Right then, my phone buzzed in my hand. Two texts from Jesse, back to back.
The first was a picture he’d taken of an old photograph. There was a bit of glare from the plastic sleeve, so it must have been inside a photo album. The picture was of a little Jesse, maybe nine or ten, probably taken at some family wedding. Sweaty-headed, surrounded by adults, in the middle of busting a serious move on the dance floor. His arms in a V shape over his head, one foot lifted off the floor, chin jutted forward, eyes closed, mouth open wide enough to see his bottom molars. His hair was white, the center of the sun. Also, little Jesse was wearing a freaking mini-tuxedo.
My heart liquefied, hot wax dripping over my ribs.
His second text said Warning: This is my body’s automatic response to hearing Cupid Shuffle. Just so you’ll be ready for me tonight.
I was ready, Jesse Ford. Oh God, was I ready.
My mom was supposed to make it over for pictures, but she got behind seeing patients, so Mrs. Dorsey took some with her phone and texted them to Mom. Mrs. Dorsey also pulled out an old photo album of when she, my mom, and my dad were all in high school together. Spring Formal was called Spring Fling then. My mom looked beautiful. And so young, her hair the color of ginger ale. I’d never seen it that color in real life, only in pictures. This might sound gross, but my dad was a total fox, tall and lean and tan with dark hair and even darker eyebrows. He had his arms folded, his chin lifted, his legs spread apart just slightly. He oozed confidence. In a couple of the shots, I saw my grandparents, and great-grandparents too, all Hewitts, Dad’s side. Mom had lost her parents when she was young, and the Hewitts basically adopted her once she and my dad started dating.
Just for kicks, Morgan and I tried to duplicate one of the poses together, where our moms were both doing some kind of weird curtsey to each other. Then Mrs. Dorsey sprinted outside and pulled the car inside their garage so Morgan and I wouldn’t get wet climbing in.
At that point, the storm was more annoying than scary, even though it was the one we’d stacked sandbags to prepare for.
Our preparations were different. We were thinking of the dash from her car into the gym. Morgan had on her pea coat, plus a rain poncho on top of that, plus rain boots and matching umbrella. Her silver heels were tucked inside a plastic bag. She also had the genius idea of gathering up her long skirt with rubber bands so it wouldn’t drag in the puddles. I had my winter coat on, my umbrella, and my rain boots. I tucked the shoes I was borrowing from Morgan, a pair of gold sandals, into my coat pockets.
As we pulled out of the garage, I couldn’t have been more excited. I’d looked forward to Spring Formal since I started high school. But it was about going with my two closest friends, dancing all night long, having a great time, taking a million pictures.
I still wanted those things, but now there was something else. A huge thing that had seemed completely unimaginable one week ago but now appeared within reach. And even though I couldn’t see the stars through the rain clouds, I had this feeling that they’d magically aligned for me.
• • •
Spring Formal was supposed to kick off at seven o’clock, but by a quarter to eight, Morgan and I and most of the other juniors and seniors from our high school were still stuck in our cars, engines running and headlights shining through the gray, waiting for the rain to let up enough to make a run for the gym. I’d never seen it come down so hard in my life. The rain made talking difficult, the sound of it thundering on the roof of Morgan’s car. Which was fine. I was honestly too nervous to talk.
So far there’d been no sign of Jesse. When would he get here? What would happen between us tonight? His two texts from earlier were my asthma inhaler. They kept me breathing. I must have reread them a hundred times.
“Keeley.”
“What?”
Morgan gently guided my hand away from my mouth. I hadn’t realized it was there. “Your nail polish is going to chip before we even get inside.”
At eight o’clock, the janitor propped the doors open, as if that were the thing keeping us out. I saw inside the gym in brief but steady flashes each time Morgan’s wipers crossed the windshield. Coach Dean spread some towels from the locker room across the wood floor. The other chaperones—Mr. Landau, Ms. Kay, Principal Bundy—stood in a circle and talked for a while, but then opened up some folding chairs and sat in bored silence. Only a handful of students were inside, the ones on Dance Committee like Elise, or kids who’d had their parents drop them off right at the doors. Someone had built a soda can pyramid on the food table. A few guys tossed a Nerf football across the empty dance floor. Two girls swayed to music we couldn’t hear.
The rest of us were trapped.
It sucked for everyone, but way worse for us girls, I think, because the guys were in khakis and button-ups, nothing special. The girls were the ones who were dressed up. And we’d dressed for how May weather was supposed to be, not what it actually was. That meant we had the heating vents pointed at our bare legs, legs that had been bronzed with either lotions or light bulbs, but not the sun. Even though our fingers and toes were painted juicy watermelon pinks and strawberry reds, they were numb from the cold. We had spritzed on too much perfume, blooming flowers and freshly baked angel food cake, because our whole school still had that dry, overcooked radiator smell left over from winter.
Worst of all, we were smothering the prettiest spring dresses with our winter coats.
My down parka definitely showed the extra two months of wear and tear. I’d lost the belt that kept it from looking like a sleeping bag with sleeves. It needed to be washed, but I was too afraid it wouldn’t survive the spin cycle. Already, every time I sat down, a few stray feathers poked free, as if I were not a sixteen-year-old girl, but a molting goose.
We would all soon learn that the cold temperatures were partly to blame for what happened later on. The ground hadn’t ever fully thawed from winter. It was still frozen five inches down, the dirt as hard as concrete. There was nowhere for the rain to go, nothing to soak it up. I didn’t know that at the time. And even if I had, I doubt I would have cared. I was just annoyed that I had to cover up my dress in the first place.
Morgan let her head tip forward until it was resting on the steering wheel. “What if it doesn’t stop? Do you think they’ll cancel it and send us home?”
I feared that too, but I shook my head like the idea was crazy. “They’d better not! Bundy can see everyone out here waiting. Plus, we don’t need the rain to stop. Just slow down a little.”
Although I’d gotten more and more excited as the night passed, Morgan drifted in the opposite direction. I was a bottle of soda shook up, while she defizzed on her way to flat.
Morgan had planned to wear her Spring Formal dress to Wes’s prom. It was strapless, mint green, with a pleated sweetheart bodice that snugly wrapped around her and a long skirt that flowed loosely to the ground. I worried it looked too much like a prom dress, but she accessorized it differently, swapping out the sparkly rhinestone jewelry for her everyday silver horseshoe pendant and a pair of tiny hoop earrings. She did her makeup dewy and fresh, just shimmery shadow, mascara, and a strawberry-colored lip. She’d been so proud of her frugality, though I bet it felt in that moment like a missed opportunity.
I hoped that was all it was.
“You look so beautiful, I’m thinking I might just ditch Jesse and try to score with you tonight.”
She smiled a thin, brokenhearted smile.
As soon as we got in the gym, I’d make sure Morgan had a good time. Maybe I’d have the DJ dedicate some terrible song to her, like the chicken dance or the hokey-pokey, just to embarrass her. I’d come up with something to lift her spirits, to help her forget about Wes. It was the least I could do, all things considered.
Her phone dinged in her lap. “It’s Elise. Someone in the gym heard that a huge tree fell across Basin Street and people had to be diverted.”
I unrolled the passenger window the littlest bit for some air, b
ut the rain blew in sideways, so I rolled it back up. Then I texted Elise myself and asked if any cars were trapped underneath that fallen tree. I was specifically concerned about a black hatchback like the one Jesse drove, but I phrased it in more general terms.
Not that I heard, Elise texted back. But apparently it took a bunch of power lines down. The news guys were already there with their stupid cameras.
Ever since the sandbag day, the news channels had begun showing up in their trucks in anticipation of tonight’s storm. They’d park half in the ditch and film themselves on our riverbanks in the kind of gear you’d expect a fisherman to wear, watching as the river crept closer and closer to sandbags we’d stacked. It became a game for me. Whenever we’d drive past them, I’d reach over and beep Morgan’s horn or yell out her window to mess up their shots.
I imagined Jesse Ford blocks away, his car stuck in traffic on Basin Street. It was practically guaranteed that he’d dress up for Spring Formal wearing something cool, something that would set him apart from the other guys. Like flip-flops and a bow tie. Or maybe he’d go full-on tuxedo, rented, or even some weird retro number from a thrift store. That would be so Jesse.
The rain began to come down hard enough that Morgan’s wipers could barely keep up. She turned them off to save gas or her battery or whatever. After that, we could barely see anything. Morgan reclined her seat as far back as it would go. The navy fabric ceiling had begun to sag away from the roof. The airy pockets looked like an upside-down circus tent. She dragged her fingertips across them and made them flutter like sea waves. The car was old. It was her father’s. It was the one thing he’d left for them after taking off last year.
Morgan wasn’t having fun. That much was clear from the way she’d keep sighing or checking the radar app on her phone. She wasn’t the only one. My phone lit up with whiny, complain-y texts from girls in our homeroom about how bad this whole situation sucked. How over it they were. By that point, we’d been waiting for more than an hour.
So I took it upon myself to keep things fun. Keep everyone’s energy up, keep us excited and primed for a good time. I took a bunch of pictures of Morgan and me and traded them with Elise and other school friends stuck in other cars in other rows of the parking lot. You really couldn’t see anyone’s dresses, so it was mainly us showing off our hair and makeup to each other, but it was something. There weren’t many chances for people to get dressed up in Aberdeen. Basically just church, which my family didn’t go to.
Next, I got everyone to tune their car stereos to the same station so we could pretend we were in the gym together. We seat-danced as best as we could for a couple of songs, but the commercials and breaking weather reports got annoying, so we eventually turned it off.
Then I spotted a feather from my down parka stuck in the daisy lace of my dress. I got Morgan to blow it back and forth across her car with me like a game of Ping-Pong. We got to six passes, but seven seemed impossible, so we quit without trying. I pulled my hands into my coat sleeves to warm them back up and tried to think of some other way to pass the time.
A big crack of lightning lit up the parking lot. Everything glistened for a second.
“I hope we’ll be able to get home,” Morgan said nervously. “Also, touch up your lipstick. It’s fading.”
I’d never worn something so bright, but Morgan had insisted I borrow it. I loved the color. It reminded me of the pink azalea bushes that bordered my house. There should have been blooms by then, but there weren’t even any buds on the branches. The cold and rain did weird things to our spring that year. It basically never happened.
I was carefully tracing the corners of my lips when my phone dinged. Before I could check it, Morgan took it and said, “Finish what you’re doing first.”
I quickly smeared the rest on. “Is it him?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, but handed me a tissue instead of my phone. “Now blot.”
I snatched the tissue and the phone from her, laid the tissue across my bottom lip, where it stuck, and checked the text.
Ahoy matey.
Morgan carefully peeled the tissue away while I typed back, Arrrrrgh. Where ye be? I pressed Send before Morgan could veto it, because I knew she’d forbid any sort of flirting done in pirate-speak.
Look out yerrrr window.
I used my hand to wipe away a porthole in the condensation from the glass. Jesse’s car occupied the next parking spot over, full of other senior guys on the soccer team. I think he had five crammed in the backseat. I couldn’t tell for sure because the windows were steamed up, all except for his, which looked freshly wiped. Someone made the car rock and shake like sex. Jesse rolled his eyes like they were idiots.
I smiled sympathetically and tried not to look nervous.
He wiped the glass free of encroaching steam with his sleeve and then blinked a few times, taking me in.
Would he think the makeup looked good on me? Would he see how hard I was trying for him? A different type of trying than how I’d acted down at the river, before I’d dared to have any expectations, when I would have said anything to make him laugh. This kind of trying felt way more obvious, way more embarrassing.
Jesse smiled a crooked smile. Then he pressed his pink tongue against the glass and gave a big fat sloppy lick of the window, aimed right at me, like he was a damn golden retriever.
Before I could stop myself, I pressed my tongue to the glass too, fake-licked Jesse back, but just for a second, because Morgan pulled me away from the window, shrieking, “Eww! Keeley!”
My heart was pounding.
Morgan pulled more tissues out of her pocket pack. “Please wipe your cooties off the window!”
I was about to when Jesse texted me, Hey, was that our first kiss?
And then :P
I felt prickly all over. It was the flirtiest thing he’d ever said to me. I didn’t need Morgan or Elise to spell it out for me.
BRB in big trouble, I managed to write back, because Morgan was swatting me with the tissues, telling me I owed her a car wash.
He answered back, Me too. Zito just farted.
I laughed out loud. Eww! Kick him out of your car!
“Keeley, what’s he saying?”
And let him drown in the school parking lot? What kind of crap friend do you think I am?
“Crap” is the right word, I wrote back. You guys are going to smell like Zito’s ass smog. Keep away!
So you’re not going to dance with me tonight? :(
Morgan shook me. “Don’t ignore me,” she pouted.
“Okay, I’m sorry! Just give me a second!”
I was trying to work on a cool response when he texted, Yo. I think we’re gonna head back to Zito’s. Send me a video of your best running man if you ever make it inside.
“Wait. What just happened?” Morgan asked. “Why are you making that face?”
I turned to her, tried to contort my mouth out of the frown. “Jesse’s leaving,” I said, stunned.
She shook her head back and forth, faster than her windshield wipers on high. “No! No, no, no! Keeley! Make him stay!”
Encouraged by her confidence that this was possible, I wiped my clammy hands on my bare legs and quickly typed back, Seriously? When Jesse didn’t reply right away, I added, desperate, You losers just got here.
I ain’t about to die in this gas chamber waiting to get into a school dance.
Thunder tumbled through the air. We were already almost an hour and a half into Spring Formal. Jesse was going to leave, and if he did, Morgan would definitely want to bail too, because she was here mostly for me tonight. We couldn’t wait out here forever. Eventually they would cancel the dance.
I happened then to catch my reflection in the visor mirror. I knew there wouldn’t be another chance like tonight. Jesse was a senior about to graduate and go off to who knows where. I’d heard a bunch of rumors, everything from a soccer scholarship to him moving out to California to become an actor. Our friends didn’t mix with each other, and
toward the end of the school year, the seniors mainly stuck together.
But mostly I felt I wouldn’t ever look as beautiful as I did right then. This was my best night. Some people might be depressed by a revelation like that, but not me. I was glad I was self-aware enough to know it. That’s what gave me the courage to do what I did next. The storm, and everything that happened after to Aberdeen, forced us all to be brave in different ways, over and over again.
This was the first time.
“I’ve got an idea.” I pounded out a text to Jesse, a few friends, and Morgan.
Her phone dinged in her hand. She read my text aloud.
Making a run for the gym at exactly 8:26 p.m. Who’s in?!?
She turned to me, wide-eyed. “Okay, wait. That’s not what I had in mind.”
“I think the rain’s slowing up!” As I said it, another rumble of thunder cracked overhead.
“Are you crazy? If anything, it’s raining harder now than before! You heard Elise. Trees are falling! People are losing power. Plus the thunder and the lightning and the water on the ground. We could be killed!”
I squeezed Morgan’s leg. “Wouldn’t that be a cool way to go, though?”
“Electrocuted in a puddle? That would be a terrible way to go. Like, maybe the worst, Keeley.”
We both glanced at the dashboard. The clock read 8:25 p.m. before the screen went dark, because I shut off the engine and pulled Morgan’s keys out of the ignition.
She sighed. “Why are you always getting me into these situations?”
I sucked in a breath and glanced over at Morgan, wondering if that was a dig, a jab for my part in what had happened between her and Wes. But it wasn’t. She was smiling as she flipped the hood of her rain poncho up and set her hands on her umbrella.
We were all good.
I pulled my hood up too and tried to tuck up the bit of dress that hung past my parka, in the hopes of keeping it protected.
The Last Boy and Girl in the World Page 5