“I DON’T BELIEVE WE’VE ever had a party in a women’s bathroom before,” Matt said, grinning.
“I suggest we adjourn to the ballroom,” Beth Rose said. “There’s so much to do. Ruined dresses to inspect, fire damage to repair, stories to hear.”
“Food to eat,” Gary said, “soda to drink, potato chips to crunch.”
Gary took Beth’s arm and together they walked out of the women’s room.
How romantic they looked! Beth’s heavy red hair pressed against Gary’s thick dark hair, and the skirt tangling between them, and then puffing out behind. The room was much emptier without them: as though love had walked out and just left the other three there, killing time.
Anne’s throat hurt. Con, she thought. Oh, Con.
Emily touched the little silver knots that dotted the pale green dress, and caressed the silver rope that hung at her waist. She stared at her pink-polished toes and the thin silver strap of her dancing shoes. I just want to be a girl at a dance, Emily thought, not a girl without a family. I don’t want my heart to be heavy. I just want my feet to be light.
Apparently Matt felt lighthearted, because he put one arm around Anne’s waist, and the other around her own, and tried to get the girls to stand with him. He said, “I can beat old Gary. I can have one beautiful girl per side.”
Emily could not even stand, let alone dance.
She literally felt heavy. It was as though all her problems really did weigh something, and they really were on her shoulders. Unless somebody had a winch to haul her up, Emily could not possibly get to her feet. Gary and Beth Rose might just as well have carried the laughter away when they left. Sure enough, Beth’s musical giggle wafted down the hall toward their ears. A sound Emily might never make again.
“Matt, I just don’t—I just can’t—I still—”
She put her head on his shoulder. She could smell the smoke on him.
Once more she felt as if she were doing something wrong. I have troubles, Emily thought, real troubles, and yet I feel pushy for wanting to talk about them. I ought to deal with my own dumb problems in my head, and let everybody else have the stage. Never complain. Always be the one to laugh, always be good company, never be rude.
How did I learn that, in a family where all my mother and father ever do is complain?
Now I’m going to walk out there into the ballroom and be polite again. Have a soda, dip my potato chip in sour cream, and giggle about this fire I didn’t see, don’t care about, and hate the smell of.
She was immensely tired. Maybe this really was the last dance. Maybe she would never conquer this heavy sick feeling. Matt wanted her to dance and forget her parents. As if it didn’t matter.
But they were her parents. It would always matter.
Perhaps she could just sleep for several weeks, and when she woke up it would all have solved itself. Sleeping Beauty had the right idea. Lie there on your pedestal and let somebody else deal with the wickedness abroad.
Sleep, Emily thought. It’s a nice enough idea, but in what house? What room? What family?
She began to cry again. Matt sighed, as though Emily’s tears were a burden to him. And, of course, they were.
Emily tried to stop crying.
Another, softer hand rested on hers. It was Anne, touching her across Matt’s lap.
“Live with me,” Anne said. “I want you. We have a large house, you know. And a guest room. And my father’s abroad again, so we’re kind of at loose ends. We need somebody else.” Anne’s smile was both sad and eager. “We need another topic, too, Emily. If my mom and grandmother could talk about you and your problems, instead of me and my problems—oh, wow, what a difference it would make!”
Live with Anne Stephens.
Emily tried to imagine it.
Matt, however, did not think much of the idea. “You mean you want Em around in order to make life easier for you?” he demanded.
“Matt,” Anne said softly. “I know what it’s like to hurt all over. I know what it’s like to look into the next few months and wonder if you can live through them. And people helped me, Matt. They made life easier for me. Isn’t that what friends are for?”
Matt could only wish that right now he was with friends like Gary and Mike and Con. Girls were always getting deep and intense and exhausting. What if M&M came to live with him and wanted to talk like this all the time? Matt liked to talk about antique cars and baseball. All this talk of hurt and the meaning of friendship….“She could stay with us,” Matt said uneasily.
Anne patted his hand, too. “She could,” Anne agreed. “But I don’t think you want to find yourselves in the mess I’ve been in.”
“Hey,” Matt said indignantly, “if you think that I—”
Anne kept patting. “No, I don’t,” she said. “I’m just telling you that my house is a better place for Emily than your house. That way she can keep dating you like a normal person, and have a normal life.”
Actually that sounded pretty darn good. Matt wanted to date like a normal person. Coping with Emily’s family problems sounded as if it would consist of sitting and moping, sitting and worrying, sitting and talking deep depressing stuff for hours.
“Anyway,” Anne said, “I have a little sorting out of my own to do. Emily and I can sit up every night and counsel each other.”
Matt could think of nothing worse, but Emily and Anne began jabbering across him, planning the living arrangements, and the studying, and the talking, and the phone calls.
He waited. Emily’s voice, which started low and sad, began to rise. Matt didn’t really listen to the words but just the tune, ready to start dancing when the pitch of her voice reached its usual happy level.
“The guest room is boring,” Anne said. “We’ll have to decorate it. It’s got vanilla colored walls without a single picture, and plain Colonial curtains without any trim, and the carpet is a dull speckled greyish color. Mother has this ugly throw on the bed that somebody gave her: big sprawling roses in pink and yellow and red, and the leaves are lime green. You won’t even be able to sleep until you cover it with a blanket. Then we’ll put up rock star posters and stuff.”
Emily’s mother never paid attention to Emily’s room. She certainly never cleaned it; that was Emily’s job. But neither would she allow Emily to spend any money on it. There was never another coat of paint, never a suggestion that they could replace the old tired bedspread this year.
Emily loved the advertising in Seventeen: her walls were papered with cutout perfume ads or jeans ads. But if Emily were to Scotch-tape sexy record jackets on the walls or cents-off coupons for detergent, it was all the same to her mother.
Emily had always wanted a mother who cared: a mother who said, “Absolutely not! I refuse to allow those things on your walls!” or else a mother who said, “Listen, darling, let’s do your room all over this year. Yellow, do you think? Or do you like mauve?”
To think that Anne’s first consideration was making the room pretty for Emily’s sake! Emily’s own mother had never cared whether Emily liked her room or not. In fact, at this point, her own mother didn’t seem to care if Emily even had a room or not.
“Your mother won’t mind?” Emily asked anxiously. “She’ll think it’s all right for me to stay a while? Anne, I don’t even know how long! It could be months, it could be—I mean, I just don’t know anything! I don’t even have my clothes. I don’t have anything!” Emily started to cry again, and Matt got agitated, and shifted all over the daybed with nervousness. Emily fought back her tears.
“Are you kidding? She’ll be thrilled,” Anne said. “First of all, decorating a room is something she knows how to do. My mother will be so happy to be back where she knows what she’s doing.”
Matt, being a boy and slightly thick, said, “Oh, what’s she been doing lately that she doesn’t know how to do?”
“Having her first grandchild,” Anne said.
Matt decided to shut up.
Emily thought that surfing must be like this. At last you could stand up on the board! The wave carried you, and the sun smiled on you, and the water cooled you, and you skimmed toward the shore. Emily was heading for the shore; she was not going to drown after all.
At first when you knew Anne, you knew only her beauty and perfection and it sort of tired you out. You felt unequal to it. But later you found out there was this really neat girl inside all that beauty. Living with Anne would be pretty wonderful. Her parents would be kind, nobody would raise a voice or a hand against Emily, and she would have somebody to talk to! It sounded much too good to be true. “Maybe we should call your mother up and ask her,” Emily said nervously.
Matt liked that. Get this straightened out, stop crying, go back with other normal people and maybe have something to eat. “Well, then,” he said, “let’s go. Phone is in the hall.”
“Next to the food, huh?” Anne teased. She stood up and shook out the folds of her dress and ran her fingers through her lovely sleek blonde hair. Matt did not notice her. He was watching Emily. He loves her, Anne thought. He really does. I wonder if he’s ever said so. Is there a single boy here who’s ever actually used that old L word?
This time Emily cooperated when Matt wanted her to stand up. She looked nervously in the mirrors to see what damage all this crying had done to her. Matt could not stop touching her. He tucked her hair back behind her ears, and adjusted the long earrings so they fell straight, and he ran his finger down the long back zipper of the dress he had picked out, and fiddled with the tiny silver knots. “You look pretty good, M&M.”
That’s it, Anne thought. That’s as close to the old L word as Matt is going to come, if I know boys. All he can tell her is, she looks pretty good.
Matt and Emily kissed each other: not the kind of kiss Anne had ever done with Con. They pursed their lips and they tilted ever so slightly toward each other until their lips touched. After a moment of frozen kiss, they tilted until their faces were squashed together. Then Matt grinned and Emily giggled, and they moved apart and did it again. Anne wanted Con to kiss her like that.
Not a kiss that was a prelude to sex, but a kiss that meant—here I am! and I think you’re cute and funny and neat to be around! I know what I’d like to do with Con, thought Anne. Be friends again. But I don’t think he can.
Anne remembered Molly. The girl didn’t seem to be in the bathroom anymore. It would be hard to miss her, in that short purple slab of a dress she had on. Probably went to find Con, Anne thought. And this time it was Anne who felt tired: so tired she did not see how she could walk after Matt and Emily. They would be in love, walking together just as Beth Rose and Gary had, and she, Anne, would be alone. Better get used to it, girl, Anne thought. Because this is your last dance.
With Con, anyhow.
Because Gary came for Beth Rose, and Matt came for Emily, but nobody came for me. No Con finished fire fighting and came searching for me.
For a moment she thought she, too, would break down and cry, but she got past it, and then Matt remembered her, and put his arm around her, too. The three of them paraded down the hall toward the phone (and the food) and Anne managed to laugh with them.
She and Emily would go home together, and they would get their acts together, and figure out what they were going to do with their lives.
And it would be good enough.
Con thought, I am such a little kid.
I haven’t grown up at all.
I mean, you would think becoming a father and all that would have matured me at least a little tiny bit.
But no.
Here I am, still the little kid, still an annoying, noisy, stupid, aggravating little kid.
Con was grinning.
He couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.
All the action was behind him, between the mountain and the Inn, where the firetrucks and the smoke and the frantic manager were making a racket. All the kids were either watching that, or inside watching each other. But me, Con Winters thought, I am watching Molly.
He had not been this happy in months.
Just thinking about it made him feel absolutely terrific.
He ran after Molly.
Pammy congratulated Kip on an excellent job of fire fighting. Then she got to the important part. “Listen, Kip, I have two questions. Were you born on an ocean liner and have you skied in six countries?”
Mike, not letting go of Kip at all because Lee was circling the place, had forgotten all about the VCR questionnaire. He stared at Pammy wondering if she had lost her mind. Girls were peculiar creatures, definitely, but what kind of questions were those?
“Pammy,” he said wearily, “do you mind? I gotta get Kip to the girls’ room for repairs.”
Kip said, “Ocean liner, Pammy, that’s me.”
Pammy crowed like a rooster.
Mike thought, Girls are so weird. He said, “What are you talking about?”
“I was born on an ocean liner, of course,” said his girlfriend.
“You?” Mike repeated. “Go on.”
Kip glared at him. She had always had a short temper, and here it came again. “What’s the matter, Michael?” she said. “You don’t think anything interesting could ever have happened to me?”
Somehow Pammy had gotten between Mike and Kip.
Mike tried to maneuver around Pammy, but Pammy’s elbows and pencil were in the way and before he knew it, Lee was back, saying, “You were born on an ocean liner? Tell me about it! That sounds like a great story.”
“Oh, it is,” Kip said, and she walked away with Lee.
“Goodie, goodie, goodie,” crowed Pammy. “I’ve got everything but this last one! Oh, I’m going to win that VCR, I know I am, I can start renting my movies right now! Mike, how many countries have you been skiing in?”
The band began playing again, and everybody was sort of surprised. They had been too busy thinking fire to think dance. The girls instantly changed gear and wanted to begin dancing again. The boys still thought there was plenty to say about the fire and there was no reason to ruin a perfectly wonderful night by going and dancing.
Beth Rose shrieked, “Kip! Your dress! Your hair! Your face! Are you all right! Oh, no! Oh, Kip, what’ll we do?”
Kip was one of the few girls in the ballroom who often forgot about looks. She had a tendency to check herself at home before she left for school and not remember anything like hair or lipstick again till the following morning. She knew her blouse was torn, and her skirt ruined, but she hadn’t really thought of her hair yet, or her face, or her hands and arms.
“Thank you, Beth Rose,” Lee said acidly. “She was fine till you started screaming.”
“Fine?” Beth Rose repeated. “She may be your definition of fine, but she’s my definition of very bad shape. Come with me, Kip.”
Gary was sick and tired of the women’s room. He just wanted to be with Beth Rose. Why did she have to go and rescue Kip, who even filthy and torn looked completely in control? Gary moaned, “That women’s room has seen more action tonight than it usually does in a year,” he said. “Come on, Bethie, stay with me. Kip—”
He almost said, “Kip can take care of herself,” which was certainly true. But that remark would not earn him any points. As it was Beth Rose glared at him. “I did what you wanted earlier in the evening,” she said acidly, “and now—”
Gary nodded twenty times. “Right. Right. Now we’ll do what you want. You set up housekeeping in the women’s room and notify me when you’re done. Right. Good idea. Go with it.”
He and Beth Rose laughed, and he didn’t kiss her, because there were too many guys around, but he grinned at her and knew that they were still friends.
Gary wondered briefly what had happened to Con.
Con had a habit of disappearing when the going got rough.
Gary readily understood.
Girls could put a lot of pressure on you.
But still. Anne. Con should either go with her or not go with her.
Anne was looking down. Gary couldn’t stand people being depressed. He said, “Anne, still the evening star. Shall we dance?”
“Actually,” Anne said, “I think we shall eat first. Then we shall dance.”
“You understand the call of the empty stomach. I like that in a girl.” Gary flirted with her easily, not having to pay attention to it, because it was second nature to him. And he knew Anne didn’t care one way or another about him. They filled paper plates with goodies and drank large sodas too quickly and leaned against a wall with Matt and Emily.
Molly was right by the pool when she heard Con calling her.
She turned and saw him framed against the hillside: the black of the grass at night, and the silvery sky in the moonlight. He was taller than she was, and now he loomed up like an Olympic athlete, bounding gracefully toward her.
I won, Molly thought.
He wants me.
Triumph ran through her, and victorious laughter bubbled up and she wanted to yell, Come look at this, Anne. You think you’re so great, Anne? Well, look who he wants! Not you, you ice maiden with your perfect elegant hair! But me. Me. Molly Elmer Nelmes!
She tilted her body sensuously and waited for Con.
Kip found herself hustled down the hall by Beth Rose, and she was of two minds about this. If she really looked that ghastly, she wanted to be cleaned up. But she didn’t care nearly as much about her looks as she cared about Mike and Lee. Mike actually had seemed interested in her again, as though it were not, after all, the last dance—but a reprieve. In Mike’s eyes and in his embrace Kip had felt his original crush on her returning: he had seemed glad to be near her, and proud of her, and excited by her. And Lee—he was definitely without question glad to be near her and excited by her.
Kip muttered, “Beth, can it wait?”
“Can what wait?”
“How awful I look.”
The girls stopped walking and Beth Rose looked intently into Kip’s eyes. Kip whispered, so Lee couldn’t hear, “I mean, I’d rather spend the time with him unless it’s Disaster City.”
It was definitely Disaster City.
It was Disaster Nation, as far as Beth Rose could see.
On the other hand, Lee was no disaster. Lee was cute and built and interested in Kip, and a person could not discount that just to wash her face. So Beth Rose said, “What do you think we should do about her dress, Lee?”
“What can you do?” Lee said practically. “You don’t have another one hanging around, do you?”
“Good point,” Beth Rose said. “Let’s—uh—let’s all go into the women’s room and wash her face and stuff and then we’ll just go back to the dance—and uh—dance!”
“All?” Lee repeated. “All go into the girls’ room? I’m not the right gender, in case you haven’t noticed.”
In Lee’s case, it was very easy to notice. A wrestler like Gary? You didn’t overlook that kind of thing, not if, like Beth Rose, you found boys the most interesting scenery on earth. She said, “Oh, I’ve been hanging out there for hours, and so have Matt and Gary. You’ll feel right at home.”
“Uh. I don’t think so.” Lee looked as though he might cut and run, which was definitely not what the girls had in mind for him. Hastily Beth Rose said, “Okay, okay. You wait here. We’ll take exactly two minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”
Lee used his two minutes to find a sheet. It was white and it had lace trim; it was used in one of the suites upstairs. But it would make a great toga for Kip. When the girls came out again, the soot was gone from Kip’s face and her hair no longer had half-burned leaves in it, and her hands were clean. Her dress was still the complete shambles it had been. Lee said, “I have a toga for you. Here.” He held up the lovely white sheet.
Beth Rose and Kip exchanged glances and grinned behind the protection of the sheet. Beth Rose nodded and Kip nodded back at her. Beth Rose and Lee wrapped Kip in the sheet draping it tightly. Beth Rose said, “We don’t need this old sleeve; it’s torn to shreds anyway,” and she ripped it off the rest of the way, so that now, in her white sheet, Kip had one bare shoulder and one bare arm.
Lee grinned from ear to ear.
Beth Rose looked at the other two and thought, Togas are pretty sexy.
Then she thought, Lee is pretty sexy!
And then, because every girl loves a romance, whether its hers or not, Beth Rose thought, This is a perfect dance.
Con just kept right on running. It made him feel terrific and incredibly strong, like a race horse going for the jump. Molly was in the perfect position, about a foot from the pool’s edge. He stuck out a hand, palm first, like stopping traffic, and as Molly cooed hello, Con pushed her into the pool. He kept running, taking an enormous leap over the corner of the pool and landing safely on the tiles. Behind him the water rose in a huge splash and Molly’s scream turned into a gurgle as she went under. Con plowed to a stop in front of the thick bushes. He turned around to make sure Molly could swim, and she could, so he squatted down and said to her, “Molly, old girl. So far tonight you’ve shoved Anne in the water and you’ve started a forest fire. I think it’s time to cut your losses and drive on home.”