Footloose (5 page)

Well, okay, if it was a story he wanted, Ren was happy to provide. He leaned forward, too, as if he didn't want anyone else to hear. This was all for Willard's benefit. “Well, it goes without saying that they were both very flexible.” From there, Ren composed a tale that would make a football player blush—literally. Willard was rapt with attention through the whole racy story, until the point he realized it was all a joke.

“Aw, man,” Willard said. “No fair. You got me all excited and you didn't even get nowhere with them.”

“But we did dance,” Ren added wistfully. “We danced our asses off.”

Chapter 8

Andy Beamis seemed like a fair enough guy. He took one look at Ren when he pulled up to the Beamis Cotton Mill, tilted his head in a way that said, “I can work with this,” and started showing him around the place. Ren figured Andy must be really good friends with Wes, because that was the only thing that could explain why he'd even remotely consider hiring someone so clearly out of his element.

“You know how to operate pallet jacks?” Andy asked.

“Uh-uh.” He didn't even know what a pallet jack was.

“Can you work a stitching pedal?”

“I don't know,” Ren admitted. “Never seen one.”

Andy paused, as if he were rethinking this whole arrangement. “Where'd you say you were from?”

“Boston, Mass.”

Andy nodded. “Did they teach you anything useful up north?”

“Just enough to get by,” Ren said. “But I'm hoping y'all could teach me the three Rs.”

“The three Rs?”

Ren threw on an accent heavier than Willard's. “Readin', writin', and redneckery.”

This time the pause was a bit longer than the last. Ren feared he had gone too far, showed a bit too much of that Yankee sarcasm. It wasn't the best way to treat a potential boss. Andy's face cracked into a slow, knowing smile. “People been givin' you a hard time?”

Ren nodded. School had been good enough thanks to Willard, but that didn't mean anyone else was welcoming him with open arms. The whispers and stares followed him around town for the first couple days, like everyone expected him to do something wrong. It certainly didn't help that Bomont had its own crazy quirks.

How was Ren supposed to know that the seniors had an extremely limited reading list? He'd picked
Slaughterhouse-Five
as his choice for his first report in English class and the teacher went ballistic, telling him he couldn't read that trash in the classroom. The next three books he chose were denied as well, which was ridiculous. The main reason he'd thought of them was because he'd already read them for school years ago. It was like some of the rules were there just to make strangers feel like outsiders no matter what they did.

“I can see that,” Andy said. “You're young. From out of town. You're a smart aleck.”

Well, that was that. Maybe he should have taken Wes seriously about his sarcasm.

“Can you start Thursday?” Andy asked.

The question caught him off guard. “Yes. Yes, sir.”

Andy clapped his hand on Ren's shoulder. “I'll help you with the reading and writing. You're on your own with the redneckery.”

Oh, but Ren had plenty of help with that as he made his way through the town over the following week. Bomont was a different kind of place than Boston, and not just because it was smaller. The people were different. The food was different. Even the activities were different.

Weekly attendance at church was now mandatory. It was a non-negotiable point with his uncle and aunt. It wasn't like the hour he gave up for it was the end of the world or anything, but the reverend's sermons were beginning to feel frozen in time, stuck in an age when people griped about anything new or different. Being the most new and different thing in town, Ren couldn't help but take it personally, though he was aware that the preacher didn't mean it that way.

Ren knew he wasn't giving the place a fair shake, but the townsfolk weren't being all that welcoming to him, either. Aside from Willard and Woody, he hadn't made any friends in his first couple weeks. Ariel continued to ignore him, and no other girls at school had sparked his interest the way she did. He knew she was playing games by ignoring him, but it still got to him.

The guys came over to help with the car after church. It was moving along well enough with all the changes he'd made over the past couple weeks, but it wouldn't hurt any to see if they could get it to run a little quieter. He'd only get in more trouble if he tried to drown out the noise with his music.

There was something that Ren wanted to talk about, but he didn't want to sound too eager to discuss it. “So what's the story with the preacher's daughter?” he asked, as if he really couldn't care less. If Ariel could do it, he could, too. “Every time I talk to her, she brushes me off.”

Woody wiped some grease off his forehead. “Back in the day, she used to be a Goody Two-shoes. Now she's frontin' like she's some hell-raiser. Wears her jeans all tight …”

“You could put a quarter in her back pocket and tell if it's heads or tails,” Willard added, sounding like a man with some experience looking at her back pocket.

Ren shrugged it off so they didn't get the wrong idea. Or the right one. “I was just curious. It's not like I was going to take her out dancing.”

Willard laughed like Ren had just made a joke. “That'd be pretty hard, being that it's illegal.”

“What? Dating a preacher's daughter?” This was a very, very strange town indeed.

“Public dancing is against the law,” Woody said.

“Jump back.” It was even stranger than Ren imagined.

“It's been that way for three years,” Willard said.

They had to be joking. Messing with the new kid. But the looks on their faces told Ren they weren't making this up. “You're serious about this? You mean Bomont High doesn't have school dances?” That didn't make any sense. How could an entire town agree not to dance?

“There's what they call the Fall Ball,” Willard explained. The way he said it made it sound like it wasn't much of a party. “That's held at the church. The whole town shows up. Everybody's eyes on you. And for one song they make you dance with your mother.”

That last part didn't sound so bad to Ren, but the rest of it was not his idea of fun.

“The schools don't want to have dances on their property,” Woody added. “They don't want to be held liable.”

“Liable for what?” Ren asked.

Willard shrugged. “Not much to do in a small town after a dance except get drunk or get pregnant.”

“Or get killed,” Woody threw in with all seriousness. “That's what started this whole thing. Five seniors got killed at this kegger party after a homecoming game. That's when the whole town went crazy, blaming it on the liquor, the music, the dancing. Pretty soon everybody started thinkin' dancing was a sin.”

That explained the memorial in the middle of the school hallway. Ren had walked by it plenty of times since his first day, but he never thought to ask anyone what it was all about. It seemed obvious enough that the teens had been in some tragic accident. He never guessed that it had led to something like this.

“A sin?” Ren asked. “We're talking about the law, not Heaven and Hell.”

Willard nodded. “Take it up with Reverend Moore.”

Ren didn't imagine that happening anytime soon.

Chapter 9

After a few weeks of being ignored, Ren was about to give up on Ariel entirely. But old habits must die hard, because somehow his hand just had to wave to her one last time as he and Willard left school on Friday afternoon.

He nearly tripped over his own feet when she waved back.
Okay, play it cool
. Now that the door was open, he wanted to go over and say hi to her, but he didn't want to push his luck. Better to just leave it at a wave and hope for more next time.

The rumble of an engine behind him clued him in to his mistake. Ariel wasn't waving at him. She was waving at the driver of the oversize truck pulling into the parking lot.

The guy behind the wheel was even louder than his engine when he called out to her. “Afternoon, little school girl. Hop in. You can tell me all about algebra.”

Ren watched Ariel slide into the truck. Then, to make the whole thing worse, the guys that had given him grief in gym class on his first day piled into the back. Since that day, Rich, Russell, and Travis hadn't exactly made their hatred of him secret. Ren didn't know what he did to earn their attention, but they had already had some minor run-ins. The ape in the driver's seat was still a mystery, though.

“There he goes, right there!” Rich yelled out, pointing frantically at Ren, so there wasn't any mistake who he was talking about.

“Where's your tie, big shot?” the driver yelled.

Seriously?
His tie was still that big a talking point? He hadn't worn it since the first day. Ren ignored the guy as he and Willard got into the VW.

“Great,” Willard said. “It's Upchuck.”

“Didn't you hear?” Russell yelled, making a big show of it for everyone heading to their cars. “He's a big star in gymnastics.”

Great. That stuck, too. Ren hadn't done any gymnastics moves since the first gym class, either. These guys had long memories for such tiny brains.

Chuck picked up on the comment. “Gymnastics? Where I come from, the only people into gymnastics are girls and fags. Which one are you?”

Ren couldn't let that one go. “Yeah? Well, where I come from, the only people who still use the word ‘fag' are inbreds or assholes. You just might be both.” He ended the conversation by hitting the gas and pulling out, but not before he was rewarded with the wonderful sound of Ariel's laughter. Too bad Chuck cut it off quickly with a withering glare.

Willard directed Ren out of town to an old, abandoned scrap yard where they hoped to find a few parts for the Bug. It ran pretty well now, but Ren wanted some spare parts on hand in case of emergency. This was a high-maintenance vehicle. Willard figured they should be able to scrounge some random junk in the automobile graveyard.

Ren's mind wasn't on his car as they walked between the stacks of rusty metal. “Tell me about this Chuck guy,” he said to Willard. “What's Ariel doing with him, anyway?”

“He's your typical born-with-a-silver-spoon-in-his-mouth bad seed,” Willard said. “Every town has one.”

Yeah,” Ren agreed. “We had plenty back home.” That was one thing he couldn't blame on Bomont. Jackasses were universal.

“Rusty says that Ariel's just acting out,” Willard said. “That Chuck is some kind of phase.”

Ren picked up on the meaningful way his friend said Rusty's name. That girl was the one bright spot in his plan to get Ariel's attention. Every time Ariel ignored him, Rusty was there to respond for her, loudly, to make sure he knew they both noticed him. Now it seemed like Willard was doing some noticing on his own.

“Oh?” Ren slapped Willard's arm. “Rusty said this? You two talk about things much?”

Willard revealed a shy smile. “Well, it's a small town. Ain't that many people to talk to. I've known Rusty for years.”

“Uh-huh?” Ren said. “What's that you say about starting stories and not finishing them?”

“No story to tell,” Willard said. “And I ain't makin' one up for your entertainment. It'd be disrespectful.”

Ren laughed. Ever the gentleman. “Okay, okay, but I didn't ask you to.”

A rusted side-view mirror came off in Willard's hand when he touched the burned-out hulk beside him. “What are we doin' here again?”

“Beats me,” Ren said, looking over the junk. Most of this stuff was useless to him. “It was your idea.”

Willard's face lit up. “Well, I just got me a better one. Come on.”

They raced back to Ren's car, and Willard guided them out of the scrap yard and back through the streets of Bomont till they reached the Starlite Drive-in. Ren wasn't really in the mood for a movie, but it didn't matter when he saw the big gash in the screen.

“They ain't showed movies here in years,” Willard said. “But the diner serves the best barbecue in town.”

The Grill was packed for an early Friday night, but everyone was way too quiet. Nobody seemed to be having any fun. That probably had something to do with Officer Herb keeping watch over the place as he leaned against his cruiser, eating a corndog.

“See you first thing next week, McCormack,” Herb said through a mouthful of food when the guys passed.

Ren answered Willard's unasked question. “I gotta go to traffic court.”

“For what?” Willard asked.

The Bug could still barely make the speed limit half the time, so it was a logical question. “Listening to Quiet Riot.”

“Who?”

Ren wasn't sure if Willard was messing with him by acting like he'd never heard of Quiet Riot, or if he truly meant it. It made perfect sense that his friend wouldn't have had any exposure to the classics in a town where no one was allowed to have fun.

The diner was crowded with as many teens inside as there were in the parking lot, probably because it was one of the few places in town where adults weren't out in force. It was just enough of a greasy spoon to keep anyone with better dining options away, but not so gross that Ren wouldn't eat there. Woody was in line at the counter with his girlfriend, Etta. He waved when he saw Ren. “What's up, McCormack? You hungry?”

“What's good?” Ren asked. The menu had the basics: burgers, fries, and an unhealthy selection of barbecued meat. There were also some foreign food items that Ren couldn't begin to understand. “Foreign” was defined as anything he wouldn't see on a menu back in Boston.

The nervous smile on Willard's face made more sense when Ren saw Rusty walking up to them with a paper bowl filled with what looked to be Fritos drowning in cheese and some kind of meat. Ren didn't think Willard's dumb grin had anything to do with the food. “Frito Pie, all the way,” she said. “And if you're a man, you'll put some jalapeños on that.”

Ren couldn't imagine any of the girls he knew back home eating that junk, but Rusty didn't hesitate. Like she could care less what anyone thought about her dining habits. Ren scooped up a cheesy Frito and tossed it into his mouth.
Not bad
.

Willard didn't have as much luck. Rusty pulled her food away when he went in for some. “Get your fingers out of my pie.” The smile she gave him told Ren that Rusty had learned some lessons from her friend about playing hard to get with guys. Or maybe she knew enough about the subject without anybody's help. The way Willard looked at her, she seemed to be doing fine without Ariel around.

Willard pointed at Ren. “What about that guy? You don't know where his finger's been.”

She responded by putting another Frito on her tongue. She did it so playfully that Ren had to laugh. She was actually a lot of fun on her own.

A now-familiar rumble shook the diner, and heads turned toward the parking lot. Ariel still rode shotgun in Chuck's truck with the trio of losers in the back.

“Thought Ariel was coming with you,” Etta said to Rusty.

“Yeah, well, Ariel's got her own plans. I just haven't been a part of them.” Rusty turned to Ren. “What do you do when the people you love let you down?”

“Don't get me started,” Ren replied.

A whistle from the kitchen got everyone's attention. The cook called out from the back. “Woody! Woody! Check your six, man.”

Woody's eyes went straight for Officer Herb's police cruiser as it pulled past Chuck and out of the parking lot. “Five-O is getting his move on. Whatcha got, Claude?”

The cook, Claude, held up a CD. “David Banner bootleg. But look-it—don't get too drunk out there. First sign of the po-po and I pull the plug. Two at a time, Woody.”

That was an odd order. Ren looked to Willard for clarification. “What's he mean, ‘two at a time'?”

“You personally get fined if you're dancing in a lewd or lascivious manner,” Willard said, slurring the word “lascivious” in a way that made it difficult for Ren to understand at first. “But if there's three or more they can fine the drive-in for holding an unauthorized dance.”

This no-dancing rule kept getting more and more ridiculous. “I thought everybody in these red states didn't like government interfering in their lives,” Ren said.

“Now, don't you get
me
started,” Rusty said as she threw the rest of her Frito Pie in the trash and moved toward the door.

Claude took down the PA microphone for pick-up orders and pointed it at his grease-covered boom box. He slapped in the CD and the air filled with lewd and lascivious music. It was a classic song, pumped up with a modern beat.

All food was forgotten as Woody took charge. He led everyone out to the lot, where the cars were already pulling into a circle so their headlights could light an improvised dance floor. They didn't waste any time moving into position, like everyone was just waiting for Officer Herb to leave.

“Hey, Woody,” Claude called out one more time. “No po-po, man.”

“Woody and everyone get all
Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome
out here,” Willard explained. Ren wasn't sure what that meant, but he was about to find out.

It started with Woody moving into the circle of light and letting the music flow through his body. His moves were raw, but smooth. Rocks kicked up and dust flew as he slid up to another guy like a dare.

The two of them moved in a back-and-forth dance battle, each trying to one-up the other. The moves were frantic with energy, quick and hard. This was street dancing. Their moves came from the music; it wasn't anything they learned in a class. But they were good.
Damn good.

“Can you believe that's our linebacker?” Willard asked.

That was almost the least surprising part.

The music surrounded Ren. It wasn't just coming out of the PA, it was in all the broken-down old drive-in speakers as well. Claude probably put some money into keeping them on, which said a lot about the way he felt about the ban on music.

A third dancer jumped into the mix. Everyone around the dirt dance floor hooted and hollered like police sirens. They celebrated the absurdity of the law, showing no respect for the letter of it. A squeal of feedback broke in before Claude's voice came over the PA. “Hey! You cut that out! I'm gonna turn it off if this gets too rowdy!”

The three dancers jumped out of the circle, tagging in two others to take their places. Everyone had his own style of dancing. Nothing formal, not always smooth—like they didn't get the chance to do this too often. Most of these moves were learned in tiny bedrooms, banging around listening to the music on headphones so their parents didn't know what they were up to. Still, some of the dancers impressed Ren more than the kids back home who took this kind of freedom for granted.

Ariel stood in the back of Chuck's truck bed, putting on some kind of show. It looked like she was doing ballet positions, so far as Ren could tell. There'd been a ballet class after gymnastics at the Y when he was a kid; sometimes he stuck around to watch, and recognized first and second position from that. Ariel held pretty steady, balancing on the truck. She must have studied for years.

Her denim jacket came off, and the dancing turned from a poised ballet to something slow and seductive. The music dulled in his ears as his eyes focused on her body. The way she moved. It almost made him forget they were in public. He wanted to go to her. To move with her.

But then her dance took on more of a stripper vibe as Chuck sat back and watched. His friends were watching, too. Practically drooling. Ren wouldn't have been surprised if one of them took out a dollar bill and held it up in the air. The show was getting uncomfortable, and Ren wasn't the only one that noticed.

“What the hell is she doing?” Rusty asked. Her voice was full of concern mixed with anger.

“Losing her damn mind,” Etta replied.

Ariel spun and grinded to the music on the flatbed truck, then jumped down in between two girls dancing in the circle. The crowd went wild with siren sounds and other, dirtier noises as the girls moved with the music.

It was like she fired a starting pistol, signaling it was time to go crazy. Everyone jumped into the circle, moving with wild abandon. Rusty forgot about her friend's behavior and bounced on her heels to the music. Etta and Woody moved in unison, their bodies fitting together like they'd danced this way before. Only Willard hung back, but Ren wasn't about to stay on the sidelines with him.

Ren started out at the edges along with everyone else, but quickly worked his way into the center, moving closer to Ariel. This time when he caught her eye, he could tell that she definitely noticed. He kicked his dancing up a notch, hoping to keep his audience.

The warning squawk of Claude's PA was enough to send almost everyone scattering back to their cars. Ren was glad to see that Ariel had stayed out there with him. They danced separately at first, as if everyone else was still on the dance floor. If she was going to ignore him, he'd do the same to her. It was enough to be near her for now.

Ren lost himself in the music, forgetting for just a moment that this hot girl was beside him. That changed when he saw that he had her full attention for the first time since he'd met her. The dancing did it. The moves he had. That was the thing she couldn't ignore. For the moment, she was his.