Another Life Altogether (31 page)

“I can’t dance, I—”

“Everybody can dance!” she yelled over the pounding music. “Come on!” She grabbed my arm and started to swing it.

I wanted to do this, but at the same time I had never felt so self-conscious in my entire life. I started to sway unsteadily from one foot to the other. “That’s it,” Amanda said, smiling enthusiastically. She dropped my arm and I moved beside her, all uncoordinated limbs. I knew I looked completely ridiculous, and right then I would have run from the dance floor if I’d thought I could do it without her noticing. Except, after a minute or so, I felt something shift. The dance floor had become more crowded. We were surrounded by dark and moving bodies in a flashing half-light. No one was paying attention to either me or Amanda. Within that hot cavern of energy and bodies, it was almost as if we were alone. I felt myself begin to loosen as the bass flowed through me, and, as I did, I remembered the way Malcolm had danced—unrestrained, oblivious to everyone around him even though he clearly had no rhythm at all. As I thought about him, I found that I, too, could let myself fall into a similar oblivion, into the sensation of
Amanda beside me, the brush of her dress against my hand, the enraptured expression on her face.

When the record ended, she fell against me, laughing and panting. “See, I knew you’d like it,” she said, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and leaning into me. Her breath was hot; it made me shudder, a thread of electric energy that bristled through me. “I knew you’d like to dance with me,” she said, pushing her lips closer, so that I felt them brush against my ear.

As I made my way back through the crowd, I felt the urge to throw my arms in the air, to yell, to celebrate. I had danced with Amanda. I felt light, buoyant, as if my body were made of nothing but air.

“What the heck are you grinning about?” Tracey demanded as I took my seat beside her once again.

“Nothing,” I said, “I just … I just really like this song.” The dj was playing something raucous, with a lot of crashing guitars.

“It’s rubbish. And if he keeps playing all this loud stuff I’ll never get a chance to dance with Greg. Of course, with you messing things up with him, Jesse, he’ll never ask me to dance.”

“Tracey, I’m sorry.” I put my hand on Tracey’s arm. She shrugged it away.

I felt a flash of hatred—for Tracey, for her stupidity for caring about an idiot like Greg Loomis, while she found it so easy to cast me aside. But, almost as soon as the hatred came, I felt a surge of desperation. I needed Tracey.

“You’re not being fair, Trace,” I said, detesting the whine in my voice, wanting, in fact, to slap some sense into her, to tell her to stop being so petty and cruel.

“Life’s not fair, Jesse,” she said.

For the rest of the evening, I sat nursing the hope that Amanda might ask me to dance again. My hope finally expired, though, when the dj switched to playing slow songs, and I saw Stan swagger across the room, take Amanda’s hand, and pull her onto the dance floor. Then,
together, they shuffled about, Amanda’s arms around Stan’s neck, her head resting dozily against his shoulder while he wrapped his arms around her waist and let his hands rest on the curve of her buttocks.

I couldn’t stand to watch them, and for a moment I let myself imagine stomping across the floor, pulling Stan away, kicking him, knocking him down. But this fantasy was just as futile as all my others, and so, rather than torture myself further, I stood up and threaded my way through the dancing couples toward the cloakroom. When I stepped inside, I was surprised to find Greg Loomis sitting on one of the low benches, smoking. He rolled his eyes when he saw me. “You! Thanks to you, I still smell like a fucking booze factory. Ruined my bloody chances with the lasses, you have. I should give you a fucking good hiding. I should—”

“I didn’t think you’d be so brave without Stan Heaphy to back you up,” I said. Instead of feeling afraid, I just felt irritated. The things that were bothering me were far more significant that Greg Loomis.

“Hey, if you don’t watch it—” He began to rise from the bench.

“God,” I said, past caring, “you think you’re such a big, bloody man. And you can’t even see what’s in front of your face.”

“What you talking about?”

“My friend, that girl that was in here earlier. Tracey Grasby. She really fancies you.”

He dropped to the bench again, taken aback. “Really?”

“Yes,” I said, wanting to add that he had to be blind as well as vain and immensely stupid if he hadn’t seen it himself.

He took a thoughtful puff on his cigarette. “This your idea of a joke? Because if it is, I’ll—”

“Look, all I know is she might stop her nonstop talking about you if you just go out there and ask her to dance.”

“Oh.” He took another drag on the cigarette, held it in, frowned deeply, then blew the smoke out in a fast stream. “Well, maybe I will, then,” he said, dropping his cigarette to the floor and standing up to make his way to the door. Before he left the cloakroom, though, he
stopped to look in the mirror at the end of the coat pegs. He patted his hair smooth with both hands, straightened his eyebrows with a moistened finger, and turned his face to admire his profile. “All right, Greg,” he said, smiling at his reflection. “Go out there and knock her dead.”

When he was gone, I sank to the bench, listening to the music echoing down the corridor and realizing that the outcome of this evening had been inevitable from the start. It was stupid of me to even think that I could fit in here. I was a misfit and a failure, and even when I tried my best to buy the right clothes and be like the other girls it was still obvious that I didn’t belong. Tracey hated me, Amanda was dancing with the hideous Stan, and here was I, again, pathetic and alone.

When I heard the music stop, I stood up, pulled on my coat, and pushed my way into the corridor. Staring glumly at the linoleum floor, I didn’t notice that someone had just stepped out of the door that led into the boys’ toilet until I almost bumped into him. When I looked up, I found myself face to face with Malcolm. Still flushed from all his exertions on the dance floor, his hair was damp and plastered across his forehead, and I could see tiny beads of perspiration at his temples.

“Excuse me,” I said instinctively as I started to edge around him.

“Hey.” He grabbed at my arm.

“What?”

“I just wanted to say, well, thanks for helping out earlier—you know, in there.” He gestured toward the cloakroom door.

Just then, I heard a loud peal of laughter echo down the corridor. I looked over to see Tracey marching toward us.

“That was really quick thinking, I—”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I interrupted.

“But you … I saw you.”

“I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I repeated, pulling my arm out of his grip.

Just then, Tracey reached us. “Out of my way, poofter boy,” she said, barging into Malcolm and pushing past him. Then, much to my delight, she leaned into me and hooked her arm through mine. “Did
you see, Jesse? Did you see?” She was bouncing up and down beside me. “Greg likes me! He likes me! He’s going to give me a lift home on his motorbike!” She looked about as thrilled as someone who’d won a ten-thousand-pound bingo prize. “And he told me, Jesse, he told me that you said he should ask me to dance. God, I’m sorry I wasn’t very nice to you earlier on because, really, you are absolutely the best bloody friend in the world.”

“Thanks, Trace,” I said, beaming at her, only noticing, out of the corner of my eye, Malcolm turn around and stalk off.

W
E EXITED THE CHURCH HALL TO FIND THAT A LIGHT POWDERING
of snow had fallen and the world had been dusted a luminescent white. The air tasted different, a cold, sharp burn. I stood on the steps as everyone spilled past me into the street. All the voices were filled with the thrill of snow, the girls’ squeals and the boys’ shouts seeming to travel forever across the silvery open fields. I watched as the haphazard pattern of footprints multiplied and boys hurled snowballs and the girls screamed and ran. I watched Tracey climb onto Greg’s motorbike and wrap her arms around his waist before they eased away. And I watched as Stan revved his bike so that it bucked up and down like a rodeo horse while he waited for Amanda to make her way unsteadily toward him. “Come on, slowcoach!” he yelled. “Let’s get going.” As she climbed on behind him, she noticed me watching her and gave a little wave. “Merry Christmas, Jesse,” she called as she pulled on the bike helmet and fastened it under her chin.

“Merry Christmas,” I called back, my voice a forlorn thread in the wide-open night. Stan revved the engine again, released the brake, and, after the bike skidded back and forth on the slushy road for a second, they sped off. I watched the bike rush into the darkness, its shape and the shapes of the figures on it rapidly fading until it became nothing
but its red rear light gliding through the darkness, like a single disconnected eye.

All the others were gone, either picked up by parents or walking home fast through the bitter cold. In the distance, I could hear their voices, loud and strident against the subtle insulation of the snow. My father still hadn’t arrived.

After only a few minutes my whole body tingled with cold. I stamped my feet, wrapped my arms to my chest, and looked up at the stars. They shone scattered and gleaming, like salt grains on a frozen road, and I imagined myself stretching out to run my fingertips over them, rough crystals against a tarmac black. A car came, its lights sweeping over the thick, intertwined branches of hedgerows, the stripes of other tires made through the snow. It slowed as it approached the tight curve in the road in front of the church hall. I began to move toward it, cursing under my breath at my father for taking so long. But, once around the curve, the car sped up again and I was left to watch its lights swing around another bend and disappear from sight. I looked at my watch. It was almost eleven o’clock. My father had forgotten to pick me up.

Behind me, the lights in the church hall flickered off, and I heard Reverend Mullins humming “Silent Night” as he pulled the doors closed and pushed a key into the lock. For a moment, I considered asking him if I could use the telephone in the church hall to call my father, but I didn’t want to have to wait with him, trapped in some interminable conversation about joining the choir, visiting Lincoln Cathedral, or the benefit of prayer upon the tumultuous teenage soul. Besides, I had become very conscious of the bottle of Johnny Walker Red Label that I had stowed away in my coat pocket. I decided to walk the two miles home.

As I walked, the whiskey bottle banged so insistently against my thigh that it started to hurt, and when I’d got far enough from the church hall to no longer fear being bothered by the vicar, I pulled it out.
There were about three inches of liquid left. For a moment, I considered drinking it down, wondering what it would feel like inside me, wondering if it might take away my misery and set me free in the steely cold night. Then I thought about Stan and Greg and Tracey and how they guzzled it down and spat out meanness, and I considered tossing the bottle into one of the surrounding fields. But I decided against this and slid the bottle back into my pocket. I simply stood there, taking in the wide-open emptiness of the dark. In the stillness, I became aware of the sound of the sea—the waves lifting, churning, falling, as if the world itself were breathing slow and sleepy breaths. The whispery roar made me think about Malcolm and how by now he was probably tucked under blankets in his little caravan being soothed by that steady sound of the sea.

It was then that I heard a harsh buzz, as incongruous as the drone of a fat summer bluebottle fly in this winter landscape. It was the sound of a motorbike and it came closer, growling around the curves behind me until its headlamp swept up from the bend in the road, illuminating a narrow swath of yellow. Then I heard a voice, shrieking higher than the buzz of the bike, echoing out across the snow-sheened fields.

“Stop! Stop!” It was Amanda.

But the bike didn’t stop. It seemed to speed up, charging forward like a raging insect. I could clearly see its silhouette and its two riders—the driver, Stan, leaning far down and forward, while Amanda, the passenger, held on tightly and kept screaming, “Stop, stop!” at the top of her lungs.

Just before it reached me, the bike came to a particularly tight bend in the road. It was the sort of bend that, even in the daylight in the best of conditions, a vehicle would have to slow down to take. Now, with the snow and the darkness, it was a bend that it was easy to miss until you came upon it. And that, it seemed, was exactly what happened.

I watched it all as if in slow motion. The bike jerking when Stan leaned his body backward as if he were trying to pull up a galloping
horse, straining against the strength of the unruly animal he rode. Then the wheels of the bike slipping sideways, out from under them, the bike sliding fast and gracelessly, while Amanda and Stan were tossed in a high, tumbling arc, into the ditch at the side of the road.