I'm sorry that this took forever to write but the dance took on a life of its own and is nearly 10,000 words. Because of that, I've cut it into two almost equal length chapters. Here's the first half. Enjoy!
…
10th Grade, High School
Age: 15
October 13, 2007
…
"Why are you pacing?"
Vince tosses a baseball up in the air from where he's laying on TJ's bed. The two are waiting for Gus, Mikey, and the girls to arrive so their mothers can gawk and take pictures of their precious babies who are so grown up. He had arrived earlier than the rest and had played some video games in the basement before the two put on their nice clothes, but it was evident that TJ's head wasn't really in the game.
Now he is pacing around his bedroom and it's giving Vince a headache.
"I'm not pacing."
"Tell that to the hole in your rug."
TJ sits on the side of the bed with a huff and Vince nearly misses the ball as it comes back down. He sets the baseball on the other side of the mattress and sits up.
"What's going on?" he asks.
TJ blows out a breath. "I'm gonna tell Spin that I love her tonight."
Vince feels his mouth drop and his eyes feel like they're bugging out. "Seriously?"
TJ nods. "Don't tell anyone. I don't want her to know just in case I chicken out or my plan malfunctions."
He holds up his fingers in a scout's honor pose.
"What's your plan?"
"I took some of the leftover lights after we finished cleaning and I decorated the rotunda with them. I'm gonna pull her away towards the end of the dance and bring her up there and hopefully everything works out."
It sounds like a good plan, but Vince sees a glaring miscalculation. "The rotunda is gonna be locked," he says.
No one in their right mind who works in the school would leave that door open. Kids would sneak up there and have the whole school to explore and cause havoc in.
TJ reaches into his pocket and shows him a key. "I know. I thought of that."
"Holy shit," he says, reaching for the key and holding it in his hand. "How'd you get this? Some sort of presidential perk?"
"I begged," TJ says. "The janitor took pity on me."
He hands the key back and looks at TJ curiously. "How do you know that you love her?"
Vince has had crushes on girls before but he has no idea what love feels like or what would make someone want to tell someone else that. TJ and Spinelli have been dating a while. High school relationships seem to last a bit longer than middle school ones, but are still somewhat fleeting as far as he can tell from his classmates. TJ and Spinelli have outlasted quite a few first relationships among their peers.
TJ thinks for a moment and when he turns back to Vince, he has a stupid grin on his face.
"I don't know. I just do," he says. "I think about her all the time…and when I think about my future, she's always there. It doesn't matter if I think of myself at sixteen, eighteen, or eighty – she's there and she's beautiful and I just feel lucky to be with her."
Vince nods and leans back against TJ's headboard. TJ almost sounds delirious when he says it.
"It's hard to explain," TJ says. "But you'll understand when it happens."
Before Vince can say anything else, he can hear the elephant footsteps of Mikey and Gus storming up the stairs. He watches as TJ seems to completely forget the nervous delirium in favor of greeting their other friends, hiding it from the others but deeming Vince suitable to witness his vulnerability.
When the girls arrive, the boys meet them downstairs. The two are standing with all their moms, Gretchen engaged in the conversation but Spinelli unable to hide her boredom. Vince sees her eyes flick toward the stairs as the boys noisily barrel down them. When she sees TJ, her whole face lights up. Her eyes begin to sparkle and a smile spreads across her face. Is that what love looks like on the outside?
TJ had said that he was going to tell Spinelli that he loved her, not that he was going to say it back, so Vince assumes that she hasn't said it yet. He can't imagine that she won't say it back tonight. But, it does feel a little odd knowing what is going to transpire between them tonight when Spinelli doesn't know. It makes him happy to know that TJ trusts him with an important secret like this, but part of him feels like he knows an intimate detail that he shouldn't know. Something that's just between the two of them.
"Hey."
He looks up and sees Gretchen standing in front of him on the other side of the stair railing. The other boys have left him in the dust, now standing with the moms as they ready the cameras.
He shakes his head and smiles at her. "You look great!"
Both the girls do. Spinelli has a red dress with thin straps on her shoulders. She has her ever-present boots on her feet and her leather jacket in her hands, ready to put on as soon as the mothers deem them finished with pictures. Gretchen has on a blue dress, made out of some sort of shiny material, that has no straps and some lighter blue flowery details. Her hair, obviously a Mrs. Spinelli special, is braided into an updo with a few pieces of hair out to frame her face. She must have a little bit of makeup on because he has never noticed her lashes before tonight. She looks really pretty.
"Thank you," she says. "Are you going to come take pictures with us, or are you going to watch from the stairs?"
He chuckles sheepishly and follows the rest into the Detweilers' living room.
The dance itself goes quickly. As the doors open and the students begin to flood in, taking in the decorations of the gym in awe, the DJ plays an assortment of popular hits. Gus lasts longer than usual, but when he is bumped by a couple of juniors, who are grinding against each other and completely in their own universe, he turns so red that it is apparent in the darkness of the gym. Mikey offers to go to the refreshment table with him as the poor kid looks around with wide eyes.
"Are we supposed to be dancing like that?" Vince hears him ask Mikey as the two dodge the crowd.
The group that Vince dances with ebbs and flows through the night but consists of a large group of sophomores. What started as just his friends, soon includes various others. By the time Cascada's voice floods from the speakers, Meghan Rigalli makes her way over to the group and manages to disentangle Spinelli and TJ, pulling Spin away to dance to the high energy music. Gretchen disappears not long after and then it's just the baseball boys left.
The thing about dances though is that the borders of groups can be very fluid. Not long after the girls have left, another group of girls Vince vaguely recognizes as sophomore cheerleaders try to infiltrate. One of the girls squeezes in between Sam and Dave, snapping along to the Lil Jon song blasting through the speakers. Another girl comes between Vince and TJ, her eyes focused on Vince.
He knows the girl by face but her name evades him. He isn't TJ and doesn't know every person's name in the school. This girl he only knows by face as a cheerleader who sometimes sits near the Ashleys on the sideline during football games. He glances over her head to see if he can catch TJ's eye, see if he can mouth over a name, but TJ is gone. Their group is now just a group of baseball boys and cheerleader girls, paired off in twos.
He dances with this girl for a few songs. It's closer than he has ever danced with a girl before and it feels nice having a dance partner. He can see how TJ and Spinelli can get lost and completely ignore the rest of them at times. He just wishes he could remember this girl's name. They only break apart when the DJ stops the music, announcing the homecoming court. For the second year in a row, Vince and Ashley A have earned the top votes for their grade and he is expected to go to the front to share a dance with her along with the freshman and junior princes and princesses prior to the King and Queen dance.
"Sorry, gotta go," he tells her.
"That's okay," she says. "Thanks for the dance, Vince."
He gives her a strained smile. Now he feels really bad for not knowing her name.
As he walks toward the front, Vince debates taking a well-timed bathroom break to avoid his duty of dancing with Ashley A. It wouldn't be hard to duck out now that he has long since lost all his friends, but knows he can't skip it. As unfortunate as he knows it will be, it would look worse for him to avoid it. This year as they rode in on the float together, she at least didn't criticize his wave, apparently deeming it worthy this year. It had been a civil ride with limited bickering.
Which is better than what he can say happened last year. He isn't sure how the rest of the sophomore class decided to vote the two of them in again. Last year, they fought both on the float and for the duration of their slow dance, standing at arm's length and breaking apart before the last chords even died. He can't even remember the arguments – something stupid no doubt.
Either the class forgot or they're just prepared with their fingers in their ears.
Ashley A is already at the front when he arrives, dressed in a bubblegum pink halter dress with sparkles on every inch.
"Alright, let's get this over with," he says.
Ashley A rolls her eyes.
"You do realize this is going to be a recurring pattern," she says as they stand, arms straight at the elbows. "Because I will be a cheerleading captain and you will be a football captain, so you just, like, better get used to this, LaSalle."
"Oh, joy. Let me pencil this into my planner real quick," he says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Let the countdown begin. Just three hundred and sixty-five more days to go."
She scoffs. "Real mature."
Her eyes scan the crowd briefly and she turns back to him.
"So, do you like Lauren?"
"Who?"
She snorts at his response. "The girl you were dancing with earlier."
Now he has a name. But does he like her? He doesn't really know her. She was pretty, he supposes but he doesn't know her.
"I, um…I don't know. I don't really know her."
When Ashley A looks up at him, she actually looks thoughtful. Her face appears genuine, lacking the perpetual uppity attitude and air of superiority she usually has. Ashley A is also on the cheerleading squad so she probably knows the girl. Maybe this will be a good thing. He never really imagined using Ashley A as a matchmaker, but here he is.
"Good. I have to say, you can do so much better than the girls you were dancing with," she says.
His face drops and his eyes widen.
"What?"
"I'm just saying," she says, shrugging. "There's nothing inherently special about her."
He should have known. She is an Ashley. They never have anything nice to say about anyone.
"Are you serious?" he exclaims. "She's your teammate!"
Ashley A shrugs. "This year. Those girls will never make varsity cheer. They're not good enough. Trust me."
The sad part is that he wants to make a disparaging comment about how critical she is of the girl, but he can't without feeling like a hypocrite. He has had the same thoughts about some of his own teammates. Only so many can ascend through the ranks to varsity and he knows, ultimately, that not everyone will make it. The only difference is that he has never actually said the words aloud.
"If you wanted to dance with us at some point, you could," she continues, recognizing his silence for what it was – acceptance that they're more similar than they thought. "Popular kids should stick with popular kids, you know."
Vince glares. That is a direct insult to Gus and Mikey and possibly Gretchen as well. TJ and Spinelli are fairly popular in their own right, as athletes and as the sophomore class's governing body. The Ashleys may not like Spinelli on principle, but they would admit to where she stands on the totem pole. No, that comment was directed toward his three other friends and regardless of whether or not what she said has any truth to it, he hates that Ashley A attacked them in such an outright way.
"You do realize that you made our lives miserable at Third Street," he says. "And not to mention, you still antagonize Spin."
Ashley A raises an eyebrow. "Spinelli gives as much as she takes in terms of antagonizing. You know that. I know that. So stop trying to make her into a saint."
"As if you're such an angel," he says. He feels the familiar bubble of hatred fill his gut. He feels like he's ten again and the Ashleys are bullying all the kids on the playground. "You're popular because everyone's afraid to outwardly hate you."
"And you're popular because you're a lunkhead athlete," Ashley A sneers. "That's the only reason why you keep Gretchen around, isn't it? So she can do your homework?"
"That's it!" Vince shouts. He rips his hands away from Ashley A's hips and backs up. "Dancing with you isn't worth the title!"
"Oh, grow up, Vince," she yells at his retreating back.
He storms through the crowd, toward the refreshment table, anger sitting in the pit of his gut. He takes one of the clear plastic cups and ladles whatever is in the bowl into it. He isn't parched and the drink tastes like nothing. Ashley A's snooty high-pitched voice echoes in his head, grating on his nerves.
Gretchen isn't just someone he hangs around with because she's smart. Yes, Gretchen is brilliant, but she is so much more than that. She is thoughtful and kind. Her enthusiasm is infectious. But, most importantly, she is an amazing friend. Ashley A, having gone to Third Street, knows that their friendship is much more than just him using her for her brains.
He sets the cup down on the table when he feels a presence behind him. He doesn't even look to see if he's right about who he thinks it is before he speaks.
"Please don't give me the look," he says, grinding his teeth.
"What look?" Gretchen asks.
"You know exactly what I'm talking about, Gretch," he says, his eyes firm on the punch bowl. "You raise your eyebrows and your lips form an almost inhumanly straight line and I refuse to accept that look for what I just did."
He takes a deep breath and turns around, happy to see that Gretchen either dropped her righteous disappointment in him or never adopted it in the first place. He stuffs his hands in his pockets.
"Anyone else," he says, shaking his head. "There were five other girls nominated and it could have been any of them and it would have been better than Ashley A."
"So you would have rather danced with Ashley B? Ashley Q?" she asks.
He grimaces. Of the six girls nominated, the majority were girls he doesn't like. Any of the Ashleys would have been just as bad as Ashley A he supposes, Ashley T being the possible exception.
"It could have been Spin," he mumbles. "Why didn't she win?"
Gretchen shrugs. "The same reason why TJ will never beat you," she says, matter-of-factly, as if he should already know this. "No one wants to vote for them for everything."
Vince's shoulders slump and he looks away. He doesn't like the insinuation that if TJ wasn't class president that he could easily beat him at this. Sure, TJ is popular too, but Ashley A was right about one thing. Athletes and cheerleaders are supposed to win at this sort of thing and, yes, TJ is a decent football player and a really good baseball player, but Vince is in a league of his own. Even Vance Lombardi, who currently leads him in points as a wide receiver on their JV team, doesn't hold a candle to Vince. The only reason he has more points is because the QB likes Vance more. Next year, on varsity – because Vince will make varsity, he knows he will – they'll have an even shot with an unbiased quarterback. In addition to his football skills, he was the only freshman in decades to make the JV basketball team rather than just being stuck on the freshman squad and he had the most strikeouts last year of any freshman pitcher in their baseball league.
"I guess," he mutters.
He pulls his hands out of his pocket to take a swig of his drink and looks out at the throngs of bodies jumping around to the fast-paced dance song currently blaring through the speakers. He doesn't particularly want to go out there again quite yet and face his friends, who will no doubt make a comment about his confrontational dance with Ashley A.
He tells Gretchen that he is going to run to the bathroom and that he'll meet her back out on the dance floor. He can tell she doesn't believe him as her eyes narrow just slightly, but she doesn't push him on it. She just gives him a little nod and watches as he walks away, wordlessly telling him that she's keeping an eye on him.
That is why Gretchen is one of his best friends. She knows when he needs her and when to step back and give him air. She knows him.
He pushes through the doors into the gym lobby. A couple of the chaperones are standing near the door, reminding students that once they exit they can't re-enter. He takes a spot against the wall near the water fountain and crosses his arms, taking a few deep breaths. He'll stay out here for a couple of songs, not long enough that Gretchen will come searching for him or anything. Just enough time for him to catch his breath and calm the bubbling in his gut.
There's a pause in the music again a few songs later and he looks up, wondering what else the DJ is announcing tonight. It can't be time for the final dance, there's still an hour left, and the King and Queen and the lower court already had their eventful few minutes of fame. He pushes off from the wall and opens the doors just as he hears the beginning lyrics of Happy Birthday coming from the crowd. He feels his own jaw drop.
"Oh, she's gonna hate this," he mutters to himself as he wonders who could have possibly thought it was a good idea to tell the DJ that it was Spinelli's birthday.
All of his friends know how awful of an idea that would be. Spinelli never even had a birthday party until fourth grade, after they all finally met her parents at Parents Night and the separation between her home life and school life was broken. But, even then, she only had two parties – fourth and fifth grade. In sixth grade, she insisted she was too old for parties, even though she's the youngest and they had all already had their birthday parties that year.
In eighth grade, after she forbade them from attending the family birthday party her parents had invited them to, the group had insisted on taking her out to dinner, just the six of them, to do something. She had begrudgingly agreed. Mikey had made the suggestion that Applebee's had free dessert if they told the staff that it was her birthday and it had nearly ended in disaster. As the staff all sang their song to her, Vince remembers thinking that Spinelli might actually explode. He has never seen anyone turn quite as dark a shade of red as she did in that moment – not even Gus during their fifth grade puberty lecture with Principal Prickly.
He starts walking back toward his friends as the singalong finishes and the DJ starts back up with the regular dance music. At least now no one will be thinking about his dance with Ashley A. All his friends will be on damage control because Spinelli is bound to punch whoever it was that initiated this. His immediate guess is Sam, who probably thought it would be funny and didn't realize how uncomfortable Spinelli would be in this situation. For someone in the limelight quite a bit recently, she's not nearly as extroverted as he and TJ.
He sees Spinelli push out of the crowd and she runs to the door. Vince quickly looks over his shoulder to see if anyone else is rushing after her, but he can't see TJ, Gretchen, Mikey or Gus anywhere. He pivots and runs after her, catching up just as she makes it to the lobby.
She presses her head against the wall and he takes up the space next to her, leaning against it and looking down at her.
In the bright lights of the lobby, he can see her chest rising and falling in a rapid rhythm, much more than he would expect from her for running that short distance. He places a hand on her shoulder and she startles slightly, her breath catching, before resuming the fast breathing.
"Breathe, Spin," he says.
When she doesn't respond, just keeps with the heavy breathing, he looks over his shoulder and hopes he'll see TJ or Gretchen coming to find them. But, it's just him. The teachers from earlier standing at the door are looking over at them and he knows that having them get involved will make this even worse, so he quickly picks her up and carries her over to the stairwell, setting her down on the step before sitting beside her.
She puts her head in her hands and he fiddles with his fingers, not knowing what to do. He has never seen anyone hyperventilate before, especially not Spinelli. Sitting beside her, watching helplessly as she tries to steady her breathing, he realizes that he actually hasn't spent much time one-on-one with Spinelli in…a long time. She used to stop by Third Street on her way home from ballet if he was shooting free throws and challenge him to HORSE or one-on-one. But, once she and TJ got together – and really, probably months before that – she stopped coming by because she walked home with TJ instead.
Spinelli blows out a long breath through her lips and he turns away from his fingers. He can't tell if the beads of sweat on her forehead are from the dancing, the hyperventilating, or a little of both.
"You okay?" It doesn't seem like the right thing to say, but he can't think of anything else.
She nods. "Yeah. Thanks for sitting with me."
"No problem." He swallows thickly. "Are you really okay?"
She nods more emphatically. "Yeah. I wasn't expecting it." She blows out another breath. "I didn't have time to fully prepare myself for the embarrassment."
"It's Happy Birthday, not the end of the world."
She glares at him. "The entire school just sang Happy Birthday. It's like going to Applebee's, but on steroids!"
"And you don't even get the free dessert," he says.
She snorts and shakes her head but he can see her lips upturning. He starts to breathe a little easier himself. This is the Spinelli he is much more used to seeing. His eyes glance around, trying to find something else he can use to cheer her up and get her to forget the last few minutes.
He stands up and taps his foot on the tiles. They're large and square and he has an idea based around the one thing he knows the two of them share – their competitiveness.
"I challenge you to HORSE hopscotch," he says. "You have to copy exactly what the other person does and if you don't, you get a letter. First person to HORSE loses."
"And what happens when you lose?"
He shakes his head. "When you lose, you mean?"
She stands and moves beside him. "Who goes first?"
It is actually much more fun than Vince expected it to be. A few rounds in, they start adding more than just hopping along the tiles. They spin and jump in circles and add in arm movements. He jumps three squares up on one foot, then jumps with two feet, spins to the left and lands facing the opposite way and hops backwards one square before motioning for Spinelli to go. She jumps the squares, but when she gets to the spin, she spins to the right, and he lets her know.
"That's an H!" he yells. "You're supposed to spin to the left!"
"I did spin to the left!"
"No, you spun to the right!"
"You're blind!"
"No, you're directionally challenged!"
"Hey!"
The two turn away from each other to see Gretchen and TJ, both looking on in confusion.
"What are you guys doing?" TJ asks.
Vince shrugs. "I'm beating her at hopscotch HORSE."
Spinelli crosses her arms and rolls her eyes. "We're tied."
Gretchen and TJ share a look between them and when they turn back their both shaking their heads.
"You guys are missing the dance. Everyone's looking for you," TJ says.
Spinelli skips away and grabs TJ's outstretched hand. She turns around and smirks at Vince.
"It's a draw, I guess. We'll have to rematch."
"Yeah, next time learn your lefts and rights!"
Spinelli sticks out her tongue at him and Vince rolls his eyes. He walks over to Gretchen and walks back into the gym beside her.
"Were you out here the whole time?" she asks.
"Yeah, pretty much. As I was coming in, she was coming out so I ducked back out with her." He shrugs. "It was kind of nice though, you know, after she calmed down. I haven't hung out with Spin in a really long time."
"Well, I was glad to see you both having fun at least," she says. "I was expecting to see the two of you miserable together."
He sucks in a breath. "I mean, we did that too. But everything ended up okay, so you can stop worrying."
As they walk into the gym, their classmates are singing along to a song. They point to the nonexistent windows of the gymnasium and then to the opposite side to point at the walls, their movements in time to the catchy hip-hop lyrics. He walks forward, bumping Gretchen's shoulder as he goes.
"Come on, Gretch," he says. "Time to get low."
"I will absolutely not be getting low."
He laughs as he takes her hand, nearly pulling her through the sweaty masses. They find their friends and start dancing again, the disaster of the homecoming dance so far mostly out of mind as the hip-hop music takes over his thoughts.
…
Notes
Again, I'm so sorry that this took so long to get out! I have everything written for the whole dance now and will update soon with the remainder in October 2007 Part 3. Gretchen and Spinelli are the narrators for the next chapter and I think you'll all really enjoy it.
Songs referenced in this chapter: Cascada - Everytime We Touch (2006); Lil Jon - Snap Yo Fingers (2006); Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz feat. Ying Yang Twins - Get Low (2002).
Let me know what you think!
