Last Dance (7 page)

And the girl was Emily.

The dark was soft and comfortable. Anne felt safe. If only the whole evening could stay like this: dusk, where you could still see each other, but not clearly. She didn’t want to go back to the strong harsh lights of the terrace, and she didn’t want to take her questionnaire and be forced to walk from person to person, grinning like an idiot and demanding to know who had been born on an ocean liner.

The whole thing with the purse upset her.

Con’s mouth had been tense with annoyance, but Anne couldn’t rest until she had that pocketbook back, and she couldn’t help it. She just hated it that life handed out these nothing little predicaments that proceeded to ruin the important things.

And so when Con’s hand went around her waist, she loved it: she wanted it to happen again. That touch was a whisper of what had once been between them. And what could surely be again! The reality of the last several months faded. The softness of dusk made her romantic again.

The pressure on her waist increased. She followed the pressure as if this were a dance and Con wanted to move in a different direction across the floor. But she was still on the pool edge, and she said nervously, “Con?”

His hand gave her a tremendous shove.

“Con!” Anne screamed. There was nothing to clutch but air. Anne catapulted right into the water.

There wasn’t much time to think, but if she was going to get soaked, so was Con! Oh, that traitor, that manipulator! Letting her think in the dusk that they loved each other after all! That skunk! He couldn’t even come right out and say he didn’t want to be there with her! The coward! He had to knock her purposely into the pool! What had she done to deserve this? One misplaced purse? Well, she had had a baby! Did he think the last nine months had been exactly a bed of roses for her? How dare he? How—

Anne’s fingers closed around his jacket.

She yanked him right along with her. She heard him yelp, like a puppy, and then she hit the water. My hair! she thought, underwater. My dress! My makeup!

Oh, she would kill him! Here he was in the water right next to her. Well, she would just drown him, since the location was so convenient. “Con,” she sputtered, coming up first, “Con Winters, you’re dead.”

Lee Hamilton could not believe the girl was pulling him into the water with her. He tried to hang onto something, but there weren’t any handy rails or posts, and he went right over. What a way to celebrate his high school graduation: all these Westerly High kids would laugh at him, and then he’d lose his job, and then his parents would kill him, and….

Lee took a deep breath full of chlorined water, choked, surfaced, spit water like a whale spouting—and the girl proceeded to try to drown him. Lee rarely opened his eyes underwater because the chlorine gave him eyeburn, but this was obviously not the time to be blind, so he glared at her underwater and tried to shake his fist. Underwater it was slow motion. Her yellow hair swirled around like a mermaid’s. Even underwater with a crazy person trying to drown him, he was struck with how beautiful the girl was.

They came up together and he bellowed, “You tried to drown me!” and she yelled “I thought you were somebody else!” and Lee screamed, “What’s the matter with you, are you insane?” and the kids who were safe and dry up on the pool edge laughed like hyenas, which he might have expected anybody from Westerly to do, and she said, “Con pushed me in!”

“I did not,” Con said, “I wasn’t even next to you. You
fell
in.”

Oh, the treachery of him! Anne tread water. The boy she had pulled in with her swam away from her. Anne, furious, humiliated, and soaked, swam out to the middle of the pool and kept right on yelling at Con. “You cockroach!” she screamed. “All I’ve been through because of you, and the first thing you do is push me in the water! Conrad Winters, I hate you! You are the scum on the pond!”

“There’s no scum in there,” Molly said gleefully. “In fact, you’re turning blue from the chlorine, Anne. Your hair is a weird color.”

Lee swam to the edge of the pool to climb out. Gary, grinning, knelt in a puddle of water at the pool rim and was reaching out a hand to help Lee out. Lee took it gratefully. Anything was better than being in the same body of water with this crazy beauty queen. But Lee was to learn that this was not a reliable crowd. Gary, being Gary, didn’t pull Lee out, but let himself be pulled in instead. Gary’s full weight landed right on Lee and they both sank like stones in the water.

Gary came up laughing, which was his style.

Lee came up homicidal, which was a new one for him.

The rest of the girls, screaming and giggling, ran back toward the bushes so they wouldn’t get shoved or yanked in.

Beth Rose hated wet hair. When she got married, she would never wash her hair when her husband was home, because she didn’t want anybody to see what she looked like with wet hair. So far she had managed never to go swimming with Gary, just sit on the sand. She was certainly not going to start swimming with him at this dance either. Poor Anne, soaked like that. Of course, Anne still looked perfect. Beth Rose backed into the flower garden, where lovely teak benches sat in convenient corners. Not only would she be safely dry here, she would be forgotten. There were times when wallflower status was best of all.

“I hate you, Con,” Anne said in a grim, teeth-gritting whisper.

Con was trying not to laugh. “Now, Anne, let’s not get excited. You just lost your balance. Swim over, I’ll give you a hand up.” He knelt by the pool.

“Better not,” advised all the boys. “She’s gonna drown you for sure, Con.”

They laughed hysterically. The kids indoors, hearing gales of laughter from down at the pool, came pouring out of the ballroom and running down the path to join the fun.

Mr. Martin ran after them, his stomach jiggling like a summer Santa, shouting, “No, no, no, no, no!” Dozens of teenagers converged around the pool, and two boys immediately kicked their shoes off, preparing to jump feet first on top of Lee and Gary. The three in the pool were treading water. Gary was laughing, Lee was trying to laugh, and Anne thought she might never laugh again.

“I hope you realize I’ve just lost my job,” Lee said wearily.

“I’m sorry,” Anne said. “I was trying to be sure that Con lost his life.” She still thought it would be nice if something long-term and painful happened to Con at that moment.

“She isn’t usually like this,” Gary told Lee. Gary was having a fine time. He had been hot anyway, and now he was nice and cool. Not so good for his shoes, but there was a price to pleasure. “Anne’s usually a very nice person, Lee,” Gary explained. “I think she probably doesn’t care to go swimming in a dress, that’s all.”

Several of the newest arrivals suggested the possibility of simply removing dresses all around.

Molly said, “Gary, where did you buy those red pants from? The whole pool is turning red around you.”

Gary floated, lifting each leg like scissors, sending little pink waves out over the pool.

Mr. Martin barely managed to stay upright as he catapulted down the gravel path, stomach first. It really was time to go on a diet. Next week. Right now he needed strength to cope with the kids. The resort should have a policy of refusing admission to anyone older than fourteen and younger than twenty. Mr. Martin yelled, “Lee! You started this! You are finished I You are dead!”

Lee rolled his eyes to the black night, and then let himself sink like a stone, and hung under the surface of the water blowing bubbles.

Kip giggled. She and Mike used to do stuff like that, all the time. Now she practically needed a form in triplicate to get him to phone.

Mr. Martin’s voice was going after only a few sentences. Hoarsely, he bellowed, “The rest of you kids go back to the ballroom or this dance is over!”

Nothing happened.

Kip sighed. She could organize the whole thing and get this straightened out in a heartbeat. She could make Anne feel better, save Lee’s job, calm Mr. Martin down, get the quiz off the ground, and herd all these teenagers back to the ballroom. And if she did…Mike Robinson would be angry with her…tell her he was tired of the way she had to run everything…and did she remember they were here as “just friends”?

Kip stared at Mike, trying to decide what he was to her. Was it worth it to submerge her real personality—worth it to pretend she wasn’t good at being in charge? If she did hang onto Mike, all she would have was a boy who wanted her to be different than she really was.

I am special, Kip thought. And I want a boy who agrees with that. I want to be like Beth Rose and have Gary. I want a boy who will stick with me through thick and thin. I want everybody to see me and think of two: like Pammy and Jimmy or Sue and Jason.

Well, if I find that special boy, it won’t be here. Everybody at this dance arrived in pairs.

Kip shrugged.

She turned to the knot of kids, knowing even as she did so that this was the end of her relationship with Mike Robinson. “Up the hill,” she said firmly, escorting Pammy and Jason to the steps first and nudging Sue and Jimmy after them. “Your first clue,” she called out, “is that the person who was born on the ocean liner is one of this bunch! That narrows it down. Now move along. The band is doing requests. Sue, go be a pain and ask them for something they won’t know. George, you and Caitlin make sure everybody has a pencil. There’s a box of them by the front door, but nobody remembered to take one. Come on, George, you love doing stuff like this. Now, Caitlin, grab Kimberly and Pete over there as you’re going. Dance those two on up to the dance floor.”

It always amazed Mike that anybody obeyed Kip; he thought she sounded like a first grade teacher making her kiddies line up to use the water fountain. But it worked for Kip, and people liked her in spite of the fact that she was yelling at them. He, Mike, did not like it at all. Mike pulled back into the shadows before Kip gave him an assignment, too.

He really would rather be playing baseball.

The thing with baseball was, you knew the skills you had to have. And you were with boys, and you understood them. Not that Kip was a mystery: in fact, she made everything all too plain most of the time. It was just that boys were easier. Mike was terribly grateful to be a boy.

And not terribly interested in having a girl.

Kip had made too much of it, that was the thing. He wanted a girlfriend some of the time, but Kip wanted a boyfriend all of the time.

Mike truly didn’t remember the evenings he’d hardly been able to tear himself away from the Elliott household. He didn’t remember lying in bed wanting Kip’s voice so much he had to call her three times in one evening.

The thing was over, and that was all.

Mike had no memories to call upon: he had not stored up a single moment.

Gary called out to the manager, “Hey, listen, it’s my fault, and I’m really sorry, you know? See, Lee here and I used to wrestle on different teams, and I got all excited when he was standing near the edge of the water and I just shoved him in.” Gary vaulted out of the pool without assistance. All the girls paused to enjoy this athletic maneuver.

He would have pulled Anne up after him, but she swam away. So instead he gave Lee a hand. This time he didn’t let go, but pulled Lee out and pretended to dust him off. A reddish puddle began to form around Gary’s ankles.

“Are you bleeding?” Beth Rose asked nervously from behind a tall stand of flowers.

“Yes,” said Gary, “it’s fatal. You
dye
of it,” he added, and they all groaned at this pitiful attempt at a pun.

Anne’s rage had worn off. Now she was just soaked and shivering. She refused to be near Con, so she was trying to pull herself out of the pool on the opposite side. There was no ladder there, and she was exhausted and could not quite haul herself out of the water.

Con walked toward her. Molly got in his way and said, “Clumsy little thing, isn’t she? In
everything
.” Molly rolled her eyes suggestively.

Con walked around her, but even that tiny moment had been too long. Lee had already circled the pool and yanked Anne up.

Soaked, her yellow hair plastered to her, and her pale pink dress another skin, she was absolutely stunning. Con wanted to shout, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh, Anne, let’s—

But he hated scenes.

Anne wiped the water from her face as if she had been crying, and Lee realized, surprised, that indeed she was crying, and crying hard.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m really sorry.”

Lee was shaken. “It’s all right,” he said, patting her stupidly. Where did you pat a person to calm her down? “Don’t worry about it.”

The wet beauty queen looked at him sadly, and Lee was shaken again. This was a girl with a lot more to worry about than ruined dancing slippers.

Now only the original handful of kids were still by the pool. Kip was herding the rest in the sliding glass doors to the ballroom. They could hear her shouting out, “All right now, pairs break up! No going back to the person you came with until you have the answers to five questions. That’s right, five! Any five answers and you can find your date again!”

They obeyed her like army privates a sergeant. The low buzz of chatter turned to a roar of questions and answers.

The last thing they could hear clearly was somebody saying, “Look at question number eleven. Somebody here hates chocolate. Now that’s weird. Who would even admit it?”

The glass doors slid shut, containing the noise and the dance.

Anne blended her tears into the pool water with the back of her hand.

Mr. Martin said, “Oh, well, just one of those things, I suppose. You three wet ones, go into the cabana and dry off. Okay, Lee, you still have a job.”

Anne stood very stiffly. Come tell me you love me, Con, she thought. If there was ever a moment to use the L word, it’s now.

Kip bounded down the path, having got the dance squared away, ready to take on the task of drying Gary, Lee, and Anne. All the rest but Mike turned to thank her. “I like you, kid,” Mr. Martin said. “You want a job for the summer? What’s your name? You’ve got style. I admire style. I pay for style.”