ATOW Chapter Fourteen

“Looking forward to Saturday?” Melissa pushed her algebra impatiently aside and propped her chin in her hands. Ronnie barely glanced up from his notebook, frowning in concentration. Term finals were coming soon, and then he would be graduating. He was the only one who took the thought of graduating seriously… the others still had what seemed an eternity of schoolwork ahead of them and they didn’t seem to notice or care that studying was important right now. Except Lissie, who met him at the library every single day after school to study. Only now her mind was occupied and she was as bad a distraction as Josh. 

“Depends. What’s Saturday?”

“What? You don’t mean to say that you’ve… forgotten?” Melissa gasped in mock horror. Ronnie jotted down an equation line, crossed it out almost immediately, and tried another. “The event we’ve been getting ready for all this month? The bazaar, remember? Games and prizes and booths and… and dancing?”

“Oh, yeah,” Ronnie muttered, bending his head lower over the algebra. “That. Uh… does this look right to you? X equals twenty-three over seven…”

“C’mon, bookworm.” Lissie reached over and yanked his glasses off. “I was kind of hoping for a more enthusiastic reaction than that.”

“Well, you’ll get one if you don’t give those back,” he grinned at her, squinting. “I can’t finish my homework now.”

“Well…” Lissie tapped her chin thoughtfully. “I might strike up a bargain with you. I’ll give these back if you…” She paused, deliberately.

“If I what?”

She ignored him, turning the glasses over in her hand and frowning in contemplation.

“If I what, Lissie?”

She didn’t answer, grinning as she slipped the glasses on and squinted back at him.

“How on earth do you see through these? Everything’s all blurry…” She pushed her chair back and stood, shakily, taking a few tentative steps with a dramatic show of imbalance. 

“You’re gonna trip, Lissie,” Ronnie warned, jumping up to grab her arm and pull her back before she stumbled over a stool. 

“I knew it. I saw that.” She giggled, holding onto his arm as if trying to keep herself from falling. “Do I look silly with these?” 

“How can I tell? I’m not wearing my glasses.” 

“Well, here ya go.” She pushed them back on his face, grinning awkwardly. “I bet I did look silly. I bet I look silly without ‘em too. Whaddya think?”

“You’re beautiful.” Ronnie’s voice was suddenly very low and quiet. Melissa’s breath caught in her throat and she trembled slightly.

“Ronnie…” she whispered, but let her voice trail away. 

“Will you go to the bazaar with me?” he changed the subject immediately and she smiled again. “What… that’s the reaction you wanted, right?”

“Exactly right,” she laughed. “And yes, I’ll go with you.”

✯✯✯

Emma sat perched on the railing of the gazebo in Jefferson Park, her back to the band playing inside, grinning widely as she watched her brother dancing with Lissie. She only barely caught glimpses of them now and again through the crowd of couples twirling across the green. The sun had set and the park was brilliantly lit with brightly-colored Chinese lanterns strung through the trees. The local band was playing a new song that she had heard a few times on the radio… “In The Mood” and she tapped her heels against the wall of the gazebo to the beat. Songs by Glen Miller were all the rage and she wouldn’t have minded dancing to them herself. Not that she was lacking in available partners… at least three boys had already asked her to dance… but she had turned them down. Right now, it was much more fun to spy on Ronnie. He wasn’t a great dancer, but he wasn’t terrible either, and she was surprised. She had never seen him dance before. Didn’t sound like something he would do. She was surprised too at how happy Lissie looked. Happier than she had ever looked in all her life. And the most surprising thing of all was that Emma felt jealous of her friend. She was suddenly wishing that she had someone to look at her the way Ronnie looked at Lissie.

The band switched to “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” and Emma grinned even wider, pinning her eyes to Ronnie and Lissie. They didn’t seem to notice anyone else in the world at the moment. A wonderful thing love was. Emma was fascinated by it. When the band reached the second verse, Ronnie suddenly pulled Lissie out of the circle of dancers and Emma strained to follow them with her eyes. She could just barely make out their figures in the distance, only dark shadows in the twilight. Ronnie bent his head towards Lissie as if he were whispering and she saw Lissie turn her face up to his. Emma bit her lip, feeling as if her face was about to split from end to end, she was smiling so hard. Ronnie was… kissing Lissie. 

“Hey, Em. Wallflower again?” Josh jumped up on the rail beside her, startling Emma so hard she almost fell backwards. And then she turned on him with a vengeance, furious at him for interrupting the moment. 

“You, of course, Scout,” she narrowed her eyes. “Who else? You broke the mood. But then what should I expect?”

“What’re ya talking about?” Josh was genuinely confused. “And what’re you staring at out there?” he peered across the green, seeing nothing significant enough to be watching so intently and grinning at like the Chesire cat. “You look like some weird kind of statue here, smiling like an idiot.” He laughed, but Emma didn’t think it was funny. 

“Nothing for you to worry about,” she said superiorly and tossed her head. 

“Oh, I get it. There’s some guy out there you’ve got your eye on. Which one is it? Charlie? Joe? Elmer?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Emma laughed and jumped down from the railing. He followed her like a faithful shadow. 

“Got any spots open on that dance card?” 

It wasn’t a question Emma had anticipated from Josh, of all people, and she stopped dead in her tracks, whirling to look at him. The look on his face held every appearance of some kind of practical joke. She had learned to be wary, if nothing else, around him in the past several years. 

“Why are you asking?” She raised an eyebrow suspiciously. He rolled his eyes and smirked impishly. 

“Why do most guys ask if a girl has an empty spot on her dance card?”

“Lemme guess. You had an epiphany and you need scratch paper to scribble it down on.”

“Epiphany, epilepsy, elephants. All the same. I’m asking you to dance, girl.”

Emma stared at him good and hard, trying to decide whether or not to take him seriously. Could anyone ever take Josh seriously? It was an impossible task.

“You, minion, are too saucy.” Emma wagged her finger at him reprovingly and turned to walk away again. He was still following her.  

“Wouldya dance with me if I guessed where you got that quote?”

“You? Recognize a literary quote?” Emma grinned. “This is too good to pass up. Shoot, Scout.”

“It’s Shakespeare,” he said promptly. 

“Very good. I applaud you. Now. Which Shakespeare play is it from?”

“Uh… Romeo and Juliet?” At her triumphant shake of her head, Josh shrugged. “I give up. I only know it was Shakespeare cause I heard you talking about it to Lissie.”

“Then ‘give me leave now, to leave thee’,” Emma quoted Shakespeare again. “You lost your bet.” She tried a third time to leave Josh behind, but he was unshakeable. He sped up, passing her and turning in the path to face her.

“Prithee, fair maiden and… uh…” he grinned. “That’s where my Shakespeare runs out. But my offer still stands. You can wander around out here and pine away in your fancies that no one wants to dance with you and be very literary and melancholy and heroic and all that, or you can come with me and have some fun. Up to you.” 

“You win,” Emma laughed. “That was quite the speech. For you, at least. Okay, let’s dance, Scout.”

And so they danced. But Josh, unlike Ronnie, didn’t adapt well to the circumstances. He couldn’t seem to master the art of a simple waltz. To make matters worse, every time he stepped on Emma’s toes, she pinched him. “To make things even,” she told him when he protested. At that, Josh went rogue. He made such a spectacle of himself what with cartwheels and somersaults and all that Emma began to seek an escape in earnest. Although an escape is hardly effective when one is laughing hard enough to split their insides. She could hardly get away from him, for as soon as she tried, he would lift her off her feet and spin wildly. She only tried it twice and decided that getting sick from spinning wasn’t worth it. When the music finally stopped, she went off with the first boy who approached her to ask for a dance and Josh went off by himself to find ice cream.

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