. “My instinct is to make fun of all those people, but the truth is, they really look like they're having a good time.”

We all looked. She was right. Couples were swaying together, smiling together, whispering to each other, putting their heads on each other's shoulders. Rebecca Saperstein looked like she was in seventh heaven. And it all just seemed so foreign and unattainable. Like all those people knew something I didn't—like they'd learned some secret language or code used to communicate desire, mutual attraction, and romance. I didn't understand how you could like someone, how they could like you back, and then how one of you could work up the guts to tell the other one. It just seemed like a confluence of statistical impossibilities.

Alice slung her arms around our shoulders and sighed. “Romance,” she said, “is just something that happens to Other People. Never me.”

Reena and I nodded.

“Totally,” I said. “That's just what I was thinking. And another weird thing is that—”

“Alice?” someone inquired.

Alice's arms slowly slipped from our shoulders to her sides, and I felt her temperature fall again.

Jamal Chapman was standing in front of us, wearing a gray pin-striped suit. He wore a white flower in his lapel and he looked … spectacular. He also seemed (and I couldn't understand this, since he was a senior and incredibly popular) nervous.

“Hi, Jamal,” Alice said. At least she was able to form a sentence this time.

“Would you like to dance?” he inquired.

I couldn't believe it. It was like I was inside some kind of dream. Or like I was inside one of Alice's dreams.

“Um, sure,” Alice said, blushing.

Jamal held his hand out and she took it. Then the two of them walked slowly out into the center of the dance floor. Alice put her hand on his shoulder, Jamal put his hand on her waist, and then it was just …
happening
. Like that. They were dancing. Alice had left my reality and entered the reality of Other People. All within ten seconds. I shook my head, stunned.

“Did that just happen?” I asked Reena, not taking my eyes off Jamal and Alice.

There was no response.

“Reen?”

I turned to my right. She was gone.

Confused, I spun around in a circle, looking for her. But she was nowhere to be found.

I was completely alone.

My heart thumping in my chest, I started walking around the dance floor, trying to find Reena. I pushed past crowds of my classmates, dancing, talking, drinking punch. I asked people if they'd seen her and was rewarded with apathetic shrugs. I kept going. I waded through piles of cotton balls. I grazed my head on a low-hanging fake icicle. I was starting to feel insane. Both of my friends had just disappeared. One for a boy, and one for … no reason at all. My face felt hot, and I cast my eyes around the room desperately.

“Miller? Are you okay?” Pradeep Paruchuri was standing in front of me in a blue shirt and a silky black tie.

“Pradeep.” I stopped, put my hands on my hips, and tried to catch my breath. “Um. Yeah. I'm okay. I'm just looking for Reena.”

“My sister?” He squinted out onto the dance floor. “I haven't seen her anywhere. Are you sure she's even here? She hates dances.”

“Yes, I'm sure.” I was trying to sound calm, but my voice cracked a little. “We came here together.”

“Weird. Yeah, sorry. I have no idea.” He smiled at me. “But I'm glad we ran into each other again. I wanted to talk to you.”

I stared into his big hazel eyes. “Um, yeah. Definitely.”

“It's just really nice to find someone else here at this school who actually reads for fun. It's, like, most people I know read because they have to for, like, school, not because they actually enjoy it.”

I couldn't believe it. Was Mount McKinsey Lodge a magical place? Were we all living in some kind of surreal dream? Was Pradeep Paruchuri really cornering me at the Winter Wonderland Ball and telling me he wanted to talk about books? I crossed my hands behind my back and pinched the soft part of my palm.

It hurt.

Was he going to ask me to dance?

“Anyway,” Pradeep continued, “another thing I wanted to say about
David Copperfield
was—”

He stopped short.

“What?” I said, trying to smile encouragingly.

“Um…,” his voice was fading out, and his eyes were fixed on something above and behind my right shoulder. “I … um…”

I turned around.

Kristen Diamond was walking toward us. As mysteriously as Reena had left, Kristen had appeared, and she was wearing a short dress made entirely out of tiny white feathers. Her red hair was in sausage curls that fell down her impressive chest and stopped just above her miniscule waist. Her skin glowed, her lips were parted, and her violet eyes were fixed, determinedly, on some point in the distance.