Last Dance (26 page)

Emily was laughing now, turning away from Anne and the mirror and the sad thoughts. She ran lightly down the stairs, her well-creamed hands lifting the long velvet skirt—loving the touch and thinking of Mart’s touch—and then he was in the door.

Wagging like a puppy dog, Anne thought, listening from upstairs. Anne always thought of Matt O’Connor as a dog and often tried to decide what breed, but she could never quite define that tail-wagging, slurpy exuberance of Matt’s.

Anne stayed upstairs another minute.

She would trade her beauty to get the sort of love that Emily and Matt had. It could hurt a person, just looking at them. It always amused Anne, in a sick sort of way, that when they bought tapes, Emily always bought the happy ones and she always bought the sad ones. Emily’s life had been so unloving until she met Matt, and yet Emily was always happy. Anne’s life had been perfect, filled with affection, and when she and Con collapsed as a couple, Anne collapsed, too.

“Stop yearning for Con,” she said fiercely to the photograph of him she kept hidden in her dresser drawer. “You are being escorted to this dance by none other than Lee Hamilton, who is doubtless the most upright, steady, solid citizen in the state. Be thankful.”

She wondered what flowers Lee would send.

Con was not a flower person; her own mother had given him his flower instructions over the four years they had dated. Mrs. Stephens had even told Con to bring her flowers when the baby was born, and Con said, “What? You think there’s something to celebrate here?”

Anne blanked her mind so she would not think of the baby they had given up for adoption. She forced herself to follow Emily downstairs, to giggle and chat with Matt for a few minutes before they left.

A big, goofy grin covered Matt’s whole face. His eyebrows lowered, his eyes crinkled nearly shut, and his lashes squashed to nothing. He always looked like that when he saw Emily—like a little boy ripping the wrapping paper off a special, wonderful, terrific present.

“Hello, M&M,” Matt said after he had kissed his girlfriend twice. “Wow, you look great, I love that dress, that’s a perfect dress. Seems to me we’re always going to formal dances, I’ve been to a hundred with you. My tuxedo is too small it’s been washed so much. So, Anne, how are you? Your dress! That’s unreal. Anne, you look thirty! I take it back, you don’t look thirty at all, I didn’t mean you look thirty, I meant you look old. No, no, I meant you look—let’s see—”

“Stop while you’re ahead,” Anne advised, laughing.

“I’m not ahead,” Matt protested, “I’m falling down right now. I meant you look mature.” He squinted his eyes, examining all the words he had said so far. “Nope. That’s not right either. You look—hmmmm—you look—”

“Elegant,” Emily supplied, coming to the rescue. “Sophisticated.”

Matt was relieved. “Yes.”

“Washing your tuxedo,” Emily teased, chucking Matt under the chin.

Matt responded by tickling Emily.

“You’ve had this tuxedo on exactly once since I’ve known you, Matthew O’Connor, because you and I have been to exactly one other formal dance. And it was dry cleaned after that dance, not washed.” Em backed away from him, warding off his tickling, and he pursued. They circled Anne as if she were a porch post. “If it’s too small,” Emily teased, “it’s because you’ve gained weight.”

“Gained weight!” Matt yelled. “I have not! I have broadened. My shoulders are wider. That is not weight. That is muscle.”

Emily decided that putting her arms around him would determine whether it was fat or muscle.

“A person could suffocate in all this true love,” Anne complained.

“Oh. Sorry. Didn’t mean to clutter the air,” Matt said. “Come on, chocolate chip. Let’s roll. Where’s your coat?”

Mrs. Stephens was lending each girl one of her furs.

Matt held Emily’s for her. “Wow, taffy, you look great,” Matt said, tilting his head way to the side to admire her. He always called her by candy names: M&M, taffy, chocolate chip. Once he ran up the front steps singing off-key, “Where’s my Nutty Buddy?”

“Good-bye,” Emily cried. “See you soon, Anne.”

They dashed off. Matt could not be slow about anything.

We always moved slowly, Con and I, Anne thought. Aware of the attention we attracted, the school’s perfect couple, basking in the—

Stop, stop, stop. He’s gone. And you arranged it. You decided Con was taking too long to grow up. It was your choice, it was the right choice, and don’t you forget it.

There was another knock at the door.

Who could that be? Anne thought.

Her mother opened the door and it was, of course, her own date.

I forgot, Anne Stephens thought. The man is sending me a rose a day, and I forgot he was coming tonight. “Hello, Lee,” she said guiltily. If only she could be honestly excited about him. She laughed in a fake sort of way and Said, “Isn’t this exciting, Lee? Dancing on the twenty-second floor in a revolving room? I can hardly wait.”

Lee nodded and held her coat for her.

“How are the roads?” Mrs. Stephens asked.

I must remember this topic, Anne thought. Road surfaces. Snow. Ice. Yup. The good ones. The exciting, romantic ones.

Lee said, “A little slippery. No real problems.”

He took her arm to go to the car and Anne thought, that’s my relationship with him, too. A little slippery, but no real problems. He’s too straight, that’s the trouble: he’s so upright and solid and steady. I must have a hole in my head. I really want Con. I guess deep down I love slipping on the ice.

“Don’t worry,” Lee said. “I won’t let you fall.”

It was true. She would never fall with Lee—and always fall with Con.

Great, Anne thought. I’ve just discovered I’m sick and twisted. And I’m going to start my New Year’s Eve with the wrong boy.

Lee opened the door for her, folded her mink coat neatly over her knees, and shut the door like a magic footman enclosing Cinderella in her coach.

I have the life of a princess, Anne thought. I just don’t have the prince.

Lee got in, began driving, and they made dull conversation. Anne thought, Actually I do have the prince. Lee is a prince. Only it’s the peasant boy I want.

How, oh,
how
, could Anne begin a New Year when her heart was still tangled in the old?

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Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller
The Face on the Milk Carton
. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.

Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book,
Safe as the Grave
, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning
The Face on the Milk Carton,
about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in
Whatever Happened to Janie?
(1993),
The Voice on the Radio
(1996), and
What Janie Found
(2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book,
Janie Face to Face
, will be released in 2013.

Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the
Mayflower
.

The house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where Cooney grew up. She recalls: “In the 1950s, we walked home from school, changed into our play clothes, and went outside to get our required fresh air. We played yard games, like Spud, Ghost, Cops and Robbers, and Hide and Seek. We ranged far afield and no parent supervised us or even asked where we were going. We led our own lives, whether we were exploring the woods behind our houses, wading in the creek at low tide, or roller skating in somebody’s cellar, going around and around the furnace!”

Cooney at age three.

Cooney, age ten, reading in bed—one of her favorite activities then and now.

Ten-year-old Cooney won a local library’s summer reading contest in 1957 by compiling book reviews. In her collection, she wrote reviews of Lois Lenski’s
Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison
and Jean Craighead George’s
Vison, the Mink
. “What a treat when I met Jean George at a convention,” she recalls.