Whiskey & Charlie (6 page)

According to the lecture that was delivered in a special assembly on the first day of term, the beginning of eleventh grade was the time to focus on academic goals and to begin thinking seriously about life beyond high school. From the students' perspective, they'd been expected to focus on academic goals ever since they started high school, and as for life beyond school, they were about as capable of thinking seriously about that as they were of imagining life on Mars.

For the girls, there was something far more pressing than exams to think about in first term: the school prom. Within a week of being back at school, Charlie had seen the girls in his homeroom excitedly showing each other pictures of dresses in magazines, had heard them agonizing over skirt length and fabric color, lowering their voices, presumably to discuss whose bow tie and cummerbund might be matched to their dress.

The official line was that the guys couldn't care less about the school prom. Jokes about potential partners might be made, but all suggestions were resoundingly rejected, backed up by the vehement declaration
I haven't even thought about it
. In truth, it had been on Charlie's mind ever since he heard the girls discussing it. The problem was, all the students were expected to attend the prom with a partner. And even though, technically speaking, girls could invite boys to the prom, in reality, they never did. It was the boys who did the asking and the girls who had the luxury of accepting or declining the invitations. Charlie wished it was the other way around. He was no good at those sorts of things. To help with the process, he had compiled a mental list. At the top of the list was Sasha Piper, a girl he would never even think of actually inviting, but who would be the girl he would choose if he was in one of those American movies where the school dork becomes popular overnight and is suddenly pursued by the beautiful blond cheerleader type who previously did not even know his name. Not that Charlie considered himself the school dork. Still, he had enough social awareness to know he was not in Sasha Piper's league. Probably, Charlie thought, Sasha was at the top of every eleventh-grade boy's wish list, but none of them would have the guts to ask her, and she would end up going to the prom with a boy from twelfth grade.

Next on Charlie's list was Shantelle Simpson, the girl who sat in front of him in math and occasionally shared a joke with him, a girl he would ask if fate threw him an unexpected opportunity, even though, in all likelihood, she would say no. Then there was Melissa Capelli, his biology partner, who was shy but pretty and would possibly say yes if he timed it right. His last resort was Bronwyn Chambers, a girl from his homeroom who he didn't fancy in the slightest but who he suspected had fancied him since he started at the school, a nice girl, although a little on the chunky side with unfortunate frizzy black hair, very unlikely to get any better offers and, therefore, almost guaranteed to say yes.

Charlie did not know if his friends had such lists. He would not ask, but he bet that Whiskey did not have a list of four, of whom one was an impossibility and one extremely unlikely. He would most definitely not have a last resort. He would not need to. It would be simple for someone like Whiskey. He would ask one of the pretty, popular girls, and she would say yes. He wouldn't have to agonize over it as Charlie was.

The way Charlie saw it, timing was everything. If you asked too early, the pretty girls would be waiting to see if they might get any better offers. They would tell you they wanted to think about it, and then you would be in limbo. You might be lucky, and no one they liked more might ask them, in which case they would come back to you with a halfhearted yes. On the other hand, they might keep you in suspense for a few weeks and end up saying no, during which time your third and even fourth choice might have been snapped up. In this regard, the efficiency of the school grapevine was both a blessing and a curse. If you were rejected, you would rather it wasn't common knowledge. But it was helpful in keeping abreast of who had asked whom, who had accepted or declined in order to assess the market, to judge the best time to make your move.

x x x

Though there was a student committee for the school prom, the teachers, as always, had the last word, and it was the teachers who had decided that in order to
set
the
right
tone
and avoid
too
much
bumping
and
grinding
later in the evening, as Mrs. Gill apparently put it at the meeting, there would be an hour of ballroom dancing before the DJ arrived to play the music the students wanted to hear. Of course, none of the students knew how to ballroom dance, so it was arranged that twice a week, throughout first term, they would learn ballroom dancing instead of their usual phys ed activities.

It was widely known that Mr. Baxter had represented the state in ballroom dancing, but the teachers were apparently smart enough to realize that the students would not have taken one of their own teachers seriously. So outside instructors were brought in, a young guy who was introduced to them as Mr. Randall, and a very beautiful, voluptuous woman who was not introduced. Charlie did not know about the girls, but none of his friends wanted to learn ballroom dancing. They thought ballroom dancing was for sissies and would rather have been playing sport. Mr. Randall seemed to sense this and took control as soon as their phys ed teacher had left the room.

“You can call me Mr. Randall, if you want,” he said. “But I would rather you called me Mr. Bond…James Bond.” He said this with just the right amount of drama, and there was laughter all around.

“Of course, if you're going to call me a ridiculous name, you'll want to know the reason why. So I'll tell you. How many of you think ballroom dancing is only for gay men?”

There was snickering and muttering through the gym, though no one spoke.

“How many of you boys think that by taking part in a ballroom dancing class you're in danger of becoming gay?” He paused knowingly. “Last question: How many of you are wondering if I'm gay?”

Surprised laughter followed this question.

Mr. Randall smiled. “If you want to know that, the best person to ask would be my wife, Carmel.” Here he gestured toward the woman he had arrived with. She gave a curtsy and a small twirl, just enough to show a bit of leg and reassure all present that Mr. Randall, or Mr. Bond, or whatever you wanted to call him, was most definitely not gay. There was laughter, applause, a wolf whistle from the back of the gym.

“‘That's all well and good, but why James Bond?' I hear you asking. Well, let me ask you this. Who else but James Bond can wrestle a giant on top of a train
and
charm a lady without appearing to even try? Does anyone look better in a tuxedo? Do you think James Bond knows how to dance? You bet he does. So, for the purposes of these classes, not only am
I
James Bond, but I encourage each of you gentlemen to think of yourselves as James Bond also. Ladies, if you wish, you may call your partner Mr. Bond. Or, if you feel daring, you may like to call him James. I'll leave that up to you. Now on your feet; let's dance.”

Everyone stood up, considerably more enthusiastic than they had been when they arrived at the gym. The James Bond speech had won them all over. Charlie could see he wasn't the only one who had benefited from imagining himself as sharply dressed and debonair, even if, in reality, they were all sweaty and pimply with two left feet. He hoped his partner would call him Mr. Bond.

Week one was the jive. The boys stood on one side of the room behind James Bond, the girls behind Carmel on the other.

Rock
step, triple step, triple step

Rock
step, triple step, triple step

Over and over again they repeated the movements, girls on one side, boys on the other. Once they had gotten the hang of it by themselves, it was time to have a go with a partner. Partners were assigned by height, with no consideration whatsoever given to social status. Which meant that in some cases, the prettiest girls were paired up with nerds from the chess club, weirdos who stayed after school to play Dungeons & Dragons; the good-looking boys with girls who had braces and the wrong hairstyles, who spent their lunchtimes in the library. In these oddly matched pairs, neither partner felt comfortable. One inevitably felt embarrassed and unworthy, the other simply embarrassed. They did not know how to talk to each other. In some cases, they had never even said hello.

Charlie's assigned partner was Anneliese Spellman. Anneliese was widely acknowledged to be one of the prettiest girls at school; the year before, she had been a finalist in the
Seventeen
Covergirl competition. She had been photographed at the beach in a low-cut top and short shorts, and Charlie, who considered himself a legs man, had torn her photograph out of a copy of the magazine he had found in the dentist's waiting room. Anneliese also happened to be the girl Whiskey had been hanging around with that term and who was to become, if you listened to gossip, the latest notch on Whiskey's proverbial bedpost.

Two places down the line from Charlie, Whiskey's assigned partner was Karen Sand, the deputy library prefect. Charlie tried not to notice, but Whiskey caught his eye, gestured to himself and Karen, and then to Charlie and Anneliese, raising his eyebrows as if to say
Clearly
there's been a mistake here
. Whiskey gave the universal gesture for
let's swap partners
. Karen looked at the floor. Charlie nodded his assent. What else could he do?

“You're only a bit shorter,” Whiskey said as he came over. Charlie hated it when Whiskey made reference to their height difference. He found it a particularly annoying quirk that they were identical in every way, except for Whiskey being slightly taller. Charlie told himself he must still be growing, that eventually he would catch up with Whiskey.

“James Bond won't notice,” Whiskey said, taking Anneliese's hand. “He hasn't got X-ray vision.”

But apparently James Bond did have X-ray vision. Because when the music began, he was suddenly beside them. Without a word, he took Anneliese's hand out of Whiskey's and replaced it in Charlie's. Then he took Karen's hand in his own.

“May I have this dance?” he asked her, bowing graciously.

“You may sit and reflect on your ill manners,” he said to Whiskey, gesturing toward the bench that ran along the side of the gym.

Whiskey's face colored. Charlie looked away from him and away from Anneliese too. He concentrated on his feet and hoped his palms weren't too sweaty. He could not think of a word to say.

At home that night, Whiskey said he'd rather be doing algebra than ballroom dancing, that Randall was the biggest turkey he'd ever met and must have paid a minx like Carmel to marry him. Neither he nor Charlie mentioned the failed partner swap.

x x x

In week two, they waltzed.
One
two three,
one
two three, rise and fall, rise and fall. Charlie spent most of the lesson counting under his breath. He felt awkward about the strange triangle he and Anneliese were part of, which made it difficult to concentrate on the steps they were learning. Charlie didn't know if Anneliese was counting the beats in her own head, but she made no attempt at conversation either. He found himself wishing Whiskey's scheme had been successful, thought how much more comfortable he would have felt dancing with Karen.

In week three, they learned the cha-cha. Their first Latin dance. According to Mr. Randall, it was all in the hips.

One, two, cha cha cha

One, two, cha cha cha

Charlie noticed that Anneliese seemed to pick up the steps more quickly than he did, that when it came to dancing, she seemed to be something of a natural. Though Charlie did not consider himself anything more than average when it came to sport, at least when he was playing soccer or cricket, his arms and legs seemed to go mostly where he needed them to be, without him having to think about it too much. Ballroom dancing was a different proposition entirely. Suddenly none of his limbs seemed willing to do what he asked of them, and certainly not all at the same time. Often Charlie found himself stepping left when he had meant to step right, back when he wanted to go forward, turning in the wrong direction, moving too late or too early. And on the rare occasions when he managed to get control over his feet, inevitably his arms were all wrong—his elbows too slack or too rigid, his grip on Anneliese too tight or too loose.

“Are you wrestling a bear?” Mr. Randall asked him once, adjusting Charlie's arms.

“She's not your prisoner!” he said on another occasion, loosening Charlie's grip on Anneliese's shoulder.

The week of the samba, Anneliese came home from school with Whiskey for the first time. She was sitting on the couch watching
Full House
with Whiskey when Charlie got home from Marco's.

“You know Anneliese,” Whiskey said dryly, without looking up from the television.

“Hey, Anneliese,” Charlie said uncertainly.

“Hey, Charlie.” She smiled at him for the first time. She was still in her school uniform, her hair in a ponytail, and Charlie thought she looked about as pretty as a girl could get.
Lucky
Whiskey
, he thought to himself as he dragged his bag down the hallway to start on his homework.

x x x

The fourth dance they learned was the fox-trot.

“Who knows the story of
Fantastic
Mr. Fox
?” Randall asked them before he showed them the steps.

Charlie raised his hand. When he was younger, it had been one of his favorite books.

“What about
Chicken
Little
?” Randall asked. More hands went up.

“What's the fox always trying to do in these stories?”