Last Dance (14 page)

Beth Rose grabbed the trees as she walked, hauling herself from safety zone to safety zone.

But then, she reflected, Kip wasn’t exactly shining in the boyfriend department. Maybe saying what you were thinking wasn’t the right thing to do. Maybe you had to lie. Beth Rose despised people who had to lie.

I’ve
been lying, she thought. I’ve never really said to Gary, I hate this, don’t ruin my day with this kind of thing.

Okay. I’m going to strive to be more like Kip. Honesty and leadership.

Oh, right. It’s me.

Well, it could be. I bet you can learn that just the way you learn algebra.

Of course, I’m not so good at algebra.

Beth Rose’s foot came down on the trail, but the trail was not there.

Her foot kept going down.

Her lungs went into a spasm of fear and her heart leaped up to fill the space.

She tightened her grip on the tree she was holding, but the tree was rotten and the branch broke off in her hand.

Her fingers tightened around the punky wood, her nails digging through the bark.

And she fell.

And there was nothing in front of her but space.

Kip said, “Listen, are you supposed to be working or something?”

“Mmmm hmmmm.”

“Maybe you should get to work then.”

“I don’t know, Kip, the old work ethic feels pretty thin right now. Let’s just keep going.”

“This is as far as I go,” Kip said.

Lee was incredibly disappointed. He had no idea he was going to be that disappointed. “Ever?” he said.

Kip thought. “Certainly not
ever
. It would be a little hard to have kids unless I do.”

“Kids!” gasped Lee, clutching his chest and heart. “Kids! That takes stuff like marriage and money.”

“You got it.” Given what Anne had just gone through, Kip was more sure of that one than ever.

Kip hopped right down off the table. “You’d better go to work,” she said.

“Are you mad at me?” Lee asked anxiously.

“No. No—I’m—uh—well—”

Lee flipped on the lights.

He caught Kip taking a deep breath, her tongue touching her lip, her face set in self-control.

“Yeah,” Lee Hamilton said. “Me, too.”

Gary said, “Where’s Beth Rose?”

“Dragging her feet somewhere,” Mike said.

Gary said, “Beth? Bethie? Where are you?”

“She’s right here,” Mike said crossly.

“Where ?” Gary asked.

There was a half minute, perhaps, while they swerved in circles and reached their hands out into darkest shadows, and muttered, “Beth? Beth Rose, where are you?”

And Gary said, “She—she—she couldn’t have fallen!”

“We were right at the cliff edge when I talked to her last,” Con whispered. Con thought, what if she fell?

Mike said, “Well, she didn’t fall. We would have heard her scream.”

Gary turned silently and began going back, cursing himself for not having a flashlight, for bringing Beth at all, for not having her hand in his every moment. For another eternal half minute he worked his way down the Two Cliffs path, and then he began yelling, “Beth! Beth Rose! Beth! Beth Rose! Answer me! Where are you?”

Con thought, she could have fallen without screaming. She could have hit her head first.

He thought of her falling, falling, falling, farther than the pebble, her summery dress no parachute. Gravity the king. Hard, hard earth the death.

Con’s lips felt like rubber. “Beth!” he screamed. “Beth Rose!”

They got to the open spot by the cliff’s edge where they had all looked into the moonlight and stared at the spookiness of Rushing River Inn below. The Inn was unchanged, its lights and music wafting up to them. Nobody heard their screams.

Gary held up a hand for silence. But Beth Rose did not answer.

Gary walked right to the cliff edge and looked down. Too dark to see anything. He knelt in the dirt. But he could not tell if anything had happened there.

He muttered, “She must have gone back to the Inn. She must have.”

Beth Rose? The most considerate girl on earth? The girl who agreed to everything, who liked everything easy and smooth? Not even letting him know what she was doing? Walking on her own through the woods she had barely staggered up?

She fell, Gary thought. She fell, and it’s my fault.

He was running then, running down the path, the branches smacking his face, running to look for his girl.

Lee Hamilton could not get Kip out of his mind.

Mr. Martin said, “Lee?”

He jumped a foot.

“Yes, sir?”

“Am I perhaps paying you money?”

“Uh. Yes.”

“Are you perhaps considering the possibility of working in order to receive that money?”

“Uh. Sure. Yes. Sir.”

Mr. Martin smiled. “How decent of you, Lee. And here I thought teenage boys today thought exclusively of girls.”

Lee blushed. He had never blushed in his entire life before.

Mr. Martin said, “Try being a waiter, Lee. You can get into it if you really try.”

Lee nodded.

Out in the ballroom he became a waiter again, but a slow one.

She wasn’t there.

Neither was her “boyfriend.” The one who didn’t even like her.

Lee circled the entire ballroom.

No Kip, no boyfriend.

He thought, they made up. Well, that’s that. My first true love was certainly brief. An hour. And I only admitted it on minute fifty-eight.

I don’t think I’m off to an impressive start.

Emily held Anne so hard Anne knew Emily needed her. It was a pretty nice feeling: being needed. Anne had needed help herself for so long that to be a tower of strength to somebody else was a pretty terrific thing.

But Matt was there, chewing alternately on a sandwich in his left hand and another in his right. He looked like a fast food restaurant ad. Anne figured any problem Emily had was with Matt so she wasn’t sure how to begin talking. “You were so late!” she tried. “Did your car break down?”

“My car ?” Matt said huffily. He was very proud of his cars. “Break down? Certainly not.”

Anne thought of herself and Con. They had hugged like that once, needing each other that painfully. She and Con had not yet learned how to touch each other again. Before, they had had two touching stages: the first, which lasted from eighth grade through tenth, was silly breathy giggly messy kissing. And comfort. And pleasure. But the second was different. It was so unfair! You would think that if you had decided to have a total relationship, you could also get the huggy comfort relationship to go with it—but Anne and Con had not. And now, they could not figure out how to touch at all.

Oh, why did the whole world have problems?

Why couldn’t the whole world have terrific families, like Kip’s great crowd or Matt’s wonderful huggy kissy clan?

The band stopped playing.

There was a moment of utter silence and then before the conversation of the dancers took over, Emily burst into terrible agonizing sobs.

A
FTERWARD, THE THREE BOYS
privately wondered why they behaved the way they did. Why didn’t they race into the ballroom and tell all the boys to help search? Certainly every boy there would have been much happier searching the forest in the dark than dancing! Why didn’t they grab Mr. Martin, demanding lanterns and search lights and trained dogs? Why didn’t they call the rescue squad, the police, the fire department? Anybody at all?

But Gary didn’t, Con didn’t, and Mike didn’t.

Mike was appalled by the snide things he had been saying to Beth Rose along the way. As if frozen in time, Mike’s muscles reminded him that his
hand
had gone to help Beth Rose, but not his heart. He had just yanked her along. He’d been thinking contemptuously: girls, dances. Kip. Stupid high heels.

Mike thought: Kip would never fall. She’d be too well organized. Kip would note the precise distance between her feet and the cliff edge for exactly the right safety margin, and when she went back to the Inn, she’d notify the authorities that the railing had fallen down. Next week, she’d call them to be sure they had fixed it.

When Mike had that thought, he expected to be angered all over again at Kip. But he wasn’t. He missed her. He missed her sense, her calm, her ability to make a decision and act on it.

If Beth Rose fell…Mike thought. If she fell…it’s my fault.

Con had decided not to worry about Beth Rose. During the climb, he knew perfectly well she was having a hard time, and he preferred not to think about her or her difficulties.

Racing down the mountain, roots catching at his feet, hemlock branches slapping his face, and oak leaves turning into slippery ski slopes beneath his shoes, Con thought—
this is how I treat Anne.

Practically from the night she told me about the baby I decided not to think about it. I decided she was on her own.

But people aren’t on their own.

Sometimes they need you.

He thought of himself running around with Molly while Anne sat alone at Aunt Madge’s, watching rented movies on the VCR because she hated to appear in public, and because he hated to appear with her.

For a moment he thought he could not handle the shame.

He had run away from Anne once before and managed to crawl back.

Con did not see how he could repeat that performance.

But if he found Beth Rose…if he rescued Beth Rose…it would be like an offering.

He would be able to say to Anne: Here, I’m not so bad. I’m shaping up, as a matter of fact. See how I saved your friend?

So Con never thought of calling for help because he needed to rescue Beth Rose himself. Con decided right away to return to the croquet courts, take the lower path to the base of the mountain, and try to find where she had fallen through.

That it was dark, that he was talking about dozens of acres of thick woods, he did not pause to consider.

Gary didn’t think at all.

He was falling inside himself: feeling the weightlessness, the horror, the plunge. He was torn by treetops—soft green leaves that looked like featherbeds became stabbing spears to kill Beth Rose.

He thought his girlfriend had not screamed because the wind was knocked out of her, or maybe because, as he was now, she was frozen by her own fear of falling.

And perhaps she didn’t scream simply because she couldn’t be that disruptive. Beth Rose hated to be a nuisance. Beth Rose hated to speak up.

Oh, Bethie! Gary thought. You didn’t speak up. You didn’t scream up! And if you’re dead, it’s my fault. You expected me to know, and deep down I really did know. But I want you to talk out loud. I want you to say what you mean, say what you want!

You never do, Beth. You expect me to mind read.

Gary thought: I can’t mind read if you’re dead.

And then he thought, I dragged her up here.

I did read her mind. I did know she just wanted to stay inside and dance.

If she fell….

Con said, “The lower path! We’ll find her down there!” He led the way through thick shrubs and underbrush.

Gary did not want to find Beth Rose “down there.”

But it had to be him and not Con or Mike who found her, because she was his girl.

So he ran with Con in the dark, yelling Beth’s name, wondering if he would see Beth’s billowing summery skirt, like a sign, a flag to mark where she hit bottom.

Anne took Emily into the girls’ room.

Where would the female of the species be without girls’ rooms? thought Anne. A girl can always kill time in there.

The lounge included a daybed, in the same maroon color as the flocked wallpaper. Anne and Emily sat on it, leaning on each other, and Emily wept. “I’m so sorry,” Emily sobbed. “I shouldn’t be crying.”

Anne smiled. “Listen. I cried for nine months. I guess you rate a single evening. Tears aren’t so bad. They don’t arrest you for it, anyhow.” They clung to each other.

Emily said, “Anne, you just wouldn’t believe what happened to me tonight.”

Anne felt as if Emily could not have a problem that Anne could not understand. She’d been through so much and been through it, essentially, alone. Oh, her parents and her grandmother had stood by her—but very uncomfortably, and very reluctantly. And Con, well, if you stretched a point, you could pretend he’d stood by her. And Beth Rose’s Aunt Madge had provided a bedroom, and meals, and cozy forgiving talks.

But that was the thing of Aunt Madge.

She was busy forgiving Anne for being bad.

I made an error in judgment, Anne thought, and I made it over and over again. But I wasn’t bad.

I was alone, she thought.

Anne would never, never be so dumb as to say she was glad all the last nine months had happened to her. But she was stronger for it, and she was glad to be stronger.

Strength turned out not to be muscles flexing, but a kind of peace. Anne settled into the maroon upholstery and leaned back against the silvery weeping willows and dancing birds of the wallpaper and knew that whatever life dealt her, she could take it.

Of course, this time she would deal her own hand a bit more carefully!

“So,” Anne said comfortably, “so tell me what happened.”

Emily was a puddle of emotion, sobbing, using up all available Kleenex and then hopping up every few minutes to get toilet paper to use instead to sop up all her tears. Anne had forgotten (so soon!) what it was like to cry your way through an entire box of Kleenex! She listened to the story with appropriate shudders and gasps of understanding.

“First things first,” Anne said firmly. “The whole thing with Christopher was probably jangled nerves, but not necessarily. Christopher is a creep. Don’t you remember that Saturday night of the Autumn Leaves Dance ? How he got drunk and practically attacked the band and the police were called and Molly had to drive him home? Anyway, a guy that big and that strong, the only reasonable thing is to be afraid if you’re afraid.”

The girls both giggled.

“Matt would have trouble understanding that sentence,” Emily said.

“So would Con!” Anne said. “But girls wouldn’t. If you’re afraid, it’s reasonable to be afraid, and that’s that. But that’s not really the point, Emily. That was just the icing on the cake. The real problem is your parents.”