The+Dreaded+Dance

The Dreaded Dance  Tomorrow was the Valentine’s Day Dance, or according to Heather it was. I didn’t pay attention to those sorts of things. We were walking across Mustang Field, heading to the Bethany gate to finally end the school day at John Muir Middle School.  “So are you going to the dance?” Heather asked, brushing a strand of her long hair out of her face. Her dazzling hair. The hair every teenage, and probably even adult, girl on the planet wanted. Though, her hair wasn’t all that brought attention to her. She had the most amazing deep green eyes. When you looked into them, you felt like you were lost in a jungle of vines that were all different shades of green and tall tree trunks that were held up by the resilient earth, but you didn’t want to be found. Her skin was lightly tanned by the kiss of the sun, which complimented the milk-chocolate color of her hair, which would make a model on one of those Garnier commercials jealous. She stood at a height of 5’5’’, an inch above me. And to boot, she was insanely nice. She was the perfect friend, she never deserted me for the popular crowd, which frankly, she could have done //long// ago.  I was not popular. Though, I wasn’t terribly unpopular either. I was not placed in a category of group. I was just… Ethan. Though, it seemed everybody knew who I was, yet they didn’t //know// me. I was like that kid Harrison Pyros, who everyone knew of because he was so tall. So it would be like, “Hey, you know that guy Harrison?”  “Yeah, the super tall kid, right?”  It was exactly like that only everyone knew of me because I had these freaky ice eyes. I was a little too pale for my liking, but whatever. I was 5’4’’ with average weight for my height and I had light brown hair and had straight bangs that stopped right above my eyebrows.  “No,” I answered like I couldn’t believe she actually asked the question.  “Why not?” she asked, almost complaining.  “Because it’s stupid. The dance is just for a bunch of relationship wannabes who want to feel mature and grown up, so they act like this ‘dance’ is just as important as their high school prom.”

“Now tell me how you really feel,” she said after a few silent steps, impersonating a therapist or doctor on one of those talk shows where they solve people’s problems. We broke into laughter. It was an inside joke we created when we were in 5th grade and all the girl drama started up. All the girls would come to Heather and complain and cry to her about how “hard their lives were.” And Heather would be forced to sit there and listen like a therapist, every once in a while saying things like, “It’s okay.” And “I’m listening, let it out.” And “Don’t keep your emotions bottled up, tell me how you really feel.” So Heather would rant to me when we were walking home about how much she wanted to slap the girls across the face and scream, “Leave me alone! I have a life too, you know!” So from then on, every time one of us goes on a big rant, we say, “Now tell me how you really feel.”

 “You know that kid Neil Nelson in our English class?” Heather started, bringing up a new subject.

 “Oh, shoot!” I said. “I left my English book in my locker! Sorry, meet you at the gate.”

 “Okay, I’ll wait,” she replied as I took off running.

 I got to the 300 Hall in a flash. The hallways were clear, since all the students had already left, so the usual wave of B.O. and cheap perfume didn’t hit me as I flung open the doors. I jogged to my locker and started turning it to my combination. My locker was a shade of green, one of the colors of our school, and had a sloppy dark green line across it, probably to cover up some graffiti, so my locker stuck out like a sore thumb. I wrenched it open; hurrying because I hated being waited on, and yanked the thick red book of torture from under a jumble of notebooks and other textbooks. Then, from the contents of my English book, fell a white envelope. It fluttered to the floor as my eyes watched it dance gracefully to the tiled ground.

 I let my backpack drop to the crook of my elbow and I let it drop to the floor. I tossed my book so it landed undamaged on my backpack. I bent down and plucked the envelope from the cold hands of the tile. On it was my name, Ethan, written so elaborately with so many curls and loops that no person in this century could perform this calligraphy. I peeled open the flap of it and removed the letter from the mouth of the envelope. On it read:

Dear Ethan,

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> Roses are red,

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> Violets are blue,

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> Follow these instructions,

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> That I have written for you.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> Meet me at the Valentine’s Day Dance at six in the gym. I’ll be the one with the rose in her hair and violet on her dress. Can’t wait to dance with you, my love.

<span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px; text-align: center;">Love,

<span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px; text-align: center;">Your secret admirer

<span style="display: block; font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px; text-align: center;">XOXOXOXOXO

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;">I let the didactic love note fall from my hands, and it returned once more to the cold clutches of the tile. I had no idea what emotion I was feeling at the moment. Surprise that someone actually liked me? Joy that somebody liked me? Hypocrisy that I thought fondly of having a relationship? To this day I have no idea what I felt that day. I call it the X-emotion; that emotion that everybody feels at least once, but nobody knows //what// emotion it is.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> I didn’t know what to do, so I picked up the letter and envelope and stuffed them in my backpack, slammed close my locker and locked it, and threw my backpack over my shoulder and burst through the doors of the 300 Hall, hauling my English book.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> I got to the gate in about 20 seconds flat, and sure enough, there was Heather.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “You ready?” she asked.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “Yeah,” I answered between breaths. “Where’s the dance again?”

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “Here, why? Did you find out a pretty girl was going and you wanted to impress her with your ‘awesome’ dancing?”

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> I gave her that Shut-Up look, and she giggled quietly.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “So anyway, I was talking about Neil Nelson before you went on your mad rampage to the lockers,” she started. “Well, he got the best prank pulled on him. It was epic! So he had just got this new, really expensive phone for his birthday and he kept scaring his friend with all the audio at the most random times. So his friend went and got one of those dead phones, pretty much just the body of what Neil has.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “And when they were outside Neil’s house, they were playing with Neil’s phone and when he wasn’t looking, his friend switched the real phone with the junk phone and ‘accidentally’ dropped it down the gutter! And Neil was all screaming and stuff. And his friend pulls out the real phone and Neil is all like, ’Dude, you suck.’”

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “Oh my Gosh! He’s terrible!” I said through my laughter.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “I know,” she said. “That one was so much better than those pranks we used to pull on each other in 6th grade in our prank war.”

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;">“I totally kicked your butt in the last prank,” I bragged.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “You just won because I was out of ideas and my mom kept yelling at me for coming home with stained clothes,” Heather argued.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> While we argued on who really won the title of King or Queen of the Pranks, the secret love letter still nagged at the back of my head.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;">* * *

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> It was already half way through the day, and I still had no idea who my secret admirer could be. I had had trouble falling asleep the day before, when I had found the fateful note in my locker.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> In my other periods, I was kept busy so I didn’t have time to think about tonight. But now it was math, the subject where I didn’t have to pay attention, so I would be free to think. So there I was, stuck in my math class with the most boring of teachers, Ms. Prouncer, in the most dull and suffocating environment on the planet. The room was covered with stupid posters like Do Math, Not Meth, but some posters were just plain weird like the one that was posted right in front of my seat: **Don’t Cheat… Chuck Norris is Watching.**

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;">Ms. Prouncer was the kind of teacher that asked her brightest students the most random of questions during a lesson just to see how much they knew about math.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> As I was wondering who my secret lover could be, she asked, “Ethan, do you know the quadratic function?”

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> I tore my gaze away from the wall I was unconsciously staring at and looked her in the face, and let me tell you; Ms. Prouncer was not a pretty sight. Her lips were lathered with the reddest of lipstick and the blush on her cheeks was put in a light pink circle. Her eye shadow was a shiny sky blue and her mascara was applied in clumps so it looked like her eyes had tiny horns. She looked like a child’s makeup dolly more than a 7th grade math teacher. Her hair was hung up a top her head, so it looked as if she had a beehive perched on her scalp.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> But the worst part about Ms. Prouncer is her breath and stench. She had the same hygienic routine as a European person in the Middle Ages: don’t bathe, and just add more makeup and perfume. There’s a reason she doesn’t have any flowers or plants in her class, because if she did they would all die when she lifted her arms to stretch.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “Negative b plus or minus the square root of b squared minus 4ac over 2a.” I replied without pausing.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “When do you use it?” she asked. Obviously she wasn’t satisfied.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;">“When an equation can’t be factored,” I replied monotonously. She turned back to the notes she was explaining; she would not bother me for the rest of the period.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> So who could it be? Karri Anderson? No, she probably doesn’t know I exist. Amber? No. Evelyn? Not a chance. Could it be … Heather? No! That would be disgusting. That would be like her liking her brother, and vice versa. Now let’s see, who else could be a possibility…

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> The rest of the day soared by too fast so I couldn’t catch it and try to slow it down to expand the time length between then and the moment of truth.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “So, you’re going to the dance, right?” Heather asked as we were walking home.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “Yes for the 8 billionth time!” I said annoyed.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “Okay,” she replied, flashing me one of her amazing smiles. “See you there.” She turned and went down her street as I said good-bye.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> My parents were all happy I was going to a dance, especially my mom. She shoved me into a pale blue-collar shirt and said it “flattered my eyes”. Then she wet my hair and parted my bangs so they didn’t fall into my face, even though she knew I was just going to put them back when she left.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> I had her drop me off 2 blocks away from school; I didn’t want to be dropped off by my mom. She grumbled something about teenagers and their weird ways of looking cool. I said my “I love you”, and got hers in exchange, and she drove off. I fixed my hair and started walking towards the dance.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> I stepped onto campus, my heart beating so hard it felt like my ribs were going to be dust by the time this was all over. There was no one in sight, yet I saw the light from the gym. //Oh, no//, I thought. //I’m late!//

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> I ran towards the gym and the music steadily got louder. Then with hands shaking, I thrust open the gym doors and… was covered from head to toe with sloppy mud. I fell backwards onto the floor as I heard someone nearly dying of laughter.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> I slowly got to my feet, wiped the gunk from my eyes and saw, yep, you guessed it, Heather.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “Oh, I got you good!” she gloated doing a little dance. “I win! I win! I am the Queen of the Pranking War!”

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “What the heck is going on here?” I shouted over the music and her bragging, and I probably had some mud in my ear. There was no one in the gym, no decoration, nothing. Nothing but a huge speaker Heather had probably set up.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;">“The real Valentines Day Dance is at Luther, smart one. Figures, you never listen to the announcements,” she said.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “Well,” I said taking small steps towards her. “Miss Queen of the Pranking War, I think you deserve a hug in recognition of your victory.”

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> Her eyes widened in realization and she said, “Oh, Ethan, don’t you-“

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> I sprinted towards her and caught her in a huge embrace. “Oh my Gosh!” she screamed. “Let go of me! You’re disgusting!”

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> I let her free and back up a few steps. She stared, open mouthed, down at the front of her outfit, which was covered in ground mush. Then after a few seconds, she started to laugh.

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> “Well,” I said. “I guess you’re gonna have to explain another stain to your mom.”

<span style="font-family: Georgia,serif; font-size: 19px;"> She looked at me and said, “It’s a good thing nobody’s writing a story about this, or else that would have been the cheesiest ending line ever.”

THE END

(Finally)