What I Came to Tell You (25 page)

“One, two, three,” Grover began. “One, two, three.” He glanced back at the clump of boys watching and saw Ashley lead Sam onto the dance floor.

Mira placed Grover’s hand on the small of her back and took his other hand and they began to move around the room. “One, two, three,” Mira kept saying. “One two three.” They danced stiffly and stepped on each other’s toes.

“I think we’re taking too big of steps,” Grover said, remembering Mrs. Brown saying something about that. They started taking smaller steps and as soon as they did, they began dancing
better. Grover kept getting off the beat. Mira would stop them, make him count with her again, and then they’d start again.

“We’re supposed to look into each other’s eyes,” Mira said.

“We’ll run into people,” Grover said.

“Mrs. Brown says if you look into the girl’s eyes, you’ll always know where you’re going. Trust me.”

He looked her in the eyes, and, as soon as he did, they ran right into a couple.

“Let’s try again,” Mira said.

They ran into another couple.

“I don’t think you’re really looking into my eyes,” she said.

This time he kept his eyes on hers, and it was the strangest thing, but it was just like she said. As they circled around the room, Grover could sense where they were going, yet he never looked away from her soft brown eyes. With each time around the gym, Grover felt they were getting the hang of it. They were going faster and dancing smoother. He tried to glance around the room, and as soon as he took his eyes off Mira’s, they ran into Ashley and Sam.

“Watch where you’re going.” Ashley frowned.

“
We
ran into
them
,” Sam said to Ashley.

“I’m sorry,” Ashley said to Mira. “Sam is such a terrible dancer.”

“Me?” Sam said. Before he could say anything else, Ashley waltzed him away.

Mira and Grover circled the gym a couple more times. When it was over, and they walked off to the side, Mira said, “You’re a good dancer.”

They stood there a moment, smiling at each other.

As Mr. Godleski’s band started into another song, Tim Buchanan asked Mira to dance. Off they went spinning across the dance floor with the growing crowd of waltzers. Mrs. Dillingham moved through the crowd like a shark through a school of fish, keeping an eye out for misbehavior.

Someone tapped Grover on the shoulder. He turned around and standing there was this beautiful girl who looked vaguely familiar.

“Hey, Grover.”

“Emma Lee? Is that you?” She had her hair up and wore some old-fashioned-looking dangly earrings with purple stones that caught the light. She still had her coat on.

“You already forget me, Grover?”

“It’s just your hair and all is so …”

“Is so what?”

“How’d you get here?”

“Mama. She and Clay went Christmas shopping downtown.” She laid her hand on his sleeve. “I like your coat. You and Mira waltzed nice together.”

“The trick is to look into the person’s eyes,” Grover said. His and Emma Lee’s eyes met for a second. Then they turned back, watching the waltzers. Grover guessed most of the boys had discovered by now that dancing with girls was a lot better than dancing with sweaty boys in gym class. When the waltz was over, Ashley and Sam stopped right beside Grover and Emma Lee, as if Ashley had planned it that way.

“Hey, Emma Lee,” Sam said. “You made it! You look great!”

Ashley narrowed her eyes at Sam, then turned to Emma Lee. “How nice of you to come,” she said, like this was her house. “I love your hair up like that. Shows off your bone structure.” Grover couldn’t tell if Ashley meant it. From the way Emma Lee kept her eye on Ashley, Grover knew Emma Lee couldn’t tell either.

“Love the earrings too,” Ashley said, stepping up and slightly lifting one of them to see it better. “Are they costume?”

Emma Lee took a step back. “They’re my Nanna’s and they’re real amethysts,” she said, touching them protectively.

“Aren’t you burning up in that coat?” Ashley asked Emma Lee. “We’d like to see your dress.”

Emma Lee looked at the floor. “It’s just an old dress my Nanna gave me.”

“I’d
love
to see it,” Ashley said. “I love vintage.”

“Leave her alone, Ashley,” Sam said.

“I want to see her dress is all,” Ashley said. “Is that so terrible?”

“If she doesn’t want to take her coat off,” Sam said, “that’s her business. Come on, let’s waltz.”

“But …” Ashley began.

“I said let’s waltz!” Sam said in the firmest tone Grover’d heard him use. Even Ashley looked surprised. As the music started, he pulled Ashley onto the dance floor.

Emma Lee glared as they moved off into the crowd of dancers.

“Don’t pay her any attention,” Grover said. “She’s jealous.”

“Of what, Grover?” Emma Lee’s face flushed angrily. “Some redneck mountain girl who wears her grandma’s old dress to the school dance?”

“She’s jealous of the smartest, prettiest girl at the Isaac Claxton Elementary Christmas Waltz.” Grover rubbed his forehead. “I can’t believe I just said that.”

“You didn’t mean it?” Emma Lee asked, her mouth still set angrily.

“Oh, I meant it,” Grover said.

She studied him, then slowly smiled.

“Want to dance?” Grover asked.

“Okay,” she said. She hesitated as she started to unbutton her coat.

“You can dance with your coat on,” Grover said, “if you want.”

“It is hot as Hades,” she said, finishing unbuttoning her coat. “Would you help me off with this?”

Grover took her coat, draped it over one of the folding chairs against the wall.

She wore a wine-colored velvet dress that shimmered in the low light. Grover’d never known that a dress could be deep, but that’s what it was. It had a reddish luster the color of glowing coals. And the way Emma Lee had her hair up, her dark cheeks, her neck and the curve of her chest, all somehow picked up the luster of the dress, making her look lit from within. There was a word for being lit from within. They’d studied it earlier in the year. But he couldn’t remember it. All he knew was that the dress
fit her in a way that made her more curved, like she’d grown ten years in the couple of weeks she’d been away.

Heads already turned. Grover and Emma Lee walked out onto the dance floor. Grover took her hand, and then put his other hand on the small of her back, like Mira had shown him. His hand sank into the soft velvet, and he could feel the hardness of her backbone beneath the tips of his fingers. He looked her in the eye.

“Daddy used to waltz with me when I was a little girl,” she said. “He used to put on this old song called ‘The Tennessee Waltz,’ and he’d waltz me around the front room with me standing on the tops of his feet. All I had to do was hang on.”

Grover began counting out loud to the music. “One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three.” Then they started, waltzing stiff at first. They stopped in the middle of the dance floor.

“I’m sorry,” Emma Lee said. “Daddy used to do all the work, I guess.”

“Look me in the eye.” Grover counted again and then they stepped off. They went slower than he and Mira had but it wasn’t long before the stiffness gave way to a floating feeling. The longer they danced, the more Grover could guide them around couples without looking away from her. It was strange how that worked. By looking deep into someone’s eyes, he could see the world around him.

The more they danced, the more Grover forgot the dancers on the dance floor, the musicians on stage, the parents and
teachers serving food and drinks. As they circled and swayed, Grover felt alone with Emma Lee. They danced their way into a stillness Grover’d never known before.

It wasn’t till the waltz was over, and he looked around, that he realized people had stopped dancing to watch them. He saw Ashley and Sam on the edge of the crowd. Sam grinned. Ashley looked miserable. They’d hardly walked off the dance floor when Emma Lee was mobbed. It was Daniel Pevoe who she went back out onto the dance floor with.

Grover made his way through the crowd to the punch bowl.

“Emma Lee looks absolutely beautiful,” Miss Snyder said, ladling punch into a cup and handing it to him. “You two make a handsome couple, Grover.”

Grover couldn’t get near Emma Lee for the rest of the first half of the dance. At the break Emma Lee came up, grabbed his hand and started to lead him out through the gym door but stopped when Mrs. Dillingham came up.

“Emma Lee,” she said. “So good to see you! How’s school up in Bakersville?”

Emma Lee shrugged. “I miss Claxton.”

“Well, you’re welcome anytime,” she said, then she turned to Grover. “I had no idea you were such a Fred Astaire, Grover.”

When Mrs. Dillingham disappeared into the crowd, Emma Lee motioned Grover to follow her through the gym door and into the lobby. Checking to make sure no one saw them, they passed the one-room infirmary, Miss Snyder’s office and Mrs. Dillingham’s office. They hurried past the cafeteria, where they
heard teachers and volunteer mothers preparing trays of food. They walked quickly up to the second floor, and then to the third. Their footsteps echoed down the hallway. They had the whole third floor to themselves.

“I don’t think we’re supposed to be up here,” Grover whispered.

Emma Lee tried Mrs. Caswell’s door and found it unlocked.

“What are we doing?” Grover asked.

She opened the door and went inside and, after a minute, he followed her. She turned on the lights, and they walked up and down the rows of empty desks. Emma Lee sat in her old desk, and he sat in his. The radiators knocked and hissed.

“Claxton feels different at night.” Emma Lee walked to the front of the room, tracing her finger across Mrs. Caswell’s desk. Heavy footsteps came down the hall.

Grover turned off the lights, and they crouched by the door, peeking through the window that looked out onto the hall. The footsteps were getting louder. Emma Lee pulled Grover down beside her, and they both crouched underneath the window, praying it wasn’t Mrs. Caswell. The footsteps passed, and they peeked through the window to see the back of Miss Shook. They heard her stomp into her classroom next door, rummage around, and then come back out and walk past them again. She carried a stapler. They crouched at the door until they couldn’t hear her footsteps anymore.

“We ought to get out of here before somebody catches us,” he said.

Emma Lee had walked over to the row of windows that looked outside. “Nobody else will come,” she said. “Look.”

He got up and, glancing back toward the door, walked over to her. Out the window, they could see downtown laid out before them—the glowing streetlights, the warm squares of window light from apartments, stores and restaurants, and the winking Christmas lights the city had wound around and up into the trees.

“It’s like there’s light coming up from underneath the city,” Grover said, “leaking out from all the windows. It looks …”

“… incandescent,” Emma Lee said.

That was the word, Grover thought.
Incandescent
was the word he’d been trying to think of when he’d been thinking of how Emma Lee looked tonight in her dress.

“Who’s Fred Astaire?” Grover asked.

“A famous dancer,” Emma Lee said. “He’s in old movies my grandmother likes.”

They heard Mr. Godleski’s band start up somewhere down below.

“We better go,” Grover said.

“Just a minute more.” Emma Lee reached for his hand and turned back to the window. He stood there looking down on a place he’d lived all his life but, until tonight, had never really seen.

Emma Lee was mobbed by boys. Grover watched her waltz away with Morgan King, a stout, red-faced boy who could beat anybody
in the hundred-yard dash. When the waltz was over, Grover climbed the steps to the stage and found Mr. Godleski tuning his bass.

“Mr. Godleski, can your band play ‘The Tennessee Waltz’?” he asked.

Mr. Godleski looked at the other men tuning their instruments. “What do you think, boys?”

“If I can remember how it goes,” said the bald fat man who played the fiddle. He scratched his head.

“Yeah, if we can remember how it goes,” said the long-faced piano player, who stroked his chin. They were fighting off smiles.

“We’ll save it for the last,” Mr. Godleski said. “That’ll be a good one to go out on.”

“If we can remember how it goes,” said the fiddle player.

The three men laughed as Grover headed back down.

For the rest of the evening, Grover couldn’t get near Emma Lee for everybody wanting to dance with her. Mira tapped his shoulder, smiling.

“You’ve caught on quick,” Mira said as they waltzed around the room.

“Dancing with girls is better than dancing with Chris Norris or Bill Parks.”

She threw back her head and laughed. When she did, he glimpsed the pink of her tongue and the red of her throat and it made something stir below. A stiffness that he’d been feeling more often. Luckily the waltzing helped it go back down.

Grover waltzed with a couple of other girls, but mostly he stood by the punch bowl, watching Emma Lee waltz. Sam came up to him.

“How’d you get away from Ashley?” Grover asked.