I WAS A LITTLE LATE, yes. I stuffed my jacket into my locker and ran up to the first-floor ballroom—formerly known as the gym. From elsewhere in the school I could hear the hubbub of voices. It was odd to be in the building outside of normal school hours; it added to the special feeling of it being our night. The seniors had left the school to prepare for their final exams, so the place was ours now—hence the traditional dance to celebrate.
Sara was waiting for me on the landing, her arms crossed, tapping her fingers on her arm. She was wearing a long carmine evening gown, but true to her New Wave style and philosophy, she was also wearing fingerless gloves, and chiffon scarves around her wrists.
“Finally!” she said.
“I’m . . . so . . . sorry,” I gasped, panting and leaning against my knees. I managed to straighten up, get my breathing back under control. “Care to dance?” I said and offered her my arm.
I had no clue where that came from. I didn’t usually have such confidence with anyone other than Jennifer, and Sara seemed as surprised as I was. She stared at my arm for a few seconds before smiling and locking her arm onto mine.
“Let’s dance,” she said.
We were the last couple to arrive in the small backstage storage area behind the gym. AJ raised his eyebrows at me, but fortunately, there was no time for questions—right on cue, the prelude for the first music began. AJ huffed, turned around, and started to guide the dancers out into the ballroom to the gentle applause (and camcorder whirrs) of our parents.
Sara and I were at the back of the line, which gave me ample time to observe my schoolmates as, in pairs, they left the dark backstage area and entered the ballroom’s bright lights. We didn’t have a real band to play the tunes—most of the people in the school band were on the dance floor—so Hanna had been put in charge of the PA system.
It’s funny, because for the previous few months, since September, we’d practised for this moment. Every other gym class was devoted to rehearsing the archaic dance steps. The two classes in our year—about sixty teenagers—gathered in the gymnasium and shuffled their feet around the basketball court, their eyes firmly on the ground, counting the beats, trying to stay in line, tripping, guffawing, starting over. And as the weeks had passed, and the partner-exchange transfer window closed, we’d had drummed into us the seriousness of the situation, the importance of getting it right, of not messing up in front of our parents, of not letting down the school and the tradition and the expectations of the generations who’d gone before us. Pressure? Well yes, a bit. But as we lined up to file through that door, I felt nothing but a sense of pride. It was our turn. We’d gotten this far. We’d survived.
I watched Jennifer walk in with Sami. Just seeing the back of her head made me smile. Her hair was up in an elaborate bun and she was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous in her full-length, electric-blue Victorian gown and long gloves.
Sara grabbed my hand and pulled me closer to her, and to the door, and we crossed the threshold to the strains of the “Blue Danube Waltz” by Johann Strauss, the younger.
I enjoyed dancing with Sara. And importantly for a klutz like me, she was a good leader. I’m sure that according to tradition, I should have been the one to lead, but sometimes needs must.
In the middle of one dance, she surprised me. We were formed up in a ring, boys around the outside. The girls would go into the centre of the ring, do a step of their own, and then come back to join us, a move that was repeated four times (or eight, or sixteen—I wasn’t sure).
“Hey, give me a high-five,” she said as she approached, holding her hand up high.
“A what?”
“A high . . . next round!” she said, twirling away.
I had never seen anyone do a high-five before. I wasn’t sure that AJ, who had taught us all the steps, would approve—but admittedly, it was also funny.
A few moves later, she came twirling back toward me, her hand raised again.
“High-five! Raise your hand,” she commanded.
I raised my hand, and she slapped it with a big smile on her face.
“Yes! Next time, low-five!”
Her smile caught me off guard. She’d been so serious all through rehearsals, but here she was, grinning, a twinkle in her eye. When she came gliding toward me the next time, I held my hand low and she slapped it, her smile even wider.
As she turned away, she shout-whispered to me, “Next time, both!”
I danced away to do a hand clap with the rest of the boys, and when I returned to meet Sara, I raised my hand to offer a high-five. She slapped it and then held her hand waist high, palm up. When I tried to slap it, she moved it and shouted, “Too slow!”
I realized I was going to miss at the same time I realized I’d swung much too hard. The whole sorry event happened in an instant: my hand sailed past the spot where hers had been, I spun, off-balance, and to the shredding sound of my pants ripping, I ended up in a pile in the middle of the circle of dancers.
I think even AJ laughed.
I quickly got up and caught up with Sara. She apologized profusely, between snickers. The laughter in the gym died down, but I kept my eyes on my shoes for the rest of the dance, my face as red as a fire truck.
WITH THE DANCE behind us and our parents on their way home, we could finally relax. The guys loosened their bow ties or changed into something more twentieth-century—acid-washed jeans and sweaters or cool T-shirts.
The student council had arranged for us to have the second-floor physics classroom to ourselves, and four desks were pushed together to create a space for a potluck buffet: lots of chips, soda, and popcorn. Someone’s mom had insisted on being sensible, and a lone salad sat at the edge, unloved.
Officially, there was no alcohol, but groups of people disappeared at regular intervals and showed up again wearing big grins. Some went to the library to “look for maps”; others spent a lot of time in the bathroom.
My mind was still on another dance: the “Enchantment under the Sea” dance where George McFly kissed Lorraine for the first time—a kiss that changed their lives, their future.
Just then, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around and saw the sweetest blue eyes I knew. Jennifer was wearing blue jeans and a saffron-yellow sweater, with the lace collar of her indigo blouse showing from underneath. She’d let her hair down, literally and figuratively.
“Hello, friend,” she said.
“Hello, friend,” I replied. “What’s up?”
“I know you said that if anybody was going to fall flat on his face, it’d be you, but you didn’t have to do it just for me,” she said, and smiled.
“Oh, please. You know I’m a man of my word. It was the least I could do.”
“What a fun night, right?” she said. “Look at you, all handsome in a tuxedo and everything. I was almost jealous of Sara, snapping you up like that.”
Almost jealous? Was she for real? Was she teasing me?
I realized that I hadn’t seen Sara since the end of the dance; I briefly wondered who she’d snuck off with.
“Ugh, I want to get changed,” I said. “Whoever designed the tuxedo obviously never had to sit down.”
“What about me?”
“What about you?”
“Was I pretty?”
“Oh,” I said. “Of course.”
“Ally Sheedy pretty?”
She knew Ms. Sheedy, star of WarGames and The Breakfast Club, was one of my favourite actresses.
“For sure.”
“What more can a girl ask for?” Jennifer said as she took me by my wrist and led me toward the couch in the lobby, where a group of friends, including Mikke and Sami, were sitting and chatting. Mikke and Sami made room for Jennifer on the couch; I found a seat on the windowsill.
Sami was the cool kid, the leader of the pack, the king of school, the Fonz and Sonny Crockett all in one. (Well, in his opinion, at least.) He was tall, dark, handsome. He was also one of the few boys with a moustache, even if it was nothing like Magnum’s cookie duster.
“What’s up, Oddjob?” he said. This was his latest nickname for me, a reference to the Bond villain (or the Bond villain’s assistant; however you want to see it). Sami called everybody names. He said it was his way of showing affection. I’m not sure AJ would have appreciated being called “Conan the Destroyer” behind his back—but then again, he did take a lot of pride in his physique.
“Hi, Sami,” I said, but he wasn’t paying any attention to me.
“Having fun, Jenny?” he asked.
I grunted. Of all Sami’s nicknames, “Jenny” was my least favourite. Who was he to give her a pet name?
“Of course she’s having fun now,” Mikke chimed in. “She doesn’t have to stand next to you anymore.”
“Funny,” said Sami flatly. “God, I can’t wait to get out of this shitty place in the middle of nowhere.”
“It’s not even in the middle of nowhere,” I said. “It’s on the outskirts of nowhere.”
Everybody chuckled.
“Right on!” said Sami. “Hey, have some of my special apple juice.” He sent his flask my way.
I took a sniff. It was sickly sweet and strong. I tipped it up as if for a hearty swig but only let a little into my mouth. It burned. I wiped my lips with the back of my hand.
“Attaboy,” Sami said. I passed the flask back to him, and he held it up for Jennifer. From her look of disdain I thought she was going to decline, but instead she grabbed it and took a few long glugs. “Steady,” said Sami. “Save some for the rest of us!”
A COUPLE OF HOURS into the party, the few that looked old enough to get served at a bar—and the few more that had convincing fake IDs—left the school; some others took advantage of the empty classrooms to get better acquainted.
I was leaning against the door in the physics room, where the buffet tables had been pushed aside to create a dance floor. A lonely DJ was sitting in the corner, surrounded by three crates filled with records. I knew him; he’d graduated from our high school together with Tina two years earlier. Though the music was loud, people were just standing around in clusters, boys on one side and girls on the other. Nobody was dancing to “We Built This City,” because, really, how can you?
The DJ spotted me and beckoned me over.
“Hey, you,” he said. “Tina’s brother. Come here.” I went. “Want to do me a gigantic favour and play these two records while I run to the bathroom?” He pointed at two vinyl singles on his side table.
Before I’d even said yes, he was halfway out the door. I took my place behind the record player. He had lined up “YMCA” by the Village People and Paul Hardcastle’s n-n-n-n-“19.” I didn’t even consider whether the DJ might be offended as I politely slipped the records back into their sleeves and then thumbed through the crates to find some decent floor-fillers. Twenty seconds later, the snappy synth intro of “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” was echoing off the physics classroom walls, and a “Whoop!” went up from the girls, who stormed the dance floor, their hands in the air. When David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” came on, the boys found something they could strut to, and pretty soon the dance floor was full.
I was on my third song—“Relax” by Frankie Goes to Hollywood—when the DJ came back and waved at me to leave the seat. By then, my schoolmates were so excited about my work behind the turntable that they loudly heckled him. Sami put his arm around the guy and walked him toward the door. Just before they walked out, I saw Sami pull his flask from his pocket.
Mikke jumped to the middle of the crowd and threw himself on his back on the floor, like a break dancer, only he needed a couple of other boys to spin him around. He looked like a turtle stranded on his back. Everyone went wild.
Somebody handed me a baseball cap, which I put on backwards. I looked at Jennifer dancing and having fun on the floor—I couldn’t really keep my eyes off her—and I realized that I was creating the perfect mix-tape for her, right there and then. There were a couple dozen kids in the crowd, but she was the only one I was playing for.
Next up: “You’re the One That I Want” from Grease, a good song to dance to, and with the right message. As it kicked off, she laughed and winked at me. Was she showing appreciation for the tunes, or that she understood my hidden message? I made a not-so-smooth transition to Rainbow’s “I Surrender” and let Ritchie Blackmore’s guitar (and Joe Lynn Turner’s voice) say what I couldn’t. She rocked out to that one, hair wild, singing along. Then I took the beat down a notch with Hanoi Rocks’ “Don’t You Ever Leave Me.” Any real DJ could’ve told you it was way too early for such a smoochy glam-rock ballad, and when our DJ returned to the classroom, he was shaking his head. All that mattered to me was that Jennifer was still on the dance floor, her arms crossed, moving a little like the Back to the Future Jennifer had done at Marty McFly’s audition.
When I put on Madonna’s “Crazy for You” and let the DJ have his seat again, Jennifer was gesturing for me to come to the dance floor, and—possibly fuelled by Sami’s special apple juice, possibly by the adrenaline pumping through my veins—I couldn’t resist the pull of her curled index finger. Not that I tried.
“Surely I get at least one dance with you tonight,” she said.
I swallowed, my mouth dry.
“Of course, and don’t call me Sh—”
“Shh. No jokes,” Jennifer said and closed her eyes.
And we danced. We swayed and moved around the classroom floor in small circles, my hands around her waist, her arms around my neck. Before the song was over, Jennifer took me by the hand and walked me out of the classroom.
“You leavin’? We’re just getting the party started!” I heard Sami shout to me.
“I’ll be right back, Biff . . . um . . . have a great night!”
Jennifer led me to a doorway next to the cafeteria, where nobody could see us. She was a bit tipsy.
“I can’t believe we’re going to be seniors next year. And then we graduate. Everything’s going to change. You’ll be just fine though, friend, because you’re so smart.”
“And you’re so . . .” I tried to think of a nice adjective that would describe her. Funny, intelligent, brave . . . I wanted to say she was beautiful, but couldn’t.
“. . . much better than you at finishing sentences?”
“Yes, that.”
She kept her deep-blue eyes on me for so long that I started to worry I might fall into them.
We heard a honk from outside, and then another.
“I’ve got to go,” she said finally, with something like a shrug. “Can’t keep Dad waiting.”
I didn’t want her to go. Didn’t know what to say to make her stay.
“You’re something else,” she said.
She flicked her hair away from her shoulder, stood on her tiptoes, and gave me a kiss on my left cheek. Then she turned around and, walking backwards, she waved, wiggling her fingers. I waved back and watched her walk out the door. I waited a minute and then left the party as well.
I hummed Madonna’s “Crazy for You” all the way to the bus stop, my left cheek burning. I was confused, but also elated and happy.
She’d kissed me.
Jennifer had kissed me.