Shiloh waved her hand out at the dance floor. “Everyone else here is dancing. You could bewiththem. Nothing is stopping you.”
“That’s why you don’t want to dance, right?” He’d turned on her. His brown eyes were narrow. “Because everyone else is? It mustkillyou to have to drink water and breathe air, just like the rest of us.”
Shiloh clenched her jaw. “I feel like you’re being really unfair right now.”
“Yeah, maybe.” Cary shook his head. “This is our senior prom.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It’s aritual—”
“To manufacture sentiment,” she said.
“No, Shiloh. To allow us an outlet foractualsentiment. We’re all here to say goodbye.”
“Hence the Boyz II Men.”
“Yeah,hence.” He shook his head. Then he shook his head again.His tongue was in his cheek—that seemed like a bad sign. (The phrase “tongue in cheek” should really mean “pissed off and thinking something hurtful.”)
Cary shook his head some more. “We could have had a good time. Tonight. It could have been a memory.”
All of a sudden, Shiloh could see it—the night they could have had, if she didn’t care so much about making a fool of herself...
If she could have stepped over some internal threshold...
Out on the dance floor with Cary and Mikey. Holding on to Cary’s shoulder for balance. Maybe taking off her boots. Dancing like a broken robot. Being silly to mask the fact that she couldn’t be sexy or smooth. Slow-dancing with Cary—because that’s what friends do at dances, right? They put their arms around each other. They stare into each other’s eyes.
None of that was going to happen now. This was the last dance. End of the road.
Cary was angry. He was the kind of angry that sometimes led to him just walking away from her. Leaving. But he wouldn’t leave herandMikey stranded there, so he was stuck.
Here came Mikey now, running toward them. He caught himself on the edge of their table. “Shiloh, get up, come on!”
“Are you ready to go?”
“No, it’s the last dance, and you have to get out there, or you won’t have broken the spell. This whole night will have been for naught.”
“What spell?”
“Cary and I swore we wouldn’t let you be one of those horrible bores who think they’re too fucking cool for high school. One of those girls who ends up with a beehive, in a punk band.”
“I love those bands. You love those bands.”
“Just get up, come on.”
Shiloh turned to Cary. He still looked pissed. She stood up. She stumbled toward Mikey. She was three inches taller than him, even without the heels.
Mikey took her by the hand. They’d never held hands before. It was mostly painless.
Dancing wasn’t.
Mikey put his arm around her. He smiled.
Shiloh couldn’t move her legs. She really, honestly didn’t know what to do with them. And she didn’t like standing this close to Mikey.
Her cheeks felt hot.
There were tears in her eyes.
