by Dyan Sheldon
Amy giggled nervously. “Jenny has a very unusual sense of humour.”
“She certainly has a very unusual sense of something,” said Rosie Henley.
“Maybe that’s the way they dance on her planet,” said Kim.
“I wouldn’t crawl around in that outfit if I were her,” said Amber.
Amy stepped forward. I held my breath, expecting to hear the unforgettable sound of a plastic lens being ground into the floor of the gym by size five pumps in a vibrant shade of blue.
“Don’t move!” I shouted. “I’ve lost my contact.”
Amy laughed. “Oh, your contact.” She moved and my heart stopped. “Jenny lost her contact,” she told them. She sounded relieved. “Why didn’t you say you lost your contact?”
“Because she was too busy listening for buffalo,” said Samantha.
When I came back from the girls’ room after putting my contact back in, everyone was gone.
I sat down on the bleachers to wait for them to come back. I figured they’d gone somewhere to smooth down their eyebrows or something. I waited.
Slowly, I began to notice that I was the only person in the entire gym who was by herself. Even the people you knew no one would ever dance with were with other people no one would ever dance with. I scanned the crowd, hoping the Martians might have shown up after all. I suddenly had a real longing to hear Tanya’s too-loud laugh, or see Sue standing in the doorway with that “What Am I?” expression on her face. Even Marva in her Countess Dracula cape would have been a relief. But they weren’t there. I waited some more.
I began to feel really self-conscious, Whenever someone looked my way, I could hear them thinking, Good grief! Look at her clothes! Doesn’t she know that black is out? Doesn’t she know that yellow makes her look ill? How could she dare to show those knees? Look at how short and chubby she is! Hasn’t she ever heard of self-improvement? I waited some more.
Eventually, I spotted Kim, Amber, Amy, Samantha and a couple of boys who were on the football team, talking at the other side of the room. Dawyne Miller was standing next to Amy, smiling. Sort of like in my dream. I continued to wait.
Amy started dancing with Dwayne Miller. He was still smiling. There was a group of girls sitting at the other end of the bleachers. They looked at me and I looked at them. I turned away. They started laughing.
Up until this evening, the worst moment of my life had been when I was nine years old. Back then, I spent my Saturday mornings not at swimming club, but at Miss Marilu’s Academy of Dance. I was in the advanced ballet class. There were twelve of us in the advanced class. Eleven of us were tall and slender, and called “my little swans” by Miss Marilu; the twelfth one was me. Miss Marilu called me Jenny. I loved ballet. All year long, I looked forward to the big end-of-year recital, when we got to wear these beautiful costumes and dance on stage. Back then, I liked having the spotlight on me. The year I was nine, Miss Marilu choreographed the ballet herself. It was about a fairy princess and a frog. The princess and her friends got to wear pink tutus and tiny silver crowns on their heads. The princess’s tutu was sprinkled with stars. The frog and his friends wore green leotards and hoods so you couldn’t see their ears. All the frog had to do was leap around and make sure the princess didn’t fall on her face, but the princess was the star. I wanted to be the princess. I had my heart set on it. I was one of the very best dancers in the class, so I knew that I had a chance. I practised for weeks. I twirled through the kitchen. I leapt across the living room. I spent hours in the bathroom, using the towel rack as my barre. I stood in front of the mirror at the back of my mother’s closet, picturing myself in the princess’s tutu.
At last, the day of the audition arrived. Louise Leftbridge was out with the flu. Arabelle Mulson forgot the routine. Pamela Hindrikson stumbled twice. But I was terrific. I was flawless. I was the princess down to the tips of my toes. Even Miss Marilu praised me. “Excellent, my dear,” said Miss Marilu. “Very, very good, indeed.” She shook her head. “It’s amazing,” said Miss Marilu, “but you really have a talent.” You’d have thought she’d just discovered that I could fly. Flushed with pleasure, I sat down to wait for Miss Marilu to assign the roles. Everyone agreed that I was a sure thing for the princess. I was so excited I could barely sit still.
Miss Marilu made me the frog. “But I want to be the princess,” I protested. “I’ve been practising for weeks.” Miss Marilu smiled at me kindly. She patted my shoulder. “I’m afraid that you’re not really built for the role of the princess,” said Miss Marilu. She patted my shoulder again. I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. She explained. “The princess must be slender and graceful,” said Miss Marilu. She gave me another kind smile. “There will be no pink tutu for you,” Miss Marilu bellowed. “But you will make a most excellent frog.” I burst into tears.
If I’d still been a child and not a young woman in high school, I might have burst into tears while I was sitting by myself on the bleachers, watching everyone else have a wonderful time. Watching Amy laughing and tossing her curly blonde hair while she danced with Dwayne and didn’t once look in my direction.
But I wasn’t a child and I was in high school, so as calmly and casually as I could I stood up. I walked slowly towards the door. I crossed the hallway. I entered the girls’ room. There were a few girls brushing their hair and studying their faces in the mirrors over the sinks. I strolled to the corner booth. I locked it behind me. I looked at my watch. It was nine twenty-five. The dance wasn’t over till eleven, when my father would be picking us up. I couldn’t walk home, because it was too late. I sat down to wait. Now that I knew what you did if you weren’t dancing, I vowed that if I ever went to a dance again I’d be sure to bring a book along.
When the dance was finally over, I went back into the gym and signalled Amy that I’d meet her outside. She was talking and laughing with Dwayne, Kim, Amber and a bunch of kids I didn’t know. She nodded briefly in my direction. When my father came I got into the front seat and Amy got into the back. My father asked us if we’d had a nice time. I said, “Uh huh.” Amy spent the ride home telling my father about the nice time she’d had, blah-blah-blah. My father spent the ride home nodding and pretending to be interested. I spent the ride home changing the station on the radio.
“So,” said my father as we watched Amy let herself into her house. “Your very first high school dance. I’m glad you girls had such a good time.”
I swallowed hard. “Yeah,” I said. “So am I.”
Who will tell you the truth if your best friend won’t?
I cried for a few hours when I got home on Saturday night, and then I decided that the quickest way to forget about the dance was to act as though it had never happened. People do that sort of thing all the time. My Uncle Jim was in Vietnam but he never talks about it. Anytime someone even mentions the word “war” Uncle Jim gets this blank look on his face and walks out of the room.
That’s what I would do. Anytime anyone even mentioned the word “dance” I’d get this blank look on my face and walk out of the room. I wasn’t going to re-live every gruesome moment of sitting on the bleachers by myself, feeling as though there were a spotlight on me. I wasn’t going to keep remembering the hours I spent in the girls’ room, reading the graffiti over and over, even though there was one limerick about Mrs Loomis and Arnold Schwarzenegger that I couldn’t get out of my head. I was going to act as though there’d never been a dance.
When I came down to breakfast Sunday morning and my mother asked me if I’d had a nice time I said, “Yes,” and then asked her some questions about her compost heap. My mother loves to talk about her compost heap. I spent most of the day doing my homework and reading a really great book about the cosmos that the town librarian recommended, which cheered me up a lot. I was a little worried that Amy might bring up the dance when I saw her Monday morning, but I didn’t see Amy Monday morning because Kim’s mother gave her a lift to school.
By lunch on Monday I was feeling almost normal.
I even managed to cross the cafeteria without thinking that everyone was looking at me and whispering, “Isn’t that the girl who spent the dance in the toilet?”
I spotted the Martians at the back of the room. Not that it was difficult. There was no mistaking Marva, wearing nothing but black, including her lipstick, or Tanya in the brightest orange overalls I’d ever seen. Marva looked like Morticia, and Tanya looked like a giant pumpkin. I started to smile. It surprised me to realise that I was kind of glad to see them.
Joan looked up as I sat down beside them. “So how was the dance?” she asked. I tried to look blank. “What?” I couldn’t believe it. It hadn’t even occurred to me that the Martians would remember the dance.
Maria leaned across the table towards me. “Oh the dance!” she said with a sigh. “I was thinking about you all weekend.”
She was? Thinking about me?
Apparently, she was. “What did you wear?” she wanted to know. “Did you meet anyone nice?”
Marva saved me from having to answer. “You’ve got to be kidding.” She hooted, bangles clanking. “Who would she ever meet at a dance at this school? Some dumb football player with an ego as big as a stadium?”
Sue stopped mid-bite. She gazed at me musingly, tomato and lettuce falling out of her sandwich. “You went to a football game?” she asked.
I started taking things out of my lunch-box, slowly and methodically. I was still trying to look blank.
Tanya blew a straw wrapper across the table at Sue, but it was to Marva she spoke. “Don’t be so prejudiced,” she ordered. “My cousin’s a football player and he happens to be a great guy. And very smart.”
Marva made a face. “Are you sure he’s your cousin?” she teased.
Sue gave me this big smile of understanding. “Oh,” she said. “You went to the dance with Tanya’s cousin.”
Looking blank was easy as long as I talked only to Sue.
Joan peered at me over her glasses. “So come on, Jenny,” she coaxed. “What was it like?”
Maria nodded. “You have to tell us every detail,” she said. “None of us are ever going to go to a dance, that’s for sure.”
“None of us would want to go to one,” said Marva.
“Speak for yourself,” said Tanya. She started bopping in her seat. “I for one happen to be a great dancer. They clear the floor when I get up to dance.”
“They’d have to,” said Marva. “No one would want you to fall on them.”
“Would you two give Jenny a chance to talk?” Joan nudged me. “So?” she persisted. “What was it like?”
I unwrapped my sandwich and just looked at it for a second. I raised my head. The five of them were staring at me expectantly. I stared back blankly. Just tell them you had a nice time, I told myself. That’s all they want to hear.
“It was hell,” I said. “It was the school dance from hell.”
So, even though I hadn’t planned to, I told the Martians all about Saturday night. In detail. I told them about how Amy had made me look and how her friends wouldn’t talk to me. I told them about losing my contact. I told them about hiding in the girls’ room. They thought it was hilarious.
“That’s even worse than this party I went to with my cousin,” said Tanya when she’d stopped laughing enough to be able to speak. “The minute we got there, he disappeared to play pool in the basement and left me sitting there all by myself for the next four hours with a bunch of strangers. The only person who was friendly to me was the dog.”
Maria, giggling, shook her head. “That’s nothing. When we first moved here my mother got one of the neighbours to invite me to her daughter’s barbecue.” She blushed just thinking about it. “I was so humiliated I couldn’t even get up the courage to ask where the bathroom was.” She bit into a fry. “The best thing that happened was that I fell into the pool and had to go home.”
Marva wiped tears of laughter from her eyes. “Wait’ll you hear about my sister’s wedding,” she gasped. “My mother made me wear a pink dress! You know, with ruffles and stuff?”
I didn’t think I’d ever find anything about Saturday funny, but somehow talking to the Martians made it seem different. By the time the bell rang at the end of lunch, we were all in hysterics. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d laughed so much.
* * *
“I don’t know why you’re getting mad at me,” Amy complained. “It’s not my fault you had a lousy time at the dance.”
I took a potato chip from the bag I was holding. “I wasn’t blaming you. I was just telling you, that’s all.”
Amy looked annoyed. “Oh, no you weren’t, Jenny Kaliski,” she said. “You were blaming me. I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re whining.”
Amber was home with a cold, and Kim had to go to the dentist, so Amy and I were walking home together on Monday afternoon. I’d felt so much better after talking to the Martians that instead of ducking when I saw Amy coming towards me, I stopped and waited. I’d felt so much better, in fact, that when Amy started to discuss the dance, I didn’t look blank. Instead, apparently, I started to whine.
I couldn’t help feeling that she was being a little unfair, accusing me of whining. She, after all, was the one who’d had a “cool”, an “excellent” and a “fantastic” time. She was the one who couldn’t remember when she’d had so much fun. She was the one who’d danced with three different boys. She was the one Dawyne Miller had asked to go to the movies. The one Rosie Henley had invited to her Hallowe’en party. The one who had to laugh when she thought about what she used to be like when she was a little kid way back in middle school. I was the one who’d spent the night sitting on a toilet bowl.
“I was not whining,” I snapped back. “All I said was that I thought you could have stayed with me. I mean, we did go together, didn’t we? I didn’t want to go to the stupid dance in the first place. I only went because you asked me.”
Amy’s expression changed from annoyed to very annoyed. “For Pete’s sake, Jen,” she snapped, “it wasn’t a date, you know. We just drove there together. All I was doing was trying to help you settle into high school. I never said I was going to hold your hand through the whole dance.”
“You didn’t say you were going to abandon me, either.” I hadn’t meant to say that, it just slipped out. But now that I had said it, I wasn’t sorry. After all, it was the truth, wasn’t it? If you couldn’t tell your best friend the truth, who could you tell?
“Abandon you?” Amy’s look went from very annoyed to stunned with disbelief mixed with outrage. She stopped dead. “What are you talking about, abandon you? I went to talk to some of my other friends, and when I turned around you were gone.”
The whole thing had seemed pretty funny when I was telling the Martians about it, but it suddenly didn’t seem that funny any more.
“You left me,” I said. “You went off with your other friends, and you left me alone.” Maybe I hadn’t been whining before, but even I could hear that I was whining now. “Why did you just walk off like that?” I moaned. “Why didn’t you come back for me?”
Amy snorted. “And do what? Sit on the bleachers all night, watching everyone else have a good time?” She started marching ahead of me.
So she hadn’t completely forgotten about me! She’d seen me sitting there all by myself on the bleachers like I had some contagious disease. She’d known all along I was waiting for her to come back. “You could’ve called me over,” I reasoned. “I could’ve hung out with you and Kim and Amber.”
Amy was so far ahead that she didn’t hear me.
I raised my voice. “You didn’t have to leave me all alone,” I went on. “I don’t know why when you’re with Kim and Amber you can’t be with me too. It’s not like you all belong to some secret society.”
She stopped and turned around. Our eyes met.
“Well, is it?”
“What do you want me to say, Jen?” asked Amy.
What did I want her to say? What was that suppos
ed to mean? “I don’t want you to say anything,” I said. “I just want you to tell me why you never hang out with me when you’re with them.”
Amy made a face. “Really, Jen? You really want me to tell you?”
“Yes, Amy. I do.” I nodded. After all, she was my best friend, I could tell her the truth and she could tell me the truth.
She frowned as if she didn’t speak English that well and was trying to make sure she had understood what I’d said. “You’re sure?”
Suddenly I had this truly bad feeling. It was the sort of feeling you get just as your mother’s camera, which you weren’t supposed to take out of the house in the first place, jumps out of your hands and into the pool. Like you knew all along this was going to happen. That if only you could go back a few minutes in time everything would be all right again. It was on the tip of my tongue to say no, I don’t really want you to tell me. But I didn’t. I said, “Well…”
Amy dropped her book bag on the ground. She folded her arms. “OK,” she said in a flat voice. “I’ll tell you, Jen. It’s because they don’t want to be seen with you.”
I don’t know why, but I smiled. Maybe I was hoping that she was kidding. You know, that she’d punch me on the arm and say, “Oh don’t be silly, Jen, you know I’m only winding you up.” Or maybe it was some sort of nervous reaction. I said, “Me?”
She nodded. “Yes, you. You’re just not the kind of girl they like to hang around with.”
“Why not?” I asked. “You can tell me. Is it my second head or is it my tail?”
She didn’t smile. She shrugged. “It’s everything.”
I pretended to wipe the sweat from my forehead. “Oh, everything!” All of a sudden, my voice was shaking. “Well, that’s a relief. I was worried it might be something major.”
“Don’t go twisting my words,” said Amy. “You know that I don’t mean everything.”
“Well, what do you mean? Almost everything?”
“Look at yourself,” she ordered, gesturing from my head to my feet. “Just look.”