by Shawn Inmon
“Psssh. No. Not yet. That’s almost two months away. I won’t get ready to go until about ten minutes before I have to go to the airport.”
So he was going to Alaska. I wondered why that had never come up in our conversations. If I was planning a big trip, I’m pretty sure I would have mentioned it to him. I felt my heart fall a little bit. We were just getting started. I didn’t want him to go away already.
“Have you ever been to Laserium?” Tommy asked. I realized he was looking at me.
Again, I had no idea what that was, so I shook my head.
“It’s at the Pacific Science Center, right next to the Space Needle. They play cool music and flash laser beams all over the ceiling. Do you want to go?”
“Yeah, sure, but what time does it happen?”
I was thinking that if we had to drive to Seattle, see the laser show, drive back to Auburn, and then back to Mossyrock, we’d be late getting home.
He ran downstairs, got the phone book, and called the information line for Laserium. The first show for the day was at 5:00.
“Why don’t you call your mom and find out if it’s alright?” Shawn asked. He pushed the phone at me.
I was a little embarrassed to talk on the phone with everyone standing around looking at me, but I dialed our number. Mom answered.
“Mom? It’s Dawn.”
“I know that. I recognize your voice. Are you OK?”
“Yes, sure, we’re fine. Shawn and Tommy want to go into Seattle and go to a show at the Laserium, but if we go to that, we’ll be home kind of late—probably around 9:30 or so. Is that OK?”
I heard a few seconds of silence on the other end of the line. “No, honey, that’s too late. Why don’t you save that for the next time you go visit?”
“Oh. OK. Bye.”
I was disappointed, but not because we weren’t going to go see Laserium. I hadn’t even known that existed until two minutes ago. I was the wet blanket that made it so Tommy and Shawn couldn’t go, even if it wasn’t my fault. They read the disappointment on my face.
“Don’t worry about it,” Tommy said. “Let’s just go down to SeaTac Mall and see a movie. I have no idea what’s playing, but they’ve got six theaters, so there’s got to be something good, right?”
If there was something good, we didn’t choose it. We ended up seeing a movie called The One and Only, starring Henry Winkler. It was terrible and it didn’t matter. We had fun hanging out.
After we bought our tickets, we were waiting in line to get some popcorn when Tommy saw a pretty girl in the lobby. I think he wanted to impress us with how smooth he was, so he started talking to her. It did not go well.
“Let’s make like Paul Simon and slip-slide away from this disaster,” Shawn said. He took my hand and led me down the hallway to the theater where our movie was playing, leaving Tommy all alone. Tommy found us a couple of minutes later.
“Thanks for leaving me dying out there.”
“You were dying with or without us,” Shawn said. “So we thought we would limit your embarrassment by leaving you to it.”
We watched the movie in silence but held hands through most of it. About halfway through the movie, I felt so close to Shawn that I rested my head on his shoulder and stayed that way until the credits rolled.
We got out of the movie just in time to drop Tommy back off at his house and head home. I was feeling so tired I thought I might fall asleep on the drive. About halfway home though, I saw a little orange car keeping pace with us in the fast lane. When I peeked around Shawn at the driver, I saw that he was holding a badge against his window and he was motioning us to pull over.
“Shawn, there’s a guy in that car that wants us to pull over.”
“Oh, really? I hadn’t noticed.”
He didn’t look over at the cop though. He stepped on the accelerator instead, so I think he had already seen him. I don’t know why, but I started to laugh. Shawn arched his eyebrows at me like I might be crazy, but he didn’t slow down. The faster he drove, the harder it made me laugh. Shawn swerved the Vega at the very last minute as we were almost past an exit ramp, and we skittered a little bit before slowing down. The cop’s car kept heading on down the freeway. Shawn pulled over onto the shoulder and I could see his hands were shaking a little bit, which made me laugh even harder. Finally, he looked at me and started to laugh. We sat there for a few minutes before pulling back onto the freeway, and made our way safely home.
We got home before my curfew, and Shawn walked me home. I was so tired I wanted to lie down and go to sleep right on the front lawn. It had been a big day. When it started, I didn’t know if Shawn was serious or not about what he had said in the letter. I kissed him softly goodnight on my front porch and I knew.
You Should be Dancing
If I was worried about anything as my relationship with Shawn transformed into romance, it was that we might lose our friendship. Shawn had been part friend, part brother, and part adviser for years. I didn’t want to think about losing all that if things didn’t work out for us. That was a minor worry though, and I happily called all my friends and told them that Shawn had asked me to Prom.
I had to worry about getting a dress because I wasn’t going to wear the same dress I had worn to Homecoming, but Prom was still a month away, so I had plenty of time to think about that.
We went back to school on Monday and everything seemed normal. We didn’t make a big deal out of being a couple, but we did spend more time hanging out in the hallways and at lunch. I don’t know if anyone else really noticed anything different about us. Toward the end of the week, Shawn walked down to the freshman end of the hall just before the bell for the next period rang.
“Hey. Kenny Schoenfeld asked me if we wanted to go on a double date with him to some disco in Longview. What do you think? Wanna go?”
I had to stop and think. I didn’t really like Kenny. He always seemed full of himself and just a little bit better than everyone else. To me, that probably explained why he only dated girls from out of town; they didn’t really know him. Still, it would be fun to go to a disco in Longview, and I would be with Shawn, so I knew everything would be good.
“Yeah, sure. I’ll have to check with Mom, but I’m pretty sure I can go.”
“Awesome. Let me know if it’s a problem. Otherwise, I’ll be over to pick you up about 6:30.”
“K… Bye.”
I thought for a second that he might give me a quick kiss, but he just smiled at me and ran down the hallway. He had told me he loved me in a letter, but he wasn’t ready for a public kiss in the halls of Mossyrock High School.
The trip to Longview started out well. Shawn came over and sat in the living room talking to Mom and Dad for a few minutes before Kenny pulled up in his Nova. We had to drive about twenty minutes to pick up Kenny’s date, but he had a super loud sound system in his car that made it impossible to talk.
The disco was called Hollywood Hollywood. I’d never been to a disco before, so I didn’t have anything to compare it to, but I was impressed. They had a little room where you could check your jacket and there was a bar where you could order a pop. They also had kid versions of adult mixed drinks, like virgin margaritas. Compared to the sound in the disco, Kenny’s car audio system was minor. I could feel the bass vibrating the floor when we danced. The dance floor and walls were lighted, playing patterns in rhythm with the music. We didn’t have anything like that in Mossyrock.
We claimed a table and all ordered Cokes, but there was no way to have a conversation, so mostly we danced. After five or six dances, we got so hot that we went outside and stood in the cool night air, then went right back to the dance floor. The whole night at the club went by in a blur of thumping music, flashing lights, and dancing until we were exhausted. I still had a curfew, though, so we left the club before 10 o’clock and headed back to drop off Kenny’s date in Onalaska.
Shawn and I rode in the back seat and held hands. I was tired from dancing and happy just to be with
him. When we pulled into the driveway where Kenny’s date lived, he hopped out and smirked at us in the back seat. He turned the car off but left the key in and turned down the sound. I wondered how long he was planning on being gone.
I glanced over at Shawn to see what he was doing. He was just looking at me. He reached out and touched my face, pulled me to him and kissed me. We held the kiss longer than we ever had before and then he turned in his seat and kissed me harder. It felt like too much. It was kind of overwhelming. I broke away and turned my head, but a minute later we were kissing again. It didn’t feel right. I don’t think either one of us knew what we were doing. At one point, his tongue licked against the end of my nose, which I was pretty sure wasn’t how this was supposed to work.
When he had kissed me after we had gone to see Star Wars, it had made my legs go weak, but sitting here in the back seat of Kenny’s car, it wasn’t the same. Finally, I turned away and looked out the window to take a breather.
When I looked back, Shawn had slid away from me and looked like he wasn’t in a very good mood. We could have easily had a conversation, but we didn’t. Everything felt wrong. I wondered if I had blown it with Shawn. I had kissed boys before, but it had never been anything like this. If I didn’t even know how to make out in the back seat of a car, would he still want me to be his girlfriend?
The car ride back to Mossyrock took forever, and I was miserable the whole way. When we pulled into the driveway between our houses, we both jumped out. I was hoping that maybe we would stand in the yard and talk for a minute, but Shawn just mumbled “good night” and went straight home. When I walked into the house, I thought I had messed up the whole relationship. Maybe Shawn wouldn’t want to see me anymore. I wondered if he would decide not to take me to Prom, just like Gordon had decided not to take me to Homecoming. I don’t cry a lot, but when I lay down on my bed, I felt like I wanted to.
Over the next few weeks, it felt like a little of the fun and excitement had gone out of whatever my relationship was with Shawn. If I was his girlfriend, he wasn’t acting like it. He was still giving me a ride to and from school, but he seemed a lot more distant than he had been before.
I knew that Shawn would be graduating in just a few months and right after that he would be going to Alaska for the summer with Jerry. He had also been accepted at the University of Washington, so he would be off to college at the end of summer. It all gave me an unsettled feeling that I didn’t like, but I didn’t know how to do anything about it.
On the Friday the week before Prom, he gave me a ride home like always. This time though, when we pulled into the driveway and I started to get out, Shawn said, “Hang on a second.”
I looked at him, but I wasn’t giving him anything. I was tired of this distance between us. I wondered if he was going to break up with me or tell me we weren’t going to Prom after all. If he did that, I would feel completely crushed. Mom would be furious, since we had just gone to Olympia the week before to pick out a dress that matched Shawn’s tux.
Instead, he said, “We haven’t gone dancing since we went to Longview a while ago. I was thinking maybe we should go again to kind of practice for Prom.”
That was silly, of course. We had never practiced before, and we did just fine at Hollywood Hollywood, but that didn’t matter. This was the first time in almost a month that he had gone out of his way to spend time with me.
“OK, what are you thinking?”
“I was thinking maybe we could drive down to Longview and go to that same place. It was cool.”
He looked a little fearful and uncertain, like maybe I wouldn’t want to go with him, so I just nodded and said, “OK.”
We decided to leave at 6:00, since I had an 11:00 curfew. When he picked me up, things felt different. I don’t know why, but as we drove the forty miles to Longview in the Vega, the weeks of uncertainty and distance faded away. We listened to 62 KGW out of Portland as we drove, and after a few miles on the freeway, Shawn reached over and put his hand on mine.
When we got to Hollywood Hollywood, Shawn took my jacket to the coat check. While he was doing that, I was standing at the edge of the dance floor, listening to the music. A boy about my age walked up and asked me if I wanted to dance. I was about to tell him ‘no, thank you’ when Shawn appeared out of nowhere. The boy was about my height. Shawn was tall to begin with, and was wearing the same platform shoes he wore for KISS II, which made him about 6’6”. He leaned over, got close to the boy’s ear and growled something at him. Sometimes I swore he really thought he was Gene Simmons. The boy’s eyebrows shot up. He didn’t say a word but he disappeared in a hurry.
I gave Shawn a glare and said, “Really? Was that necessary?” He looked guilty for about half a second, then smiled and it made me laugh. We found a table right at the edge of the dance floor and watched other people dance for a few minutes. Shawn reached under the table and took my hand in his again. I felt so drawn to him. I had gone out with boys before, but I had never felt what I did right at that moment with Shawn. People were all around us, but it felt like we were all alone.
When the DJ played Always and Forever, Shawn just stood up, smiled at me and pulled me out onto the dance floor. We had slow-danced before, at his 16th birthday party and again at Homecoming, but this felt different. As soon as we stepped onto the floor, he pulled me close and looked into my eyes. I felt my breath catch a little and our recent emotional distance vanished. It felt like we were one person, split into two bodies. Everything but Shawn and his blue eyes faded away. When he sent me a letter and told me he loved me, I wasn’t sure. When he asked me to Prom, I started to believe. Standing on that dance floor, feeling his presence all around me, I knew.
I knew I loved him. Right at that moment, I wanted to give him everything, every part of my heart. Our eyes never left each other as Always and Forever started to fade away. I didn’t want this moment, this feeling, to end. The DJ played another slow song, though, so we were able to stay in our little cocoon of love and contentment for a few minutes more. When that song too, faded away, the next song was fast and the floor immediately filled with new dancers that bumped and danced all around us. We didn’t care. We weren’t ready to let go of that moment yet. We ignored the new beat and clung to each other, still moving in a slow circle, dancing to our own music. Shawn finally seemed to realize what we were doing and bent down. He touched his lips to my ear gently and said “Let’s go.”
We collected my coat and hurried out of the club. I didn’t know where we were going and I didn’t care. I was feeling something I had never felt before, and I didn’t want the night to end yet. It was just getting dark when we got outside. We got in the Vega and Shawn turned the music on low. He slipped the car into gear and headed for Mossyrock. I wrapped my arms around his and rested my head on his shoulder. The ride home felt like it was over almost before it started.
Eventually, I lifted my head and realized we were almost back to Damron Road. We still had almost an hour until my curfew and I couldn’t believe he was taking me home. Just before we got to Damron Road, though, there was a road to the left that went up a steep hill to a little cemetery. He slowed down and turned left up the hill.
I looked at Shawn and started to ask why we were going to a cemetery, then realized I didn’t care where we were going as long as we were together. We crested the top of the hill and rolled down the little road that ran alongside the graves and headstones. Shawn had picked the quietest place in Mossyrock for us to park.
We took off our seat belts and slid easily together. I laid my head against his chest and I felt him stroke my hair gently. The radio was playing and the moon shone bright. In the back of Kenny’s car a few weeks ago, everything had felt wrong. Here, once again, everything was completely right.
I moved my face just a few inches from his. We were so close I could feel the heat radiating from his body. When I looked in his eyes, I felt our connection all the way through me. I moved the last little bit and kissed him long, slow
, and deep. I grabbed the back of his neck and pulled him closer to me, loving the way he felt.
When we broke off, he smiled at me, but didn’t say anything. Words weren’t needed. Shawn managed to keep one eye on his watch, and a few minutes before my curfew, we drove back down Doss Hill and home. I got out of his car and he held me against him for a long minute before he let me go with one last kiss. It was the perfect ending to our perfect night.
Always and Forever
After our second trip to Hollywood Hollywood, my lingering doubts about where Shawn and I stood were gone. He had been picking me up for school since the beginning of the school year, but now we left the house a little earlier and got to school a little later so that we could drive around the back roads and talk for a few extra minutes every morning.
He usually managed to find an excuse to come down to the freshman end of the hall at least two or three times a day to see me, and we ate lunch together. He was finally a little less shy about us being a couple. He would reach up and touch my hair sometimes, or hold my hand while we walked to class, or even put his arm around me once in a while.
Prom was approaching fast. Shawn had been chosen as part of the Prom Court, so he had to wear the same tuxedo that everyone in the Court wore, cream with a white bow tie and tan ruffles on the shirt. Mom helped me find the perfect dress to match it. My stomach was all butterflies that week. I wasn’t nervous anymore about Shawn’s feelings toward me—he had erased all those doubts. I was nervous because I wanted to do something on Prom night to show him how I felt about him, but I wasn’t sure exactly what to do.
On Prom day, I followed my favorite routine: I slept in. It seemed like I could never get enough sleep. As soon as I woke up, thoughts about Prom jumped into my head. I saw Shawn over in the side yard washing and waxing the Sin Bin, but he just waved at me, so I didn’t go talk to him.