“GENTLY! GRACIOUSLY! GIRLS! GIRLS! CALM down!”
Ashley smiled. Miss Charm was darting around like a confused bird lost in the sea of adolescent excitement. The etiquette teacher had volunteered to be a mixer chaperone, and she and Mr. Huntley, the elderly math teacher (and the school’s only male professor) looked overwhelmed by the ferocious energy of their charges. “Remember your ladylike behavior!” Miss Charm despaired.
But it was no use, Ashley knew. Carly Cohen’s announcement was like a clarion call, leading to a mad frenzy as all the girls scrambled to join her at the top of the steps. They crowded around the picture window, watching intently as a stream of boys in blue blazers exited a yellow school bus and walked toward the school.
“Get down!” Ashley ordered, as the boys disappeared into the front doors. “They’re going to be here in a minute!”
Almost as one, the girls clattered down the steps as Ashley instructed, their high heels making a thunderous noise that echoed around the auditorium.
Miss Charm needn’t have worried, Ashley thought, as the girls settled themselves quietly on the front bleachers. Ashley took a seat near the middle, Lili and A. A. on either side of her. Like her, they kept their legs prudently crossed at the ankle, and the three were the very picture of demure femininity by the time the boys arrived.
Finally the doors to the theater opened, and the Gregory Hall boys shuffled in, still wearing their uniforms, since they had come straight from class. Ashley kept her nose in the air. Really, the boys could have made more of an effort.
The boys elbowed one another, pushing and snickering. They cast sheepish glances at the rows of seated girls and moved, en masse, to the opposite wall. Ashley gave them her most welcoming smile.
The girls stared at the boys. The boys stared at the ceiling. The girls began to whisper to one another and giggle. The boys looked longingly at the buffet tables. Ashley tapped her foot impatiently. This was so not the way she’d pictured the dance happening. She noticed there wasn’t even any music.
“Where’s DJ Tommy?” Ashley whispered to Lili.
“He said he’d be here. I left him tons of messages this morning to remind him,” Lili said, looking worried. “His people dropped his stuff off this afternoon,” she added, gesturing to the DJ station in the middle of the stage, flanked by massive six-foot-tall speakers.
“What are we going to dance to, then?” Ashley whined.
“Told you he was a flake,” said A. A.
“Shut up,” Lili said. “You’re not helping.”
Ashley watched with morbid fascination as Miss Charm made her way to the turntables. No way. Their etiquette teacher placed a needle on a record and the scratchy sound of a familiar Chopin waltz began to play.
The girls continued to fidget in their seats. Ashley saw some of the boys bring out handheld video games and start playing with them. How rude! This was turning out to be a total disaster. Not one boy crossed the great divide of the parquet dance floor, festively stenciled with the letters VIP in the middle, while the disco balls kept turning, refracting the light.
Ashley crossed her arms. She had gotten her hair and makeup done professionally for this?
At last a dark-haired boy separated from the wolf pack. Tri. Thank God. Unlike the other boys, who looked like they’d just come straight from the playground, with sweaty-looking faces and messy, dirty trousers, Tri was neat, preppie, and handsome in his crested blazer, and confidently crossed the yawning expanse of the dance-floor Sahara. He stopped in front of the Ashleys.
“Hey, Tri,” the three girls chorused.
“Hey.” He nodded, smiling and sitting down next to A. A., of course. “This is some dance. Great music, too. Really . . . retro.”
“Shut up! I just called Tommy. He just got out of AP Biology and he’s going to be here any minute,” Lili promised.
A. A. looked at her watch.
“You need to be somewhere?” asked Tri.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m meeting someone.”
“That online boyfriend of hers,” Ashley said.
“At the fountain, right.” Tri nodded sagely. “Still think it’s Billy Reddy?” he asked.
“No.” A. A. shook her head. “Of course not. I’m so over Billy Reddy.”
“He’s LWN,” said Ashley.
“What?” he asked.
“Last week’s news.”
Tri looked pleased.
“Now she thinks he’s Dex Bond,” Ashley told him.
The smile faded slightly from Tri’s face. “Who’s Dex Bond?”
“Some dude who coaches the high school lacrosse team.” Ashley shrugged.
“He’s cuuute,” added Lili.
“Oh.” Tri looked down at his suede bucks.
“I’ll give it a few more minutes,” A. A. said. “Then I’ll go.”
“Right,” said Tri, standing up. “Hey, um, wanna dance?”
“Sure,” A. A. said, getting off the bench. “Somebody’s got to.”
“Uh, I meant Ashley,” Tri said.
Ashley looked up. Tri was looking at her and not A. A. What was going on? He looked at her expectantly. He was serious.
“You don’t mind?” Ashley asked A. A.
“Why would I mind?” A. A. laughed, sitting back down, although her cheeks had suddenly turned bright red. “Go ahead.”
“C’mon,” Tri said, holding out his hand. Ashley gave him her most charming smile. She basked in the knowledge that she was the first girl to be asked to dance at the school’s first mixer. Even if it was only Tri, who was cute, but cute the way teddy bears were cute. “Sure,” she said, standing up and taking it.
She put her hands on Tri’s shoulders and he put his hands on her waist and they began to move to the waltz’s box step. Tri fumbled and stepped on her left foot, crushing her toes. “Ow!” she yelped.
“Oops, sorry.” Tri blushed. “Are you okay?” His dark cowlick fell into his bright blue eyes, and Ashley suddenly felt a flutter in her stomach. He was really very cute, she thought. How come she’d never noticed before?
They glided across the room and Ashley tingled, feeling the jealous, watchful eyes of all the girls focused hungrily on the two of them.
Then the classical music screeched to a halt. Ashley and Tri looked up at the stage, where DJ Tommy, out of breath and still wearing his St. Aloysius uniform, was now installed at the turntables and removing Miss Charm’s Chopin record. Tommy shook his head and placed a new one on. He held a pair of earphones up to his ear with one hand, and with the other put the needle on the record.
He leaned into the mic. “MISS GAMBLE’S IN THE HOWWWSSSS!” he whooped. The hard beats of the latest felon rap, “Drank Me to Death,” reverberated around the Little Theater.
Screaming girls rushed to the middle of the dance floor, tired of waiting to be asked. Ashley smiled and cheered silently for her sisters.
Who needs boys?
The dance had officially begun.