Scene Six #2
She’s done a great job. The courtyard is strung with twinkle lights and paper lanterns.
The trees are sprinkled with silver and gold tinsel, and flower garlands hang down from the breezeway.
It reminds me of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a play I saw once with my mom in LA.
I was ten then, and I didn’t really understand much of it, but I remember the set looked like a kind of fairyland. Like magic.
Students are milling around sipping apple cider out of champagne flutes. It doesn’t feel like just another school dance. It feels enchanted, important, like maybe something special is happening here tonight.
I spot Jake, Ben, and Rob by the punch table with Charlie and Olivia. Rob is wearing a suit jacket, which he never does. He keeps tugging down the sleeves. It’s sort of adorable, actually, how uncomfortable he looks. I can’t see Juliet anywhere. She must not be here yet.
In the time it’s taken me to talk to Lauren, Charlie and Jake have already started arguing and Ben and Olivia are on the cusp of making out. She’s giving him her power move—chest out, stretching—and he’s got his arms around her back.
I look at Rob again. He’s so cute in his suit jacket and gray pants. He has on a pink-and-white-checkered shirt underneath. It’s one of my favorites, and he never wears it.
I want to go over and put my arms around him, but then I remember that, technically, he isn’t even here with me. I haven’t really let myself think too much about it. I just keep hoping she just won’t show up.
As I cross the courtyard, “Kokomo” by the Beach Boys starts playing.
“You know, I think I’ve been to all of the places in this song,” Olivia says. She’s holding out her fingers and counting along with the lyrics. “Yep, all seven.”
“You are such a snob,” Charlie says. Ben seems to have found this comment endearing, though, because he takes Olivia’s hand in his and kisses the back of it. She giggles.
I can feel Rob’s eyes on me, and I will myself not to look at him. Not yet. I know as soon as I open my mouth, I’ll just be Rosie, and I’m enjoying having the dress speak for me, just for a moment.
“Wow,” he says. He comes up next to me and runs a hand down my arm. “You’re stunning.”
“You like it?” I drop my hands by my sides and play with some of the material. I’m feeling just a little bit tipsy from Rob’s hand on my arm. Like I’ve had a drink or something, even though I’m dead sober.
“You look great,” he says.
“So where’s Juliet?” I ask it casually, but I can see him grimace.
“I dunno,” he says. “Haven’t spoken to her.”
“Oh.”
“Rosie, I told you it’s no big deal. I’m just doing this for you.” He draws me close to him the way he did by the Cliffs. It feels nice, safe. It makes me start to relax. “We’re okay, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, angling closer to him.
“Good, because regardless of who my technical date tonight is, I want to dance with you.”
“Corny,” I say, “but I’ll take it.”
He stabs himself in the chest with his hand. “Only for you.”
“Okay, Romeo,” Charlie says. “Are we dancing, or what?”
The song changes, and “Walking on Sunshine” starts playing.
Charlie thought old songs would be appropriate for the Fall Back theme.
“Like throwback,” she said. I’ve always loved this song.
It reminds me of summer and being young, and when Rob grabs my hand and starts twirling me on the dance floor, all thoughts of Juliet fly right away.
It’s dark out, and as Rob spins me around, the paper lanterns zigzag beams of light across the courtyard.
I feel like I do on the swings ride at Six Flags, like the world is going a million miles a minute and yet I’m completely lost in one moment.
Things moving by so quickly, they look like they’re completely standing still. The best kind of paradox.
Charlie and Jake are getting along for the moment, and Olivia is stuck to Ben, dancing way too slow for this song. I find myself smiling so hard I start to laugh. It’s perfect, this moment. So completely wonderful I want to stay here forever.
The song ends, and Rob twirls me one last time. “Nice moves, Rosie,” he says. We’re both a bit breathless.
My dress has shifted dangerously low, and my hair is wet, some of it matted to the back of my neck. I already feel like a drowned rat, and we practically just got here. I need to freshen up.
“I’m going to go to the bathroom,” I say to Rob.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” he says as he pulls me to him and kisses me once softly on the cheek.
He’s a little bit sweaty, and the kiss is damp, but I still walk away with my hand over the spot where his lips have just been.
It’s perfect. This entire night is turning out better than I ever could have imagined.
A few freshman girls are in the bathroom, and they take one look at me and scramble to leave. It’s funny to remember feeling that way—small and insecure. Between this dress and Rob’s kiss, it seems like such a long time ago.
I’m alone in the bathroom, in front of the mirrors.
I feel dizzy, like I need to sit down, except I’m too excited to even stand still.
You’re beautiful, Rob said, and being here now, for the first time since he said it, I think it might be true.
I look at this girl in the silver backless dress and feel beautiful.
I was so silly to think that things might not work out for us, or to even give two seconds to this Juliet thing.
It’s Rob. And me. And when he kissed me, it felt right.
I was so comfortable being close to him.
I mean, Rob was the one who rode behind me the day I took the training wheels off my bike.
He was the one who, when I got stung by that wasps’ nest while pulling up tomato plants in my mom’s garden, bought me sunglasses to cover how swollen my eyes were.
He was the one who trained with me every day in the pool at summer camp our fifth-grade year so that I could finally make it to the color orange group.
He was there when our dog, Sally, died. He was the one who insisted we have a funeral and even wrote a poem: “Sally did not dillydally. She died today. It’s sad to say.
” He was the one who held me when Charlie and I got in a gigantic fight last year, when I thought that maybe we wouldn’t be friends anymore.
He was the one who knew it would all be okay.
He knows that Twizzlers are my favorite candy and that up until the fifth grade I thought my middle name was spelled a different way.
He’s Rob. And the fact that I’ve known him forever and that he knows me, really knows me, is proof that it was always supposed to be us.
That he’s the one. And what makes it really remarkable is that he’s out there right now, waiting for me.
My body is buzzing with this quiet excitement.
I can feel it in my toes and through my fingers.
Maybe this is our night. I can’t think of anyone else I’d want it to happen with, and standing here now I can picture a lot more than Rob’s hands in my hair.
Charlie’s right. This is going to be the best year ever.
And next year Rob and I will both be at Stanford.
Suddenly I can see the rest of my life laid out in front of me like a red carpet. All I have to do is step onto it.
I apply some more lip gloss with a shaky finger, smooth out my dress, and walk down the breezeway. I feel invincible. Like Beyoncé in a music video. Like I have my own personal wind machine in front of me.
I can hear the notes of a slow song playing.
It’s that one from the movie Ghost. The one that goes, “Oh, my love, my darling.” Usually slow songs make me uncomfortable, but I’m already anticipating being in Rob’s arms, having his hands around my back, resting my head on his shoulder.
I’m walking so briskly, I don’t even notice that I’ve walked right into someone. “Sorry,” I say, not looking up.
“Hang on.” Len puts his hand on my arm, stopping me.
“Umm, hey,” I say, shaking him off.
“I was actually looking for you,” he says.
“Has hell frozen over?”
He cocks his head to the side. “Yeah, it has,” he says. “But it’s kind of a nice change from this sauna of a summer.”
“Is there something you need?” I ask, impatient. I want to get back to Rob. To tell him, absolutely and definitively, I want to be with him.
Len shrugs. “Need? Nah. I just wanted to ask what’s up with your man.”
“My man?”
“Cut the act. I’ve seen the groping.”
We have not been groping, have we? “There hasn’t been any groping.”
“You know, you’re right. It was nothing compared to what’s going on up there.” He gestures above the courtyard.
“Up there?”
“Look, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He gives me a little salute with two fingers and then stuffs his hands into his pockets, walking backward and away.
“What are you talking about?”
“He’s a jackass,” Len says, turning. “You heard it from me first.”
“Who?” I mutter stupidly, but he’s off the breezeway already, and if he’s heard me, he doesn’t answer.
I glance around the courtyard. Charlie and Jake are swaying together, although it looks a little like Charlie is leading.
Ben and Olivia are completely tangled up in the corner.
It’s impossible to see whose limbs are whose.
I can’t seem to spot Rob, but I still feel dizzy. It’s making it hard to focus.
I weave in and out of people on the dance floor.
Couples, swaying. Matt and Lauren are locked in an embrace, and I wonder, briefly, if they’re together.
Stranger things have happened, I guess. It might be good for Lauren since it took her forever to get over that girl from the public school that she’d dated last year.
I’m standing in the middle of the dance floor when instinctively I look up. And as soon as I do, I understand what Len meant.
There’s this little balcony over the breezeway that was part of the old mansion and that the school kept, even though it serves no practical function. It’s small, probably seven feet by four or something, and it’s covered in ivy.
Rob’s up there. His brown hair is falling slightly into his eyes, and the collar of his shirt has come undone.
He’s swaying to the music, just like I imagined.
He looks handsome and strong and charming all at once, and I want more than I ever have to be in his arms. The problem, though, is that somebody else already is.
He’s holding her. His arms are around her back and her head is on his shoulder, and they’re swaying slowly, so slowly they look like they’re not even moving. The girl in his arms should be me, but it’s not, not even close. The girl he’s swaying with is none other than Juliet.
There’s something in the way that he’s holding her that makes me stop in my tracks.
It’s not friendly and it’s not platonic.
He’s holding her like she’s a leaf, like she might just at any moment blow away in the wind.
She looks like a ballerina in his arms, so small and delicate and fragile.
And then I see him lean over and smell her hair, and it’s like someone has just knocked the wind out of me.
I just stand there, gaping. They’re so close together, you couldn’t even fit a feather between them.
I blink, but they’re still there. She doesn’t pick her head up off his shoulder. He doesn’t move his hands from her back. They could be a statue, that’s how still they are standing together.
Is anyone else seeing this? Olivia and Ben are still smothering each other, but I don’t see Charlie.
I suddenly desperately don’t want her to know.
I don’t want anyone to know. I want to take back the last forty-eight hours, to avoid this humiliation.
I want to run as far away as I possibly can from here and never look back.
I want to reverse time. I want to do a million things rather than stand here, watching them.
I finally look away from them, and Len’s face comes into view. He’s looking at me, and I expect him to smirk, to roll his eyes, but he doesn’t do anything. He just looks away.
Then Charlie is there. Her red hair has fallen out of its bun, and it’s hanging around her face like braches on a weeping willow tree.
She’s seen them too, and she’s looking at me, her expression mirroring mine.
She crosses over to me in two paces, and I feel her take my hand in hers.
She squeezes it twice, the way she did on our first day of high school in the car when I was nervous.
The way she always does when things get to be just a little bit too much. It’s her way of saying, “I’m here.”
And then, still holding my hand, she leads me away. Off the dance floor, through the breezeway, past Cooper House, and out to upper, where she opens the door and helps me inside Big Red. It’s only once we’re pulling out of the parking lot that I start to cry.