Slow Dance in Purgatory (28 page)

             
Maggie met her aunt’s concerned gaze and shook her head slowly.  “I already know what happened to Johnny, Aunt Irene.  I don’t need any of this.”

             
“True…but you are obsessed, all the same.”

             
“I’m not obsessed,” Maggie whispered.  “I’m in love.”

***

             
On Christmas Eve, Irene and Maggie watched “It’s A Wonderful Life” together with a big bowl of buttery popcorn wedged between them.  Maggie wondered if angels really had to earn their wings to get to heaven like old Clarence in the movie, or if they were stuck in Purgatory like Johnny until they did.  That night she cried herself to sleep, wishing somehow she could spend Christmas with Johnny, hating that he was alone as he had been every other Christmas for over half a century.  She fought the almost irresistible urge to sneak from the house and head to the school; she even stole out of bed and changed her clothes.  But her key was gone.  Had Gus anticipated that she wouldn’t be able to stay away and taken her key?  She headed back to bed, defeated.
             

             
She woke up Christmas morning and was thrilled with the stocking that her aunt had filled with treats and trinkets.  Maggie recognized a few of them from Irene’s own jewelry box.  She wanted to refuse them, but it would have hurt Irene.  She thanked her aunt graciously and then skipped under the tree to retrieve the package holding the blue scarf she had found at a little boutique on Honeyville’s Main Street.

             
Shad and Gus came over for Christmas dinner, and Maggie presented them with their gifts.  Gus had been easy to buy for.  He desperately needed a new hat; the brim on his looked like it had been slept in – repeatedly.  Shad was much harder.  She wanted to give him something meaningful without him assigning
too much
meaning to it.  She had finally settled on a Superman comic book that had set her meager bank account back a significant amount.  She was glad she’d chosen it, though, when Shad opened it and went wild. 

             
The holiday passed quickly, and 2011 arrived with little fanfare.  Maggie went  to the school several times through the Christmas break, but always in the company of Shad and Gus for janitorial duties or with her dance team for rehearsals.  She made no attempt to seclude herself or call out to Johnny, and she didn’t feel him nearby.  There was an emptiness about the school that was almost tangible.  Maggie imagined Johnny floating somewhere far from her.  If she called him, could she pull him back?  Such thoughts shamed her with their weakness, but she couldn’t help herself; she missed him desperately.

             
The first day back to school after the vacation, Maggie woke up extra early and pedaled to the school.  She needed to dance.  Rehearsals with the team kept the crazies at bay, but she needed to move and sweat and feel without an audience.  A few days prior, her key had magically reappeared, right where she had left it, sitting innocently on the desk in her room.  Had she just overlooked it?  She didn’t think so.  Maybe Gus was extending some trust, silently entreating her not to blow it. 

             
It was only 5:30 a.m. when she flipped on the sound system, peeled off her coat, and slipped off her shoes.  She always danced with bare feet.  She set her ipod on random and began to warm-up, jumping and stretching, limbering herself up.  She loved the challenge of dancing to a song that a choreographer would never pick, simply because it didn’t have the right kind of sound or rhythm.  Those were the best songs, because they forced her to really interpret the song through her movements, and she loved getting lost in the fusion of sound and soul.  She danced until the halls started filling up with students, and she was forced to quit.   

             
Every morning that week she arrived just as early and danced just as hard.  She had been dancing for about an hour when an old favorite seeped through the speakers and into her battered heart.  It was beautifully, hauntingly done. And for a minute she stopped and just listened.

I’ve lost my mind

Your love’s made me blind

I can’t even speak

Your love’s made me weak

But if you watch me I’ll show you

And if you let me I’ll hold you

So the words that I can’t say

You’ll hear anyway

You’ll know how much I long for you

How every note’s a song for you

You’ll know

How I just want to breathe you in

And lose myself inside your skin

I’ll hold you and you’ll know

She tried to let the music in, inspiring her, telling her how she should move.  But it hurt too much.  She was hanging on by a thread, and this song would sever it.  She clicked off the music and stood, breathing hard, unwilling to accept the sheer futility of a love story that had only one possible ending.  All week long she had danced for him, hoping he was watching and missing her like she missed him.  She turned the music back on.  She wouldn’t call, she wouldn’t beg, but she would dance.  She would make him come back to her.

***

             
Her emotion pulled at him like silken tentacles, and he knew he couldn’t resist her much longer.  He tried to lose himself in the haze of nothingness that he called floating, but he had felt her calling to him, and he slid back to Earth.  He had watched her, day after day, trying to create distance by turning away, only to find himself staring helplessly at her once more.  Her dancing called to him, but it was also the thing that reminded him she didn’t belong with him.  She had a gift and that gift would take her far away, and he would have to let her go.  He wanted her to go.  He just wished, with everything he still was, that he could go with her.

             
She cried out for him now, and as hard as it was to turn his back on her love, it would be worse to trap her with it.  He flashed himself to the farthest corner of the school, putting as much physical distance between them as possible and clenched his hands to his head, filling his mind with radio waves and static.  His mind’s eye kept trying to tune her in, as if her signal was stronger than all the others.  He fought it desperately, and breathed his relief when he felt her stop dancing. 

             
It wasn’t until later on that he felt her loneliness and her longing for him well up again like a black cloud.  She was so unhappy.  Her misery clung to him, suffocating him.  With a tortured groan, he clung to his self-imposed exile, but it was a losing battle.  He told himself he would just check on her, just allow himself one small glimpse. 

             
She was in the cafeteria.  Rows of tables filled with laughing, talking, eating teenagers surrounded her like a human maze.  Shad sat beside her, and he was clearly angry.  He was looking at a nearby table filled with students, a few of whom Johnny recognized.  The guy named Derek was standing on the bench and waving his hands, calling attention to himself.  The cafeteria noise dimmed to a dull roar, and the guy on the bench commenced speaking.

             
“It seems a certain, attractive female – OUCH, damn it – stop it, Dara!”  Derek was getting slapped by the girl sitting next to him.  Johnny recognized her as the girl on Maggie’s dance team.  The one he’d taught a small lesson to a while back.   She didn’t seem to like her boyfriend referring to another female as attractive.

             
“Anyway, it seems as if a certain, uh….female came alone to the Winter Ball a few weeks ago.  This female looked oh-so-fine.”  He shot a warning look down at Dara, “But interestingly enough, halfway through the dance she was nowhere to be found.  Her friends thought for sure she had left the dance and gone home.  But to our surprise her car was still in the school parking lot when the dance was over!”  The kids around him hooted appreciatively, and some sent up a few cat-calls.

             
“In fact,” the kid continued, soaking up the attention like a TV game show host, “Maggie’s car was still in the lot early the next morning!”  The noise rose even further, and people were pointing and laughing, eyebrows raised and hands covering O-shaped mouths.

             
“Oops, sorry Maggie.  I wasn’t going to say your name, but…oh well.”  Derek smirked over at Maggie and made a little kissy face at her.

             
“Now Maggie won’t tell me who she was with.  In fact, she told me to go to hell!”  A couple kids clapped and whistled and a few booed.  “So I want to offer $20 to who ever can tell me who our little Maggie spent the night with…. ‘cause I wanna give that SOB a high five!”

             
Maggie looked stricken, her face infused with color, her blue eyes bright with angry tears.  She straightened, her spine as stiff as a board, and stood from the table, her untouched lunch tray clenched in her hands.  She turned and headed toward the garbage without saying a word. 

             
“Come on, Maggie! Don’t go!  I’m proud of ya!”  The loud-mouthed punk shouted after her.  Shad slammed his tray down and stood to follow her.

             
“Hey, Shad!  Your momma hasn’t been teaching Maggie some new tricks has she?”  Derek howled with laughter, slapping the hands raised to him in high fives supporting his antics. 

             
Shad froze in his tracks.  Maggie looked as if she was going to be sick.  Johnny was overcome with a pulsing, red fury.  He swung his arms and sent lunch trays flying down tables, upending drinks and splashing food into laps.  Kids cried out and scattered.  Trays hit the floors, and food splattered over fleeing students.  The table that Maggie’s persecutor was perched on began to shake as Johnny ordered it to quake and topple.  Derek jumped just as the table tossed its human occupants and skidded across the floor, slamming into another empty table nearby.  Johnny bumped a confused student, making sure the tray she was holding sloshed its contents over Derek’s head, sending spaghetti sauce spilling over his spiky hair and down into the collar of his shirt. 

             
Johnny roared, and milk cartons exploded all over the room like bottle rockets and several kids screamed. 

             
“Johnny... Johnny!  That’s enough…stop!”  Maggie stood next to him, her eyes wild, hectic spots of red high on her cheeks.  She grabbed his arm, and Johnny realized he hadn’t kept himself hidden from her.  He had lost his temper in a very messy way.  Shad was standing just beyond her, and he was doubled over in laughter. 

             
“What was that?!  That was awesome!!  I didn’t even see who started it!  Food Fight!  Food Fight!  Food Fight!”  Shad started pumping his fists and chanting, not seeing the principal bearing down on him.  He ceased chanting abruptly when Ms. Bailey grabbed him by the shoulder and marched him out of the lunchroom.

             
Apparently, several students were taking the rap for Johnny’s display of temper, Derek included.  There was some justice in the world, it seemed.  Derek and several others were being led out of the room, heading in the same direction as poor Shad.  Maggie overheard Derek protesting and watched as he was forcibly removed from the lunchroom.

             
“Nobody threw anything!” he cried.  “It was like an earthquake hit the cafeteria.  We weren’t having a food fight!  I swear!”

             
Maggie looked back at Johnny, and her mouth twitched slightly.  Johnny just shook his head; this wasn’t good.  This was the second time he had caused mayhem in a very public way.  He had to get control of himself.  He looked down into Maggie’s big blue eyes and groaned.  Her glasses had been splattered with sauce and she’d taken them off.  She stared up at him with her heart in her eyes, love written all over her face.  She was so unbelievably beautiful.  He wasn’t going to get control any time soon.  Here he was, back at square one.  All that suffering, staying away from her, trying to protect her – all of it was for nothing now, and he didn’t think he had the strength to do it again.

             
“Can we just go somewhere, just for a little while?”  Maggie held herself stiffly, her arms crossed in front of her, bracing herself for his refusal.  But her eyes pleaded.

             
“Maggie….this won’t end well.”  His voice was a tortured whisper. 

             
“You can’t make me leave you again.  I’ve missed you so much.”  Her lips trembled, and his iron will shattered like a thousand pieces of glass. 

             
Johnny grabbed Maggie’s hand, and they walked quickly through the double doors, leaving the chaos of the lunchroom behind them.  He pulled her down a flight of stairs and through a large corridor before coming to a stop outside the one place he thought they might spend the afternoon undisturbed.  No one paid Maggie any attention as she slipped into the dark auditorium and pulled the door shut behind her.  She waited a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark, feeling Johnny beside her, relishing the heat and energy rising from him.  The stage loomed before them, unlit and empty, the curtains pulled wide to reveal glossy floors and darkened overhead lights.