Slow Dance in Purgatory (24 page)

             
After a time, the circles Johnny was making on her back widened to include her dark hair that fanned across his chest.  Rubbing a silky strand between his fingers, he lifted it and tucked it sweetly behind the ear that peeked out behind the heavy tresses.

             
“Are you all right?”

             
Maggie nodded, but burrowed her nose in his chest.  She didn’t want to tell him what had scared her so badly.

             
“Maggie?”

             
Maggie nodded again and sat up, sliding to the floor beside him.  She tucked her legs under her, smoothing her skirt nervously.  Sighing, she pushed her hair back from her face and raised her eyes to his.

             
Blue eyes searched blue eyes as they regarded each other soberly, their faces only inches apart. 

             
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Johnny’s voice was low and gentle, as if he were afraid to send her reeling back into the abyss.

             
“I couldn’t see you in the mirror.”  Maggie spoke bluntly, seeing no way around the stunning revelation.  “I could feel your heart beating, your arms around me, your breath in my ear,” Maggie blushed but soldiered on, her eyes still on his, “but in the mirror, you weren’t there.  I stood completely alone in the center of the room.  It was so surreal… and I think I forgot to breathe…I’m sorry for ruining everything.”  And she was.  How she wished she had missed that brief movement in the mirror and instead had pressed her lips to his, sealing the perfect hour with a kiss.

             
Johnny’s eyes shifted from hers then, and he drew his legs up, leaning his elbows onto his knees and running a hand through his slicked back hair.  It fell back into place.   He scrubbed at it again, violently.  It slid effortlessly back to its original perfection.

             
“The night I died, for lack of a better word, I realized something was seriously wrong.  I had felt myself dying.  I was in horrible pain.  I had a hole in my chest, and there was blood everywhere.  I remember refusing to go.  I fought it so hard, and then I must have passed out, because the next thing I knew I was standing, watching everything happening around me, but no one seemed to know I was there.

             
“I saw my momma.  She ran into the school, stood two feet from me, and didn’t see me.  She didn’t hear me either – nobody did.  They were all looking for me, but I couldn’t let them know I was right there, and honestly, I didn’t know if I really was…. do you understand?”

             
Maggie nodded, transfixed

             
“I collided with a deputy, and I felt it, just as I would have if I’d been… alive.  He felt it too, though I can’t say what he felt exactly.  He reacted, though.  Then, I tried to leave the school when they took my brother’s body away, but I couldn’t.  It was like I was on an invisible leash, and it would stretch just so far.  I couldn’t hear or see anything beyond the school.  I saw no stars shining through the windows, no sirens or lights from the police cars, nothing. 
             
.

             
“Then later that night, the police searched the school.  They spent hours digging through this place, searching high and low.  I followed them around – even speaking to them, trying to tell them what had happened.  It was like I wasn’t there at all.  Then I got frustrated, and I tripped one officer, and he fell.  I pushed one guy into another, and it started a fight between them.  None of it made any sense. 

             
“When they all left, I went into the boys’ locker room.  I was cold and scared, and I didn’t know what the hell was happening.  I turned on the showers and stood beneath them in all my clothes.  The heat felt good, but the water didn’t make me wet.  My clothes were as dry as they’d been before.  I felt like I was in the middle of a nightmare, and I couldn’t wake up.  I ran out of the showers and toward the mirrors and realized I couldn’t see myself in them.” 

             
Maggie shuddered, understanding full well what that must have been like.  She reached for him, but Johnny paused only briefly before beginning again, unloading the memory like he was reliving it once more.  It occurred to her that he had never been able to unburden himself to anyone.

             
“I broke them.  I couldn’t stand it.”  Johnny’s eyes met hers again.  “I broke every mirror in that bathroom.  I slammed my fists into them over and over.  The glass was everywhere.  I felt the pain in my fists, but there were no cuts and no blood.  My hands were completely uninjured.”  Johnny looked down at his hands, his palms up; he seemed lost in the past. 

             
  “Before long, they fixed the mirrors.  I’ve learned to avoid them.  And, to tell you the truth, I’ve gotten used to it -- so used to it that I forgot. ” His voice dropped to just above a whisper.  “I didn’t know it would be the same for you, Maggie.  After all, you CAN see me.” Johnny smiled a little at that, but his eyes looked bleak, and Maggie longed to rewind the night back to “Rockin’ Robin,” when he had laughed and danced and seemed as care-free and innocent as the song.

             
Johnny rose to his feet and leaned down to her, extending his hands.  She let him pull her to her feet, but gripped his hands tightly when he would have turned away.

             
“Don’t go!”  Maggie couldn’t help but plead.  “Just one more dance, please?” 

             
“The dance is over.” Johnny’s voice was gentle, but he was already pulling away.  “The school is empty, Maggie.  Isn’t there someone waiting for you, worrying about where you are?” 

             
She hated that it seemed so easy for him to leave her when she felt like her heart might break if she had to walk away.  Not yet, please, not yet.

             
“We have time for one more – don’t we?”   It was certainly not yet midnight.  If Aunt Irene were waiting, she wouldn’t be worried yet.  

             
Something warred in Johnny’s eyes, a battle of desperation and of need, and he bowed his head, holding it briefly in his hands, and she knew he was going to refuse her. 

             
Moving close, Maggie pulled his hands away from his downcast face and stepped within a breath of him, lifting her cheek to his when he wouldn’t lift his head.  Where she got the courage, she didn’t know.  It was a courage born of her own desperation, and she spoke just one word.

             
“Please.”  It was only a whisper of sound, but his arms slid around her, and from overhead a melody wafted down to wrap them in song.

             
They moved slowly, cheek pressed against cheek, arms embracing one another.

             
“Stay with me my darling

             
I’m lost without your touch

             
Without you time goes slowly

             
And time can hurt so much

             
Will you please stay?….”

             
The song ended much too quickly, and as the last note faded Johnny whispered the words Maggie couldn’t bear to hear.

             
“You have to go, Maggie.” 

             
“I don’t want to…”

             
Johnny’s sigh echoed in her heart as he pressed his forehead against hers.  “You have to, Maggie.  This won’t get any easier.  If you don’t go now, I won’t be able to let you go at all.”

             
Maggie thrilled at his words and pressed a kiss into his palm.

             
“Then I’ll stay.”

             
Johnny threw himself from her with a guttural groan.

             
“Don’t you think I want you to stay, Maggie?  You’re all I think about.  You’re everything I want!  Don’t you think I’d keep you here with me if I could?”  His voice had grown more strident.  It was loud and cutting, reverberating down the empty corridor.   Maggie winced and stepped back as if he had struck her.  He pressed on ruthlessly. 

             
“I’d give anything to keep pretending – because that’s what we’re doing.  We’re playing make believe.”  Johnny’s hands fisted in his hair, and he spun, talking as much to himself as to her. 

             
“I was going to stay away from you – I tried so hard.  But I saw you.  You were so beautiful tonight and so alone, and I couldn’t resist.  I had to get closer, and then…. I could see your sadness, and I couldn’t stand it.  I told myself I could comfort you, that it would be just for a moment...“ 

             
“Why would you even try to stay away?!”  Maggie interrupted, as impassioned as he.  “What did I do?”

             
“It’s not what YOU did!  It’s what I’m doing to you!”  Johnny gaped at her, incredulous.

             
“Maggie – if this were 1958, and none of this had ever happened, and I was just a guy and you were my girl…..I would hold on to you and never let you go,” Johnny implored huskily, “But it isn’t 1958…and I am not just a guy, in love with his girl.”

             
Maggie swallowed back the yearning that his words conjured inside her.  She stepped toward him again, and he raised his right hand, stepping back, warding her off.

             
“Maggie!   This can’t work!  Don’t you understand?  I am essentially a ghost.  I have no life beyond these walls!  This can only hurt you.  I will only hurt you.”  Johnny’s eyes glittered like twin blue lasers incinerating her with his gaze.  He lifted his arm and pointed away from him. 

             
“You have to go.”

             
“No,” Maggie whispered the word.

             
“Maggie!  Listen to me!”

             
Maggie covered her ears with shaking hands, defying him.

             
“Go!”  The venom in his voice lashed out like a whip, and Maggie felt the heat radiate off of him like a billowing furnace.

             
Maggie shook her head vehemently, her eyes filling with angry tears. “I won’t.”

             
“Oh God!” he moaned, raising his face to the ceiling, in supplication to a higher power.   His arms hung at his sides, fists clenched and muscles corded in an effort to resist.

             
“I love you,” Maggie said honestly, her tears freely falling.

             
“Maggie, please,” he pleaded with her then, the anger falling away as he moaned in surrender.  With a speed that was beyond human, he swept her up against him, burying his face in her hair and crying out her name, over and over.  Sinking to the ground with her, he rained kisses on her tear-stained cheeks, on her eyelids, on her soft mouth.  His voice thick with emotion, he begged her not to cry, and begged her to forgive him.  Then he was gone.  Like a star winking out for the last time, he was gone, taking his light and his heat and Maggie’s heart with him.

***

             
He watched over Maggie as she sat, huddled and crying in the dark corridor.  He fought against his desire for her, against the need that buffeted him.  Johnny felt her pain calling out to him, but he resisted, knowing that wanting her made him selfish, but loving her demanded he deny himself.

             
She didn’t leave.  With all his might, he willed her to return home to the arms that could hold her and comfort her.  He exerted all his energy, which was considerable, to lift her from the floor and set her on her feet.  But her will was not his to direct, and her physical self was not an energy he could control.  She remained there, huddled in his prison, waiting for him to return.

             
Johnny watched in agony as she cried herself to sleep, a despondent tumble of arms and legs, lying on the cold linoleum floor.  He sent hot air billowing through nearby vents to warm her trembling form and soothe her troubled sleep.  Time passed.  He watched as the old man, Gus, and his grandson entered the school, their faces grey and drawn with worry.  He heard them call her name, ached to direct them to her, and finally, saw them find her. 

             
“Miss Margaret!”  Gus rushed to her side, the boy at his heels.  “Oh Miss Margaret…what has happened to you, child?”  Gus’s voice was thick with fear and sick with dread.  He knelt by her sleeping form and rubbed his gnarled hand across her brow and down her bowed back, trying to rouse her. 
             

             
“Miss Margaret!  Are you all right?  Wake up, little girl.  Wake up, now.”  Neither Gus nor Shad would be able to carry her, even as slight as she was, and Maggie was emotionally and physically spent.  She slept as if in a stupor, and Gus was getting very little response from her.  Johnny fought the instinct to assist the old man, afraid to touch Maggie once more. But he was weak with guilt and grief, and he could not watch any longer.