All That She Saw

by Alana Terry

  She had never felt so happy before. Never so alive before. Like she’d been made for this moment, to dance here to this song at this precise instant in time. Lisa, the most popular girl in the ninth-grade class, was on her left, and they were surrounded by the coolest, prettiest girls in school. There was only one thing that would make tonight even more perfect.

  Jennifer was lightheaded when the song ended. A few boys groaned when a slow song came on. Jennifer held her breath. The DJ was playing Boyz II Men already? It was too soon. Darren wasn’t here. At least she hadn’t seen him yet …

  Shawna and Kylee, Lisa’s two best friends, stared at Jennifer and began to giggle. They leaned over to whisper in one another’s ears. What was going on?

  And then she felt it. The tap on her shoulder. The electric spark zinging down her arm and throughout her entire body.

  Darren.

  “Wanna dance?”

  It was impossible to remember the exact order of what happened next. Did he put her hands on her waist, or did she say yes to him first? Was she the one who took a step closer, or was that him?

  “The thing about slow dancing is it’s like you’re giving him a five-minute hug.” That’s what someone had written in to Teen magazine for their article on your first school dance. And as it turned out, the author was exactly right.

  “You like Boyz II Men, don’t you?” Darren asked.

  Jennifer could hardly hear his words over the pounding of her heart, the swell of the music. “Yeah,” she answered, only then piecing the individual words he spoke to her together to try to form some kind of meaning out of them.

  And he pulled her closer. Her feet were touching his. Each time he swayed, she swayed, and the music wrapped them up in a warm cloud of perfect bliss.

  It was even more perfect than she’d been dreaming.

  “Thanks,” Darren said, grinning at her. Why had he stopped moving?

  Jennifer’s face flushed. She hadn’t even heard the song end. She wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen next. Was she supposed to say thank you back? Was she supposed to tell him you’re welcome? Or maybe she was supposed to grab his hand right there and make sure everyone around them knew that she’d be dancing with Darren and Darren only for the rest of the night.

  She was still trying to decide what to do, terrified of saying the wrong thing, thinking back desperately to that article in Teen to remember if they’d given any kind of rules. How do you end a slow dance?

  “Thank you,” she finally managed to stammer, but Darren had already disappeared.

  Shawna and Kylee pounced on her an instant later. “Oh, my gosh. Did you seriously just dance with him? You two looked adorable. Are you going out?”

  “When did Darren start to notice someone like you?” And then Lisa stepped up to their group, her face not so excited, her smile not so friendly. Shawna and Kylee backed away. Jennifer could feel their eyes on her. Wait, why were they upset? She hadn’t done anything wrong, had she?

  “Was that Darren you were dancing with?” Lisa’s voice had a grainy edge to it that made Jennifer want to cover her ears.

  She tried to laugh. “Yeah, crazy, right? He just came up and started dancing.” Was that how it happened? Jennifer couldn’t even remember. They were playing a rap song now, but it felt like her feet were still swaying slowly, like they were still pressed up against Darren’s as their bodies moved together in perfect rhythm.

  “Cute, Jennifer.” Lisa flipped her hair over her shoulder. She’d straightened it for tonight. Jennifer suddenly felt juvenile and fake with her bouncy curls and took a step back.

  “Cute,” Lisa repeated.

  Jennifer glanced at Shawna and Kylee to see if she could pick up any clues from them. What was going on? They circled around Lisa, giggling, and the trio turned their backs on Jennifer and walked away.

  What was that all about?

  The very next song was another slow one. Jennifer didn’t recognize it. She glanced around the gym, wondering where Darren was, if he’d come up from behind and tap her on the shoulder again like before. Or maybe she’d see him first, smile, and walk straight up to him.

  She inched her way toward the walls as couples took over the center of the gym. They looked so awkward together, some of them standing with a full foot of separation between them. Not like Jennifer and Darren, where she’d been pressed so close to him she was certain he could feel her heart thudding against his chest.

  Where was he?

  And then she saw. Lisa was talking to him, her hand on her hip, her body at an angle. Her two best friends stood on either side of her like guards, their arms crossed, their faces set in scowls. Darren looked helpless. He looked … Wait, what was going on?

  Lisa’s posture relaxed. She slunk up toward him, putting her hands on his shoulders. On Darren’s shoulders. That’s not what was supposed to happen.

  Shawna and Kylee grinned when his hands circled around Lisa’s tiny waist. Her hair was so long now that it was straight it fell past the small of her back. Somebody bumped into Jennifer. She thought she heard someone asking her a question, but her mind refused to work. Her body refused to move.

  What was Darren doing?

  Shawna and Kylee turned and looked straight at her. Did they know she’d been here watching them this whole time?

  Jennifer wanted to turn and run away, but she couldn’t. Not when Darren was there, dancing with the most popular girl in ninth grade. Lisa with her straightened hair. Why had Jennifer decided to scrunch up her curls tonight, anyway? She looked ridiculous. Like a poodle in a dog show.

  Shawna and Kylee grinned as they stepped up to her. “Hey, Jennifer, can we talk to you outside?” Shawna asked.

  Jennifer still hadn’t stopped staring at Darren. There were dozens, maybe hundreds of students in between them, but their eyes locked for a split second.

  He gave a shy smile and an embarrassed shrug. Then he rested his cheek on Lisa’s gorgeous, straightened hair as he swayed with her in perfect time to the music.

  CHAPTER 11

  “Yeah, so here’s the thing.” Shawna jutted out her hip, just like Jennifer had seen Lisa do a dozen times a day. Next to her, standing just behind Shawna’s shoulder, Kylee twirled her straight hair around her pointer finger and chewed loudly on her bubble gum.

  “So, Darren’s gonna ask Lisa out tonight,” Shawna said, never once taking her eyes off Jennifer. “And, well, we know you like him.”

  “Yeah,” Kylee inserted. “It’s totally obvious.”

  Jennifer ignored the burning in her cheeks. She shouldn’t feel embarrassed. She should feel angry. What was this? Some kind of interrogation in the girls’ bathroom?

  The toilet from one of the stalls flushed, and the three of them were silent as a gangly girl hurried out, not even bothering to wash her hands.

  Shawna and Kylee followed her out with their eyes.

  “Gross,” Shawna hissed.

  “I know,” Kylee whispered back.

  Jennifer was relieved to no longer be the center of their focus. Unfortunately, the reprieve lasted only a second or two.

  “So, anyway,” Shawna went on, “Lisa asked us to tell you to stop hanging all over Darren, if you know what we mean.”

  Kylee smacked her gum loudly and added a very emphatic, “Yeah.”

  “Because you’re kind of embarrassing yourself the way you’re all over him and everything.”

  Shawna and Kylee laughed. Jennifer took a step back.

  “We don’t want to hurt your feelings,” Shawna concluded, “but Darren’s already told Adam and Russ and Craig that he likes Lisa better. We just wanted you to know so you could stop acting all weird around him. No offense, but people are starting to talk about you.”

  Kylee gave a little snicker. Jennifer wished that she could conjure up a spell to make the floor open up and swallow her whole.

  She didn’t hear what Shawna and Kylee said next. She hardly even noti
ced them walk out and leave her in the bathroom alone. She reached into her pocket, counted out her change. Down the hill from the school was a pay phone. Maybe her dad was right. Maybe these dances were nothing but a big waste of time.

  Whatever happened, she wasn’t going back into that gym. Not with Darren acting like such a two-timing player, not with Lisa standing there with her arms draped all over him. It was either call her dad, walk home in the dark, or stay here in the bathroom.

  Jennifer allowed herself the luxury of a short cry locked inside one of the stalls, then she counted her coins again and made her way down the hill.

  It was time to call her dad.

  CHAPTER 12

  The flight attendant made one more announcement, another apology for the few minutes’ delay. We’re not in the air yet. The door to the gate isn’t even closed. I could get off now. Pretend like I need to use the bathroom in the front of the plane, then walk away and never look back …

  Except I know I can’t do that. At least, I know I shouldn’t do that. When I became a Christian, Russel assured me that God freed me from the sins of my past. That means I don’t have to be terrified anymore, do I?

  I wonder if Russel would have told me those same comforting platitudes if he knew who I really am.

  I stare down the aisle, stare at that open door as if it’s my last connection to safety. If those attendants shut that gate, if I just sit here and fly out to Detroit and meet my in-laws and accept all their profuse congratulations for my marriage to Russel, I’m stuck in this life, in this skirt, in this headscarf for good.

  I’m not who any of them think I am, but if I allow myself to stay here on this plane, I’m going to wake up one day and realize there’s no more me left at all.

  I had a dream right after Russel proposed. I was her. Sarah, his first wife. I was wearing her clothes, cooking meals in her kitchen, homeschooling her kids, tending her garden. The children called me Mom. Even Russel called me by her name.

  When I looked in the mirror, it wasn’t my own face that I saw. It was hers. Pale and tired and wrapped up in that old-fashioned kerchief. I felt like I’d stepped out of an 1860s frontier TV show. Is this what I am? A mail-order bride escaping the dangers of the city to hedge my bets and do what I can to make life work out in the untamed wilderness?

  I woke up crying. I hadn’t done that in years. My pajamas were drenched in sweat, my cheeks soaked with tears. I don’t want to be Sarah. I don’t want to pretend. But if Russel knew the truth …

  I can’t do that to him. Not after he’s trusted me with his love, his kids. He’s flying us out to Detroit to introduce me to his parents, for goodness sake. It’s because of Russel I have a roof over my head. I have food to eat. It’s because of Russel I know who Jesus is. When I ran away from my past, I wasn’t looking for spiritual awakening, but God brought it to me anyway.

  And he used this man who loves me, the man I pledged to love and honor and cherish until death do us part. Russel has already started the paperwork for me to adopt his kids. It will be my name on their new birth certificates, as if Sarah never even existed.

  I’m sweating. I’m shaking. I’m biting my lip until I’m certain I’m about to draw blood.

  “Are you ready to hear what happens next?” The tiny voice beside me has grown familiar but still sounds so strange. How can I pretend that this child is my own, that I can ever be a fraction of the mother that she needs?

  “What happens next?” I ask, still keeping my eyes on the front of the plane. They haven’t shut the doors yet. There’s still time …

  “So the prince tells the princess that he wants to be married to her and live together for ever and ever in their great big castle, and he’s going to keep her locked up in the basement for the rest of her life.”

  I snap my focus away from the front of the plane to stare at my stepdaughter. “He did what?” I demand. I hope her father hasn’t overheard. If so, he’ll think I’m the one filling her head with scary images of kidnappings and torture.

  “I said he kept the wicked witch locked in the dungeon.” Annie pauses with a pout before finally adding, “That’s the end.”

  I feel the breath return to my lungs, repeat the words I just heard her say. He kept the wicked witch locked in the dungeon. I don’t remember a wicked witch in the story, but I assume she got what was coming to her all along.

  “That sounds like a very good ending,” I say, but even I’m not convinced by my own words. I repeat them, more forcefully this time, and the captain gets on to tell the flight attendants to prepare the cabin for departure.

  CHAPTER 13

  Dad was in a foul mood by the time he rolled in to pick Jennifer up at the bottom of the hill. If she’d known he’d be this late, she would have started walking instead of standing in the cold like an absolute idiot. What was her dad thinking, leaving her out alone like this?

  She was glad when they got home. Glad when Dad sauntered into his room and slammed the door shut instead of yelling or telling her how dumb she was for wanting to go to a school dance in the first place.

  The truth was humiliating to admit, but Dad had been right all along. Dances were stupid.

  The Teen magazine she’d been studying all month lay open on her bed. She ripped out the pages about school dances and flung the shreds into the trash. Too bad their home didn’t have a fireplace. She would have liked to watch the pieces burn.

  Hot tears streamed down her cheeks by the time she saw her eighth-grade yearbook on her nightstand. She yanked the cover open. She hadn’t realized it before, but Darren and Lisa’s pictures were just one row apart from each other.

  She ripped out the entire page, crumbling it to a ball, wishing there was something else she could do to give voice to her rage. She turned to the page where she knew she’d find Shawna’s photograph when she heard something at her window. At first she ignored it. The wind had picked up. She couldn’t let herself get interrupted by every little sound that made her jump. She had a job to do.

  Out with Shawna’s smiling face. Another page to crumble up. Maybe Jennifer should have drawn on the picture first. Given Shawna and Lisa and all of them the hideous makeovers they all deserved.

  The humiliating conversation from the bathroom ran unchecked through Jennifer’s mind.

  You’re kind of embarrassing yourself the way you’re all over him and everything.

  Jennifer gave a roar as she ripped Kylee’s face out of the yearbook then paused to see if her dad had overheard. Most likely, he’d already fallen asleep, but she didn’t want to wake him up with her yelling.

  She strained her ears, fearing the sound of her father’s door opening down the hallway. Then she heard it again. A tapping outside her window. Either the wind had really picked up or …

  She froze when she saw the flashlight beaming in through the glass. What was going on?

  Another rapping. Was it Darren? He knew where she lived, didn’t he? They rode the bus together through all of middle school. Even though she thought she’d been totally invisible to him at the time, he could find a way to remember that much, right?

  She wiped the tears from her face then yanked up the blinds. It felt just like in the TV shows. Darren at her window, come to apologize.

  Except it wasn’t Darren.

  “Shawna?” Jennifer couldn’t remember the last time she’d talked to Shawna without Kylee in arm’s reach. It felt strange to see her alone.

  “I came to apologize,” Shawna said, smoothing out her hair. “I didn’t see you at the dance and thought you might be upset. There’s a party going on at Kylee’s house. I wanted to know if you’d come with me.” She paused and lowered her eyes. “I’m really sorry about what we said to you. You know we didn’t mean it. Wanna come?”

  Jennifer glanced at the clock on her desk then at her closed door. If her dad found her sneaking out like this, he’d kill her. She thought about how silent and withdrawn he’d been since Mom died. How
he could spend weeks hardly leaving his room. How protective he’d gotten of Jennifer. How worried he’d be if he found her gone.

  Jennifer was about to fake a sore throat when Shawna lay her hand against the screen. “Come on. Basically everybody’s going to be there.”

  Jennifer held her breath. A real party? And Shawna came all this way to invite her?

  Jennifer looked at the clock once more. Kylee’s house wasn’t too far away. She could go for just a short time and be right back. Her dad would never know.

  Shawna gave a sly smile. “Darren’ll be there,” she added.

  Jennifer turned back once more to find her shoes and told Shawna she was ready to go.

  CHAPTER 14

  Darren hadn’t left her side all night. Jennifer had promised herself to leave Kylee’s by eleven, but it was nearly midnight, and she was no closer to going home than she’d been when she first arrived.

  “Isn’t your dad going to get mad if he finds out you’re here?” Darren asked. He had a dimple in his right cheek when he smiled.

  And he’d been smiling the entire time he and Jennifer had been talking.

  Jennifer didn’t like the fact that everyone in her school seemed to know how protective her father was, so she gave a convincing laugh and shrugged. “What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, right?”

  Darren laughed too, a confident, easy laugh. Jennifer wasn’t sure she’d ever been as relaxed and happy as he appeared to be right now as they sat side by side in Kylee’s living room.

  “I looked for you at the dance,” he said in a low voice. Jennifer couldn’t be certain, but she thought he leaned toward her an inch. His hand was so close to hers, a small twitch and their fingers would be touching.