New Year's Eve (5 page)

Lee got in, began driving, and they made dull conversation. Anne thought, Actually I do have the prince. Lee is a prince. Only it's the peasant boy I want.

How, oh,
how
, could Anne begin a New Year when her heart was still tangled in the old?

S
NOW FELL LIGHTLY.

Town trucks spewed sand onto the white surface, and the snow turned beige. The doorman at The Hadley whisked an enormous broom constantly, keeping the sidewalks clear beyond the wide roofs that covered the doorways. The Christmas lights were still on the rows of tiny evergreens in pots, that flanked the entries to The Hadley. They winked joyously, and the snow fell and formed thick white collars around the little tree trunks.

Indoors, the guests at the ball took off their coats, and shook snow out of their hair, and laughed, and fluffed the flowers pressed down by heavy wool jackets.

The elevators began to fill.

Young people came from the public high schools in Lynnwood and Westerly, from the parochial and private schools and from as far away as Brinton. Adults—twenty to ninety—arrived for other parties. There was another New Year's Eve dance in the dark romantic cocktail lounge on the lower floor, and two clubs had each rented enormous ballrooms for their celebrations. There were private parties in the smaller dining rooms of one of the grand restaurants.

The boys were nearly all in tuxedos. Formal dress gave them dignity. Boys who normally held tobacco-spitting contests, or spun wheelies on the school grass, or went on twenty-four-hour slime sprees, were now adjusting satin cummerbunds. Hardly anybody snapped the other guy's suspenders. Feet that for months had been encased in untied high tops were now gleaming in black leather.

The girls looked sweet and fresh. There were so few chances to wear a really dressy dress that girls who favored denim and khaki, T-shirts and sweatshirts, were now joyously wearing satin, lace, silk, and velvet. This year's colors were subdued: tawny tea shades, flushed pinks, and light lemony hues. Their flowers were mostly roses, orchids, or camellias. Wrist corsages were everywhere—quite a change from wrists normally adorned with string bracelets.

The elevators were redolent with the scents of aftershave, cologne, perfume, and flowers. Nobody said much. They were subdued by their own clothing.

The elevators climbed without a sound, without a bump—gliding without motion, it seemed. Finally the cars stopped, ever so gently, and rested for a brief moment.

The doors opened slowly and silently onto a large stationary lobby with high walls of gleaming dark glass. The kids stared into a hundred reflections of themselves and giggled. Enormous bouquets of hundreds of helium balloons in jelly bean colors were tied down at each corner of the lobby. A thick, dark green carpet led around a corner and out into a narrow curved hall.

Before them lay the revolving ballroom.

It moved so slowly that at first you could not tell it moved at all. There was no sense of having to watch your feet as if you were getting off an escalator. It was simply a lovely long room without an end, wrapped in curved glass walls. But once you were inside, and you drifted toward the glass, you saw the world spread beneath you: snowy, and blurry, and magical. Slowly this moved away, horizons changing and the patterns shifting.

The dance floor was gleaming wood; the other areas the same thick, dark green carpet. Where there were walls, they were covered in crimson as dark and rich as the carpet: like an incredibly sophisticated Christmas color combination. Tiny, tiny Christmas tree lights were draped in intricate patterns all over the walls, turning the entire twenty-second floor of The Hadley to sparkling diamonds.

The band had not yet begun to play.

The food was not yet being served.

They gathered in knots, stranded on the dark green carpet, wondering what to do next.

And into the ballroom came someone who was definitely not subdued by her clothing.

Someone spectacular, and weird, and wild.

Someone who made them all gasp, and turn, and stare.

Gwynnie Vannerly made her entrance.

Molly Nelmes had made her New Year's resolutions back in the summer. All fall she had nursed them along and tonight, finally, she would carry them off.

First, Anne.

Oh, she would get Anne. Bad enough that Con had been in love with Anne ever since he had figured out there were two sexes. (And Con had figured that out very early.) Bad enough that when Anne was having his baby (“out of town” was the phrase everybody liked to use; “Oh, Anne's out of town for a while,” they would say, pretending nothing was happening) Con dated Molly but refused to take her anywhere publicly. “That might hurt Anne's feelings,” he would say. Bad enough that Molly had to sneak to see Con, and he sneaked to find her. It meant she was out with Westerly's finest specimen of manhood … and nobody knew. To be with Con was to be somebody important. But how was that supposed to happen if nobody knew?

But then Anne came back to town. Con was at her side in about twenty seconds. From then on he pretended he didn't even know Molly. Anne was no different at all: she had never admitted knowing Molly. When Molly couldn't catch on that her romance with Con was over, he even shoved her in a pool and she nearly drowned.

For a time Molly hated Con. But then Anne dumped Con—as if Con was the one who was worthless! And she began going out with the King Of Boredom, Lee Hamilton! Well, after that, Molly hated Anne again.

She liked hating Anne. All Anne ever did was stand there being beautiful and pretending nothing was happening. Here was Con, eating his heart out, dating some private school preppy named Jade, and Anne was pretending nothing was happening.

Well, Molly would make something happen.

Molly smiled, thinking of what would happen to Anne.

Anne, who always knew exactly what to do and say. Well, this would be quite a test. They would see if Anne could cope with this one.

Then there was Kip. Molly hated Kip even more than she hated Anne. Last summer, when they were all at the dance at Rushing River Inn, Molly had a cigarette in the woods. Big smoky deal. Who cared? So it started a fire. It got put out. Nothing burned but a bunch of dumb trees. And Kip had a wonderful time being in charge. Molly bet if a nuclear holocaust came, Kip would have a wonderful time being in charge.

But thanks to Kip, Molly had had to talk to the fire marshall and the police and the juvenile authorities about arson. Molly got out of it. Molly was no slouch at standing around pretending nothing was happening herself. So nothing did happen to Molly except a few bad interviews.

But the kids all knew.

And they despised her.

Now Molly had little use for girls. Her favorite sweatshirt said
SO MANY BOYS … SO LITTLE TIME
. Not having girlfriends didn't bother Molly a whole lot.

But this year she had no boyfriends, except the scuzzbuckets. They liked her fine. They thought it was pretty neat to hang out with a girl that probably committed arson. But Molly didn't want to hang out with the slime molds of Westerly High. (And she had certainly learned by now that Westerly had more than its share. If you hung out with Anne and Beth Rose and all those Miss Innocent types, you'd think Westerly was nothing but fresh daisies in a meadow; well, Molly could tell them a thing or two.)

Molly hated the boys she had to hang out with, and she hated the good kids who left her out. She wanted to date Con, or Gary—not these kids with the personality of a Port-A-Potty.

So tonight she would fix Anne and she would fix Kip.

And while she was at it, she'd take a nice whap at Beth Rose. There was nobody Molly loathed more than Beth Rose. You take a nothing like Beth. One hundred percent personality free. Nobody even knew Beth Rose was breathing, let alone attending a dance. And Gary happened to stumble over Beth's fat feet, and apologized by asking her to dance. And what happened? Gary fell in love with her. Molly could not stand it that terrific wonderful guys like Gary were hanging out with zeros like Beth.

She could not stand it that Beth Rose, that nobody had known existed, was suddenly friends with girls like Anne and Kip. Even after Gary broke up with Beth, Beth was still friends with Anne and Kip. But did Anne ever even smile at Molly? No. Did Anne and Kip ever invite Molly to their parties? No. But they invited Beth Rose all right. A person who you couldn't even tell if she was talking or silent, she was such a bore.

Molly thought she probably hated Beth Rose more even than the rest, because Beth was such a simpleton. A person with no brain ought to be a vegetable, not a social success.

Molly fingered the invitation from Gwynnie. It had been printed on a personal computer, using various typefaces and the art-work that comes on a bought program. Gwynnie had used a paper so red, so brilliantly crimson, that it hurt the eyes. Molly had to squint to read the little black words. But she had read them until she had them memorized.

Gwynnie had invited Molly.

Why? Why would Gwynnie ask Molly?

Gwynnie's elevator did not go all the way to the top. If she had a reason it would not be a normal one. Gwynnie had some purpose in asking Molly to her After Midnight party—but what? Gwynnie had asked kids like Anne and Lee, like Emily and Matt. The hard core
We're Too Special For You
crowd. So why Molly?

Gary and Gwynnie. Gary leaving Beth was not surprising. What was surprising was that Gary would take up with Gwynnie. Gary, in his drifty, dark way, was quite distinguished. If Molly had forecast a new girlfriend for him, she would in fact have predicted the elegant Anne.

Gwynnie?

Who to all appearances was insane?

He could have asked me, Molly thought. But nobody in that crowd would now. They hate me. You'd think I was a criminal or something. All I did was have a cigarette. Well, they never proved anything about that fire, and it was only trees anyhow, and nobody got hurt, so who cares?

But if they all hate me, how did I get on Gwynnie's guest list?

She understood Beth Rose was actually going to appear at the ball with Kip's little brother George. Why, George couldn't be sixteen yet! Oh, well, beggars couldn't be choosers, and if Molly had ever met a beggar, it was Beth Rose.

Gwynnie was a nut case who would do anything. So why was she having a party with all the straight ones? Molly despised straight people. They were so boring. A person who wouldn't try a drink and wouldn't crack a dirty joke—who needed them? Anne and Lee, Emily and Matt, Beth Rose and her fifteen-year-old? Ugh.

Molly stared at herself in the mirror.

She had gone all out for this ball.

She was going to be the most striking girl there, no doubt about it.

In a fashion season that featured quiet colors, Molly had found a dress of zingy emerald green and black. The hurt-your-eyes green formed a satin background and the black was two stark exaggerated silhouettes of a man and a woman kissing each other. Their foreheads formed the dip of her gown and their lips met, stretched way out like tubes, just where the V of her dress ended. And where the silhouettes parted, so did her gown, so that a little diamond of Molly's flesh showed, just above her belly button.

Nobody, Molly thought with satisfaction, but nobody will have a gown to equal this. They'll all be wearing their little pastel pinks and their little cut lace ivories.

I, on the other hand, will be astonishing.

She loved that word.
Astonishing.

Some day she would be famous, and when she dressed for the Academy Awards evening, the television commentator would shake his head and say, “That woman is astonishing!”

Molly frowned slightly as she held Gwynnie's invitation. Gwynnie might show up in a bomber jacket or even the parachute that went with it.

But Gwynnie wouldn't be astonishing. She'd just be weird.

Molly wished she knew what kind of party it was going to be. But it was very hard to ask Gwynnie anything, and they'd been on school vacation for ten days anyhow. Molly couldn't imagine telephoning Gwynnie. She couldn't imagine Gwynnie doing something normal like saying, “Hello?”

Molly wondered what wig Gwynnie would wear. Gwynnie had six that Molly had seen. Molly's favorite featured tight kinky curls that stuck out almost as much to the sides as downwards, so that Gwynnie was not a girl so much as a hairball. With this wig Gwynnie usually wore oversized sunglasses with orange rims to match her orange running shoes.

Gary and Gwynnie.

It sounded like twins in first grade. It didn't seem possible that Gary would have asked Gwynnie to invite Molly. Gwynnie must have decided that herself. Maybe Gwynnie wanted to be friends with Molly.

Molly liked that. Gwynnie knew that out of all the duds and jerks at Westerly High, there was but one truly astonishing girl—she, Molly Nelmes.

Molly pivoted in front of her mirror.

The stretched silhouettes kissed endlessly, their lips never tiring.

Molly thought of Beth Rose, and Anne, and Kip, and hate filled her in a satisfying way. What clever plans she had for tonight! And nobody would know Molly had set it up. Nobody could possibly know!

It was the first time in Gary's life that nobody had even seen him. He was handsome enough that girls' eyes clung to him and followed him. But he and Gwynnie walked into the ballroom and he was invisible.

Gary enjoyed it thoroughly.

It had been a long time since he had been with someone crazy.

And Gwynnie was definitely not playing with a full deck.

As Gary's mother put it, “Honey, I wish you'd go out with Beth Rose again. She was so sweet. This Gwynnie, now. Her porch light's on, but there's nobody home.”

Oh, wow, was her porch light ever on!

Gwynnie was as tall as Gary: five foot ten.

Tonight she wore scarlet spike heels that put her well over six feet.

Her new wig was white. Not blonde, but white. White as ghosts. The hair was very long, but Gwynnie had skinned it tightly back into a two-foot pony tail, and then tied it in a square knot. The knot was as large as Gary's fist, and the ends of the hair stuck straight up into the air. It didn't look like hair at all, but like some huge ship's rope stuck to her head. She had not covered up the tiny rat tail of her own dark hair but let that fall onto her cheek.