Last Dance (23 page)

“Lee will be there?” cried Jamie. Jamie catapulted up off the living room rug. He raced to the bathroom door and kicked it open. Just as she lifted the mascara wand, he flung himself on his sister. “Is it true? Lee will be there?”

She wet a washcloth to wipe the mascara off her cheek. “Look at my self-control,” she said to her little brother. “I’m not making you eat the washcloth or anything. Yes, Lee will be there.”

Lee: wrestler, college freshman, former boyfriend. Kip folded the washcloth and pressed it over her eyes to absorb the tears that came whenever she thought of Lee.

“Who’s he going with?” demanded Jamie. “Somebody pretty?”

“Mother!” Kip screamed. “I am going to kill him. There’s no doubt about it. That’s how he’s going to start off his New Year. Dead.”

Mrs. Elliott hastily rescued Jamie.

“I just wanted to know if Lee was going with somebody pretty,” Jamie protested.

“Your sister is very pretty,” Mrs. Elliott said.

Jamie sniffed.

Kip’s hand was shaking so hard she would never be able to put mascara on now. For Jamie was right. Lee was going with somebody pretty this time. He was going with Anne. Though pretty was not the right word for Anne. She had a golden elegance that took your breath away. Slim and fragile, Anne had translucent skin and lovely shining yellow hair. Lee would never even see Kip tonight, let alone yearn for her. Anne would only have to stand there (what Anne did best anyhow), and Lee would be entranced. Let’s face it, Kip thought. He’s already entranced. One New Year’s Eve more or less won’t matter.

Mrs. Elliott removed Jamie, but unfortunately she did not stay to supervise the boys. She and Mr. Elliott were going to a New Year’s Eve gala themselves, and she hadn’t decided yet what earrings to wear. And of course George Elliott, who had never worn a tuxedo before, never had a date before, never even been on a dance floor before, was taking Beth Rose. Enough people were trying to get in and out of showers, and have mirror time, and get zipped up that Mrs. Elliott could hardly think about Jamie.

Kevin whispered, “Jamie, you’re gonna spoil it.”

“Yeah,” Pete said. “Now listen, because I’m in charge tonight. We’re gonna take a taxi to The Hadley. That’s where George’s and Kip’s ball is. And we’ll go, too!”

Even at five, Jamie could see a lot of problems here. “Does Mom know?” he asked cautiously.

“Course not. Don’t tell her or we’ll squash you with the piano.”

The three little Elliotts scrunched down by the coffee table and plotted.

Kip had already forgotten that she had four brothers. She was staring into the mirror, thinking of her two boyfriends. It was so easy for Kip to take charge of a dozen projects at one time that, last summer, she convinced herself she could take charge of more than one boyfriend at once, too.

It had turned out that she could take charge all right—but not all the boyfriends stuck around.

The history of this was simple: Mike had fallen for Kip a year ago. They’d had two months of perfection. The kind of love that obsessed you; where if you didn’t actually write poems, you listened much more carefully to song lyrics. The kind where if you weren’t on the phone with each other, you yearned to be. And then Mike lost interest, and went back to baseball. Kip attended a lot of baseball games, but Mike didn’t notice her. After a while Kip was asking Mike out, instead of Mike asking Kip. But for whatever reason, Mike barely noticed Kip again. In his case, love had been a passing thing: a strong wind, perhaps, that blew away. Mike didn’t even have memories of loving her.

And at the dance at Rushing River Inn last June, she had met Lee Hamilton. Kip was the first girl Lee ever loved and he loved her fiercely. One look at Lee’s devotion, and Mike was suddenly able to remember feeling the same way. So on Friday she had nobody interested in her, and by midnight Saturday, there were two boys vying for her attention.

Kip saw no reason to choose between them. After all, she wasn’t going to get married, was she? She was a high school senior who wanted to have a good time. And Mike was a cherished old boyfriend and Lee was an exciting new boyfriend.

She would date them both.

At first Kip thought it was going beautifully. Mike took Kip to sporting events, and Lee took her to dinner. Mike bought series tickets to the summer car races, and he and Kip had soda and potato chips while they cheered. Lee took her to every rock concert and Burger King in the state.

This is the life, Kip Elliott thought. Maybe she would write an article for
Seventeen
on the joys of dating more than one boy. She even thought of looking for a third boy to date as well. Variety, thought Kip, is the spice of life. Phone calls from two adoring boys. Turning one down in favor of the other. Mentioning the terrific Sunday afternoon with Lee when she was at the movies with Mike.

Kip had four little brothers and felt she knew all there was to know about boys. It did not occur to her that she had never known her brothers as dates. It did not occur to her that a fight over who got the last of the sugar cereal was not the same as a fight over who got the girl.

Mike and Lee never even discussed their sharing of Kip, let alone fought. For three whole months she alternated boys and thought she was the winner herself.

In September Lee backed out of the game.

Up till then, Kip had not really admitted it
was
a game.

Right up till then, she thought she was simply not tying herself down, and so forth.

But it was a game, and all games have losers, and in the game of two boys/one girl … the loser was Kip herself.

Perhaps that was why she wanted to be called Katharine now. She could distance herself from that awful arrogant girl who played games with Lee and Mike, bouncing them off each other like Ping-Pong balls on a green table. Maybe if she used a more grown-up name, she would be a more grown-up person.

Kip was wearing the same dress she had worn to the dance last fall, more than a year ago. Her parents had five children to clothe, and a formal dress that still fit was good for a second year. It was the color of a dark peach: gold flushed to pink. And it was lovely—but not the same as having a new one.

It was a rerun.

Like tonight.

For something had happened that Kip never expected, never even thought of.

Mike was attracted by the fact that she was worth something to another boy. But once she was no longer attractive to Lee … she was also no longer attractive to Mike. It was the duel that excited Mike, and not Kip herself.

Once more, Mike was bored with Kip.

He had bought season tickets to the ice hockey games but had taken her only once. He was going with guys to the rest. “Why not me?” she said, desperately, after Lee was long gone and Mike was fading. Mike looked uncomfortable. “I like to go out with other people now and then, too, you know,” he said.

How many girls, Kip Elliott thought, finally getting the mascara on the way she wanted it, have yearned to turn the clock back? If I could go back to that night in June when Lee first fell in love with me … if I knew then what I know now….

In the living room, Pete, Kevin, and Jamie were lying lengthwise on the carpet like logs, squashed between the coffee table and the couch. “Do we have the money for a taxi?” whispered Jamie.

“Yes,” Pete said. “We each have tons of Christmas money.”

Jamie nodded. “But I’m in my pajamas.”

“After they’re gone, we’ll get you dressed.”

The boys lay on the floor listening. Their big brother George was running around. “These dress shoes are too tight!” George yelled. “I can’t even move.”

“Then how did you get in my bathroom?” hollered their father.

Jamie whispered, “Why are we going to the ball?”

“Come on!” Pete said. “You’ve just had a two-hour tantrum because you wanted to go to that ball.”

“We’re going to see Lee,” Kevin said. “Dontcha wanna see Lee again?”

They all wanted to see Lee again. Lee had not just dated their sister; he had practically dated them. He had taken them to the state fair, and he was willing to go on the roller coaster six times in a row. He had taken them on their first—and only—train ride. He let them help change the oil in his car, and there was that memorable night when he and Kip were going to a rock concert and the little boys pleaded to go, too, and Kip told them to drop dead and Lee said, “Oh, all right.”

They would never forget how they were allowed to stuff themselves into the backseat and go to the rock concert, too.

Still, there were a few problems with going to the ball to see Lee.

Number one, he was not there with Kip.

Number two, Kip was there with Mike. Mike didn’t want Kevin and Pete and Jamie around. He had enough family of his own, and other people’s families annoyed him. Kip’s brothers didn’t actively dislike Mike, but they didn’t really like him either.

They worshipped Lee.

Jamie scrambled up.

“Where you going?” whispered Pete. “We got plans to make.”

“I want to ask Mommy if it’s okay.”

His two brothers caught him by the ankles, pulling him smack down on the carpet, and when their mother responded to Jamie’s screams, they lay on top of him. “It’s what he deserves,” Kevin explained.

Mrs. Elliott was struggling to fit into a gown she had worn two years ago to a formal evening. “Luckily,” observed their mother, “in this life most people don’t get what they deserve.” Jamie wasn’t bleeding so she walked away.

Except me, Kip thought, who had opened the bathroom door to see what this new type scream of Jamie’s meant. I am getting what I deserve.

“I got the lesser of the two,” she whispered to the quiet mirror. “The better one wouldn’t put up with it. Of course not! That was one of the things that made him better!”

She had to put her mascara on all over again. How many times would she cry it off tonight? She could remember a dance where half the girls spent the whole Saturday night in the girls’ room because they cried so much. Would this New Year’s Eve Ball be like that? Kip slipped her mascara wand into her tiny evening bag just in case.

It was hard, under the circumstances, to feel good about a New Year. A New Year in which to make more stupid decisions? Kip thought bleakly. A New Year with three hundred sixty-five days, all of which I can goof up again?

George flung open the bathroom door.

“I am not running a toll booth on the Turnpike here,” Kip said. “I would like a little privacy please.”

None of her brothers paid attention to that sort of remark. “How do I look, Kip?” George asked. He was jumping up and down with nervousness, patting the ruffles on his white dress shirt, and checking for the hundredth time to be sure the cufflinks were still in place.

“You look excellent,” Kip said, without looking.

“You didn’t look,” her brother accused her.

“I’ve told you and told you. You want me to do something for you, then remember to call me Katharine.”

“Katharine, how do I look?” her brother said obediently.

She turned. All George looked was young. He was three weeks short of sixteen and had just set a record in the Elliott family for growth spurts. His elbows jutted far enough to the sides to block traffic. His huge feet clumped along like a clown act. His hands could circle watermelons. A nose that belonged on an elder statesman sat in the middle of a little boy’s face. In the rented tuxedo George looked dressed up for Hallowe’en, hoping to get mostly Almond Joy bars.

“You’re so handsome,” Kip said, tugging at his lapels as if there were something to straighten. And he was. Or at least, he would be one day. He had a few years to go. Now he was just tall. And young.

“Will Beth Rose like me?” George asked.

“You know she likes you. She’s over here all the time and you crack jokes with her as much as I do.”

“That doesn’t count,” George said. “I’m just your kid brother then. She has to be polite.”

Kip pretended there was more work to do on her eyelashes. It gave her time to think of the right thing to say. But nothing came to mind. She had set up George with Beth Rose because Beth’s beloved Gary was going with somebody else, and Beth didn’t know anybody to ask. George was tall enough and he had clothes to wear. That was it for qualifications. He was a sophomore, and this dance was for seniors; he was a bumbling half-grown twerp compared to Gary Anthony. And how could any senior girl not make the comparison?

Here Beth Rose had been the envy of the school for practically a year: plain, wallflower Beth on Gary’s arm, and over that year, Beth flowered like her name into a beautiful mature rose.

And Gary, oblivious or bored, drifted on.

To Gwynnie.

Kip had been unable to form much of an opinion about Gwynnie. The girl was just too weird to get a handle on. The Vampire, Kip once referred to her as, and the nickname stuck. Kip didn’t know if the nickname would hurt Gwynnie or amuse her because Gwynnie did not appear to have the normal human emotions. Gwynnie was more like a walking mannequin dressed from a vast disorder of clothing.

Gary was rather preppy in his drifty way, and yet at the same time a complete “townie”—he’d rather stay home rebuilding the transmission on his old Chevy than learn to sail. This boy with Gwynnie? Gwynnie, who everyone felt was more likely to take up witchcraft than to run a comb through her hair during the coming New Year?

She was dressed finally, and ready for Mike. Mike was getting George as well as Kip, and they would drive on to collect Beth Rose. Not the most congenial foursome Kip could think of, but they should last for the short drive to The Hadley. She looked at the three little brothers. They were up to something. She could spot that a mile away. Oh, well, who cared? She would be at The Hadley, dancing and laughing and pretending to be calm when Lee came in with Anne. Her brothers could bake cakes in the elevator for all she cared.

Jamie’s pajamas bottoms were half off. His top was buttoned wrong. The thick glasses that rode his tiny nose were bent and one lens had a milk splotch. “You look pretty, Katharine,” Jamie said, staring up through the milk splotch.

Kip thought she might cry. She hugged him fiercely. “Happy New Year, Jamie,” she said.