Absent (18 page)

WHAT WOULD I HAVE WORN TO PROM
?

I’d been to only two school dances freshman year before Usha and I had decided that they were stupid, so I have only two dresses in my closet at home: red and black. The black one is short; the red one is red. Getting ready for those other dances, I’d stand naked in my bedroom, hair wet on my back, and lay both dresses on the bed, trying to imagine how my night would be different if I wore one or the other. Red dress or black? Hair piled on my head or tousled? Dewy cheek and lip gloss or shadowed bedroom eyes? It didn’t matter. I was never the girl in my head.

Tonight, I wonder where those two dresses are now. Are they still hanging in my closet like promises never meant to be kept? Or have they been folded up and closed in a box with my name on it? Or maybe they’ve been donated to charity and are being worn right now by two other girls at two other proms, with entirely different boys and entirely different songs, their dance moves making entirely different patterns of wrinkles in the fabric.

Kelsey arrives early, just after the chaperones, and leans against the wall opposite from the drop cloth. She wears a knee-length shift with straps so thin they look like they’re made to be snapped. The fabric has been woven through with keen silver threads so that the dress winks dangerously, like a thousand needles, as she turns. She surveys the empty hallway once more, and now certain that Wes isn’t there, she steps back against the wall to wait. Stray strands of her hair, brushed into a frantic shine, begin to climb above her head, tiny static snakes against the brick. I remember a page I’d read in one of the left-open library books, how in actual mythology, Medusa didn’t turn you into stone because she was so ugly, but because she was so beautiful, and because you were fool enough to meet her eye.

I draw closer, peering at Kelsey’s face. We both turn at a spike of laughter from people passing the mouth of the hallway, faces stuck in smiles at seeing Kelsey Pope alone at the dance. Kelsey presses a hand to her cheek self-consciously.

“You look beautiful,” I say, not sure whether I’m saying it to apologize or simply because it’s true. As if in answer, Kelsey’s mind whispers,
Paige
. There’s no more resistance than breaking the skin of a pool as I step into her waiting form, and now I am beautiful, too.

I post myself at the mouth of the hall, watching the dancegoers clump in twos, fours, groups. They all spare looks for me, most of them turning away, expressions laced with laughter.

Then, Lucas Hayes lopes down the hall, the little dark-mouthed burner girl tucked under his arm. I goggle at them. Lucas wouldn’t have taken Brooke to prom—not me either. What does it mean that he’s brought her? A gang of paired ponies and testos come after Lucas, the ponies dropping behind their dates, not sure whether to
stare at Lucas Hayes and his low-rent date or at Kelsey Pope and her no-date.

But then there he is, my date, Wes Nolan. He shoulders past them, already muttering apologies. He halts, excuses fading out. “You look . . . shit.” He shakes his head. “You’ll hate it if I say ‘beautiful.’ ”

“You can say it.”

“All right.”

Wes grins. We grin at each other like goons.

“Well, say it if you’re going to say it, then.”

“You look beautiful,” he says, no grin.

A chord rises in me that is both the swell of the music and the pain of the string being plucked.

“Not me.”

“Who else but you?”

When he grabs my hand, I let him take it.

I have never danced like this. But it’s how I would’ve liked to dance. Wes and I leap; we twist and spin. It’s weird. It’s fun. A circle forms around us. With my eye makeup blurring and my hair whipping and Wes laughing in my ear, I can’t tell if they’re admirers or jeerers. Then I think,
Does it matter?
During the slow songs, I let Wes wrap his arms around me tight, like I’m impossible to break, like I’m invincible. Even the chaperones don’t dare approach us.

Partway through the dance, I see Evan standing in a corner among the wallflowers. I follow his gaze and find Mr. Fisk presiding over the refreshments table. Something must cross my face because Wes touches my arm and says, “Just ignore him.”

He nods past Evan and Mr. Fisk to Lucas Hayes, who cuts through the gym, threshing the crowd. The burner girl follows after him in a dress as dark and brief as her lips. Lucas turns and says something to her; the words are short. She stops at this comment, all the sass draining from her, her hands falling to her sides. Lucas walks on, leaving her behind. The crowd flails around her, buffeting her left and right, until she washes up by the refreshments table. When Lucas reaches the door to the hall, he looks back. Somehow, across the gym full of dancers, his eyes catch mine and hold them. They don’t look like his eyes, charmingly lazy and warm. His eyes look suspicious, mean. He darts out the door.

Through the doorway Lucas has just left, Usha enters, wearing a pouf of canary tulle that we’d found together at a garage sale a year ago. A group of people surround her—biblicals, well-rounders, even a pony or two—though none are nearly so vividly arrayed. One of them reaches to touch the hem of Usha’s skirt with a look of unguarded admiration. Usha laughs and spins, the yellow fanning out. Usha is a twirling type of girl again.

“We have to vote!” I remember.

“Vote?” Wes asks.

“For prom queen.”

“That’s right. You’re nominated.”

“I forgot,” I say, lifting a hand to my forehead.

“Really?” Wes asks. “You
forgot
.”

“Actually, I did. But it doesn’t matter. I’m going to vote for Usha Das.”

“Well, I’m going to vote for you.” He grins.

“If you must,” I say, and lead the way to the table with the ballot box. Mrs. Morello hands us the slips of paper. At the last minute,
I change my mind and make a check not next to
Usha Das
, but
Kelsey Pope
. Consider it my apology. I fold the paper and drop it in the box with a smile.

Still, I’m just as happy when Usha is called up to the makeshift stage and crowned prom queen. She’s fumbling with the hairpins, and I’m clapping and cheering louder than anyone else. Wes musses my hair and swings his arm around my shoulder, murmuring, “No one has any idea how cool you really are,” and this compliment I claim as my own.

We escape the heat and noise, ending up back in the hallway, the dance still in full swing. The song lyrics from the past few hours echo in my ears like someone is whispering them to me from another room. Wes walks backward in front of me, his shirt unbuttoned at the collar, his tie laid carelessly over one shoulder, and his cheeks flushed pink all the way to his ears.

I reach out and let my fingers graze his jaw. He tries to catch them, but I’m too quick, and his hand closes on air.

I step over to the drop cloth. “Why do they still have this up?”

“I think it’s to protect the mural until it’s done.”

“But there’s no mural.”

“What do you mean? It’s right under there.”

I feel Kelsey’s pulse in my neck and wrists, starting up a flutter faster than when I was dancing. I pinch the edge of the drop cloth, the warp and weft of the fabric between my fingers. “No, I saw. Usha painted over it. It’s just a blank wall now.”

Wes shakes his head. “It’s a mural. She’s been working on it for over a month.”

Then I remember something: Stumbling down the hall after I’d seen Lucas with the burner girl, I almost ran into her, Usha up on
her ladder. I’d been so upset that it hadn’t registered. I press a hand to my neck. There it is, my pulse, a little under-the-skin creature beating its wings.

“She kept painting it?”

“Of course.”

“But I saw her painting over it. She said, ‘Maybe we should be trying to forget.’ ”

“Here. See?” Wes steps past me and yanks the drop cloth free. My eyes follow it as it floats gently to the floor.

I don’t look at the mural right away. First, I look at Wes looking at it. He scans the wall, floor to ceiling, his eyes lit up like they were when he broke through the trees to the burners’ circle and found me scratching my designs into the ground.

“Will you look at that?” he says, voice awed.

So I look.

The mural reaches from floor to ceiling, a maze of lines and curves.

Birds.

The flocks of birds from Usha’s notebook, not inked centimeters across, but painted meters high, beaks pointed, wingspans unfurled, feathers all colors and speckles, delicate necks stretched toward the sky. And, parachutes, the calmly floating parachutes, their passengers tied safely below. Airplanes with whirring propellers. Bunches of helium balloons, hot-air balloons, too, with wicker riding baskets. Clouds of insects—monarchs, wasps, bluebottles, and dragonflies. Dragons, griffins, other impossible creatures, flying horses, and angels with trumpets as slender as their wrists. And there at the bottom, tiny in its corner, my contribution to the mural, my fuzzy little moth.

Usha has painted things that can’t fall.

She’s painted things that can fly.

I feel it again, that dissolving feeling, the feeling that happens whenever I inhabit someone. But this time it’s different, stronger, warmer . . . wider? And then I hear the voices, dozens of them, a whole crowd, whispering to one another. I can’t make out the words, but the tone is warm, like how you might whisper
I love you
to someone who’s sleeping. I place my palm against the slick shine of the dried paint, the tiny furrows of brushstroke, the wall beneath. The wall that will last for years.

“Hey,” Wes says softly.

I turn to face him.

“Hey,” he says again, taking one of my hands in both of his and holding it to his chest. “Why are you crying?”

“Because.” I shake my head. “Because I feel alive.”

Wes leans down and kisses me. I kiss him back. His lips taste like cigarettes, like paper burnt until it’s cinders, but then the cinders glow softly, rekindling with the warmth of his mouth. After seconds and years and eons, we part.

He grins, and I let out a little burst of laughter.

“So that was funny to you?” Wes says, but he’s still grinning.

I shake my head. “What are you even doing here, Wes Nolan?”

“Nothing much,” he says, “Just being here. With you.”

Footfalls behind us. We break apart, and Usha stands there in her dandelion of a dress, lipstick on her front teeth, rhinestone crown pulling away from the pins that hold it to her hair. She looks perfect, by the way.

“Sorry,” she mutters, backing away.

“Usha!” I call.

She turns, an uncertain expression on her face.

“You painted this.” I point at the mural.

“You shouldn’t have taken that off.” She gestures at the crumpled drop cloth. “It’s not ready yet. I still haven’t really—”

“Thank you,” I interrupt.

“For what?”

“They’re flying,” I say.

She nods.

“Now people will remember her as something other than . . . I . . . I’m sorry that I lied, that I said she jumped.”

Usha’s brows draw together. She pulls the crown from her head, holds it in her hands, running her fingers over the fake gemstones. “You don’t have to pretend.”

“I’m not pretending.” I put a hand to my chest. “I really am sorry. I’m sorry I lied.”

“You don’t have to pretend to . . . I know it wasn’t a lie.” Usha looks up from her crown. “Paige stepped off the roof.”

“Usha.
No
.” My hands fall to my sides, the silky fabric of Kelsey’s dress in them, crumpling and uncrumpling in my fists. “I know what people have been saying, but it’s not true. She fell.
She fell
.”

Usha doesn’t shake her head, she doesn’t raise her voice, she doesn’t argue. She simply says, “Paige stepped off the roof. I saw her. Everyone else was looking the other way, at those boys throwing things. But I was looking at her. And you were, too. You screamed. When she did it, you screamed, and everyone else looked. You don’t have to pretend. I saw it. I saw you see it.”

“But no,” I argue. “That’s impossible, because I—she—didn’t jump.”

“Kelsey,” Wes says, “maybe right now isn’t—”

My mind latches on to something. Usha and my conversation at the lunch table. “You said, you told Jenny, that I shouldn’t have said it, that I shouldn’t have said that Paige jumped.”

“I was mad that you told everyone, not because it was a lie, but because it was true.” Usha looks down at her crown, pulls free a strand of hair that was caught between the stones. When she looks up again, her expression is peaceful. “I’m not mad anymore. I was carrying it around, that secret, and it was
hurting
me. But after you said it, after everyone knew, I told my mom and we talked about it. I forgave you. And I painted. And I forgave her, too.”

I open my mouth, “But she couldn’t have jumped, she just, she turned and then—”

“She jumped,” Usha says, plain and soft. “She did.”

I start to say
no, no way, you’re wrong
, but I can’t say any of it because I’m falling all over again. Kelsey is slowly and firmly pushing me out of her body, and I can’t find my hold on her, can’t even find my feet. I’m sinking through the floor. I see a flash of the three of them—Wes, Kelsey, and Usha standing in a circle—before the floor takes me.