The Hard Kind of Promise (8 page)

"Except for that hoodie," Carly said. "Ditch it."

Sarah pulled it off and tossed it on the floor by the wall, irritated that Diane was right. Without it she felt almost naked, even though she was wearing a dark
green turtleneck sweater over a black and green plaid skirt and black nylons.

"You're going to be sweaty," Carly said. "Next time, wear something sleeveless."

"And don't wear stockings," Lizzie said. "My stupid mom tried to get me to wear them."

Sarah nodded, terrified by how many mistakes she had made already. They hadn't even started dancing yet.

"The boys look dumb," Carly said. "Except for Steve Birgantee. He is so unbelievably cute."

"No matter what he's wearing," Lizzie said. "He could be wearing Superman pajamas and still look cute."

"I think Robert Whitchurch looks kind of cute," Sarah ventured shyly.

"Really? Robert?" Lizzie followed her gaze. "I guess he looks better than he usually does in chorus. But his hair is all slicked down."

"Well, yeah," Sarah said, afraid again. "Except for that."

She looked out over the room, trying to find Marjorie. She was pretty sure Marjorie wasn't there, that she would have seen her by now. Sarah missed her. She missed talking about things that didn't have anything to do with boys.

"I can't believe Jason Webb is wearing a bow tie," Lizzie said. "And look how big his shoes are."

"All he needs is a fake red nose, and he'd look like a clown," Carly said.

"I wonder where Alison Mulvaney got that dress," Lizzie said. "I heard her telling Yvonne Brondello that her mom was going to buy her a different dress for each week of dance class."

Carly said something, but Sarah didn't hear what it was. Marjorie had just walked into the gym.

She was wearing a long dress. Not an evening gown, exactly. It was made of beige lace, with long sleeves and a high collar and lots of tiny buttons running up the front. It looked like a Victorian wedding dress. And she wore a hat. Not just any hat: this one was white, with a huge brim and a white scarf that attached to its underside and was tied in a bow beneath her chin.

The room got quiet for just a second, then erupted in sound. The girls were giggling and whispering. The boys were pointing and laughing. Even the chaperones couldn't take their eyes off of her.

"Oh, my God," Lizzie breathed. "What is wrong with her?"

Marjorie walked like a queen into the room, taking slow steps, holding her head high. She wasn't smiling, exactly, but she looked happy to be the center of so
much attention. Sarah knew that if anyone started talking to her, she would answer with a British accent.

"She's coming over here!" Carly whispered. "Oh, God, make her go away!"

As Marjorie headed toward them, Sarah could feel her skin burning. She was so angry at Marjorie, for making everyone look, for not caring, for not knowing how to behave.

"You're wearing
gloves?
And
boots?
With
laces?
" Carly hissed when she joined them.

"Marjorie, you cannot dance in boots," Lizzie said. "And you look like Mary Poppins. Or that old English queen who rode around in a carriage."

"My mom won it at a charity winetasting," Marjorie said. "It wasn't even for fancy occasions. Just what ladies wore every day."

"It's, like, four hundred years old!" Carly yelled. "You can't dance in four-hundred-year-old clothes!"

"It's only about a hundred and twenty years old," Marjorie said. She was smiling, but her eyes were crinkled up in a funny way. Did they do this every time she smiled? Why had Sarah never noticed before?

"Ginger Rogers danced in evening gowns," Marjorie said.

"I don't care what your other weird friends do,"
Carly said, "but you can't hang out with us in that thing. You just can't."

"It is pretty heinous," Lizzie said in what Sarah knew was a trying-to-be-gentle voice.

"Ginger Rogers is a movie star," Sarah said.

"What?" Carly stamped her high-heeled foot in frustration. "Sarah! Do you not get that everyone is
staring
at us?"

Sarah got it. "Ginger Rogers isn't a weird friend. She's a movie star," she said.

Mrs. Gretch had moved to the front of the gym. She held a microphone and wore an old-fashioned flowery dress with a matching belt around the middle. Mrs. Gretch was chubby. The belt looked tight.

She tapped on the microphone, then put her mouth too close to it. "Testing, testing," she said.

Marjorie sidled close to Sarah. "She looks like she's going to try to smoke it," she whispered.

Usually this would have made Sarah laugh. But she didn't say a word. She was too angry. And she was sick of defending Marjorie when she did stupid things.

"Will everyone please be quiet?" Mrs. Gretch said.

Jesse Pike pretended to hold a microphone and sing the lyrics to "Seven Nation Army" by the White Stripes. All the boys around him laughed, because it
was funny to think of Mrs. Gretch singing in a rock band.

"Boys and girls!" Mrs. Gretch said sternly into the mike. Everyone jumped.

"Hey, not so loud!" Carl Estes yelled, clamping his hands over his ears.

"Attention, please!" Mrs. Gretch said. "I need everyone's attention!"

Finally everyone shut up. Sarah realized her heart was pounding.

"Most of you know me as a teacher and an assistant principal," Mrs. Gretch said, "but what you probably don't know is that I am a ballroom dance aficionado."

Everyone looked confused. A few boys yelled out, "What?"

"I am a fan of ballroom dance," Mrs. Gretch said. "I have been dancing for years. And I like passing on my love of dancing to young people."

She smiled at all of them. From the back of the room, one of the boys belched loudly.

"You all know Mr. Finch?" Mrs. Gretch said, pretending not to hear.

Mr. Finch waved. He was a PE teacher, and his face was bright red from having been hit by lightning. He was wearing a baggy black suit. Usually he wore shorts and a sweatshirt.

"Mr. Finch will be assisting me," Mrs. Gretch said. "And so will our wonderful parents. Let's give our parents a hand."

Everyone clapped dutifully.

"Now," Mrs. Gretch said. "Our first dance is the waltz."

Everyone began to talk again while she turned around and fumbled with the CD player. Lizzie whispered, "Oh, my God, her ass is enormous!" Sarah saw Alison Mulvaney pointing at Marjorie and whispering to Zannie and Yvonne. Marjorie held her head high, as though she were at the opera and trying to see the stage over a tall man in front of her.

Old-fashioned music filled the room.

"Who knows what makes a waltz special?" Mrs. Gretch asked.

Marjorie and a few of the music kids raised their hands, but someone called out, "Three-four time!"

"That's right!" Mrs. Gretch said. She began to rock slowly in time to the music. "Feel the beat.
One-two-three,
one-two-three, one-two-three,
one
-two-three!"

"This is stupid," Sarah said. "We're never going to have to waltz with anyone."

"You might at a wedding," Carly said. "Or if you ever go to a ball."

"Mr. Finch?" Mrs. Gretch asked into the microphone. "If you would be so kind?"

The kids all stared in embarrassed horror as Mr. Finch and Mrs. Gretch waltzed around at the front of the room. Mr. Finch was young. In his PE classes he let all the kids call him Chuck. Except for having a red face, he was handsome. It was weird to see them holding each other the way Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers did. It made Sarah realize that you didn't have to be in love to dance.

While they were dancing, one of the moms came up behind Marjorie and put a hand on her shoulder. Sarah heard her whisper, "Let me take your hat, honey. So you won't put somebody's eye out." Marjorie untied her scarf and let the mom take her hat away. Without it, she looked small and sad, like a wet dog.

"All right," Mrs. Gretch said. She was a little out of breath. "Girls, line up on this side of the room. Boys, line up over there."

"This is it," Lizzie hissed. "Try to get across from someone cute."

Sarah could see that everyone else had the same idea. Alison Mulvaney was shoving people to make sure she was across from Steve Birgantee.

Even after they had all achieved a semblance of a line, a few boys kept pushing each other. Sarah could
see that they were the boys across from Marjorie, who didn't seem to notice, except for the way one of her eyes was twitching.

Her twitchy eye made Sarah's heart hurt.

"Boys, that's enough!" Mrs. Gretch said sternly. "Now, everyone, approach your partner, please."

Sarah ended up with Dylan Dewitt, who was pretty cute except for having huge teeth.

"Hey," Dylan said. "I hate this. My mom is making me."

"Mine, too," Sarah said, which wasn't true, but she felt she had to say it.

Mrs. Gretch was explaining how they had to hold each other.

"Sorry," Dylan said when he took Sarah's right hand with his left. "I'm not always this sweaty."

"It's okay."

"And I have canker sores. But they're not contagious."

"Are you sure?" she asked. "I think they're from a virus."

"Not these canker sores!" Dylan said proudly.

"Well, okay," she said, even though the idea of touching anyone with canker sores made her want to scrub her hands with a Brillo pad.

Everyone practiced one-two-three-ing while Mrs.
Gretch counted out the beats. The chaperones walked around making sure they were doing it right.

"Very good!" Mrs. Gretch said. "Now with the music!"

While they waited for the waltz to start, Dylan leaned forward.

"What?" Sarah said, backing away, not wanting his canker sores too close.

"What is wrong with your friend?" Dylan whispered.

She glanced over at Marjorie, who was standing straight and tall while a boy Sarah didn't know argued with one of the chaperones. She could tell he was refusing to dance with Marjorie. Finally the chaperone grasped his arm and pulled him toward Marjorie. The boy held his arms the right way, but when Marjorie put her hand in his, he looked away, as if by not looking at her, he could make her disappear.

"I don't know," Sarah said to Dylan as music flooded the room. "That's just how she is."

THE NEXT DAY AT LUNCH, Sarah waited for Marjorie outside her video production class, just as she always did. But when Marjorie came out, she didn't have her backpack.

"I have to skip lunch," she said, leaning against the classroom door to hold it open. "Joey and I have to work on some stuff."

"What stuff?"

"How we want to shoot the movie. The lighting. Camera angles. That kind of thing."

"Wow," Sarah said, impressed. "Will it take long? Because I can wait."

"No, just go eat without me. I don't want to rush," Marjorie said. She seemed eager to go back in the classroom.

"Well, okay," Sarah said. This would be the first time ever that she wasn't eating lunch with Marjorie, except for the few times when one of them had been sick. It seemed weird to eat without her.

"Want me to get you anything?" Sarah asked.

"No. I've got my lunch. I'm going to eat at the computer," Marjorie said. She turned and went back into the classroom. "Thanks, though!" she called out just before the door swung shut.

As she made her way to Lizzie and Carly's spot, Sarah thought how horrible it would be if she didn't have them to eat with. Nothing was worse in middle school than not having someone to eat with. It was a good thing she had some extra friends, she thought, reminding herself of her mother.

Lizzie and Carly couldn't stop talking about Cotillion.

"Alison definitely had the best dress," Carly said. "I can't believe she's only going to wear it once. If I had that dress, I'd wear it every week and be happy."

"It's so unfair. She's got a red iPod
and
a BlackBerry," Lizzie said. "Her parents buy her too much stuff." But she sounded jealous as she said it.

"Didn't you think the boys looked hilarious?" Carly said. "Seeing them in suits just made me realize how gross they really are." She paused. "Except for Steve Birgantee. He looked pretty good."

"They could have taken showers. They could have at least washed their hair." Lizzie shivered as she took a delicate bite of a Nutter Butter, which she was holding the way old ladies held teacups. "Some of them smelled."

"I think it was on purpose," Carly said. "I think they didn't use deodorant so they'd smell and we'd be disgusted. They thought it would be funny."

"Not all of them," Lizzie said. "Some of them are just pigs." She pulled her thick, frizzy hair up into a ponytail, as if she were giving the back of her neck some room to breathe. "The cutest boy I danced with was Jesse Pike," she said, letting her hair fall back down. "He's not really that cute, but he's better than Eugene Brownmueller."

"Both the boys I got were disgusting," Carly said. "And I would have gotten Steve Birgantee the second time if Yvonne Brondello hadn't cut in line. She actually pushed me out of the way to get to him."

"You should have pushed back," Lizzie said.

"Have you seen her arms?" Carly swallowed the last of her cracker. "I'm a little afraid of her."

"Who did you think was best-looking other than Steve Birgantee?" Sarah asked, just to have something to say. She was actually a little bored. She kept wondering what Marjorie was doing. She missed her.

"Maybe Thomas Su. Maybe Nick Ballantine," Lizzie said. "Who did you think was cute?"

"Robert Whitchurch looked kind of okay," Sarah said.

Carly was looking at her fingernails, checking to make sure they were all the same length. "I think he likes you," she said to Sarah. "He kept looking at you."

"He does not like me," Sarah said, but inside, she felt hot and fluttery.

"Well, why was he looking at you, then?" Carly asked.

"If he liked me, he would have tried to get in the right place in line to dance with me," Sarah said.

"Not necessarily," Lizzie said. "Boys are idiots."

"Do you like him?" Carly asked.