When Women Were Dragons(88)
I smoothed the bodice of my dress with my hands and let my fingers skim the pink chiffon. My mother’s dress. It fit me perfectly. My body became what her body once was. Before the first cancer. Or the second. Before the cancer ate it. Before it became ash and air. Before it blew away.
There were no dragons in the gym. Or anywhere inside the school. Still, we all knew they were on the roof. Standing guard. We all knew they swooped and swirled through the skies overhead. Every once in a while, one would appear at one of the windows—a bright flash of color, of tooth and scale and muscle and eye—and vanish just as quickly.
“You need punch,” Randall said suddenly. “My mother said I’m supposed to bring you punch.”
I wasn’t thirsty, but Randall was already marching away. Such a strange boy, I found myself thinking, wondering why I had ever said yes to the whole business. By the time Randall made it to the refreshments table—manned by Mr. Reynolds and two science teachers—he blended in so well with the other boys, all getting punch for their dates, that I couldn’t have picked him out if I tried. I turned my attention to the dancers.
Sister Leonie and two other nuns prowled the dance floor, inserting a measuring stick between the couples, making sure the dances remained chaste.
“Leave room for the Lord,” Sister Leonie said, in both English and French, just to show she really meant it.
Randall returned with two glasses of punch, spilling a little bit on his shoe. I sipped it gingerly.
Girls began to clump together in greater numbers, leaving their dates alone on the sides of the dance floor, holding coats or wraps or purses and not entirely knowing what to do with them. The boys shifted their weight from one foot to the other, some heading to the chairs along the back wall to sit. The girl clumps drifted toward me, each one a riot of ruby reds and emerald greens and dark golds—the girls were all glitter and color and light. They flashed their teeth. They batted their eyes. They danced in groups of three, then seven, then thirteen, a tangle of arms and skirts and loosening hair. The bangles on their wrists glinted. The rhinestones around their necks winked prettily against their shining skin. The boys slumped on the sidelines and held their hands at their eyebrows, shading their gaze from the glare. One by one, the boys began to scowl. I wasn’t sure why. Just look at them, I wanted to explain. If you could choose to surround yourself with that much beauty, wouldn’t you do so in a heartbeat? I had never thought about it before. Yes, I thought. I know I would. I pressed my hand to my heart. My skin was hot. My whole body pulsed.
The band consisted of the art teacher and the art teacher’s brother and three guys on horns who graduated the year before and an older lady who played the drums. They were not very good. They had their eyes on the growing clumps of girls. They missed notes and dropped beats and sometimes forgot the words. No one seemed to notice.
“I love your dress, Alexandra,” one girl called out to me as she waltzed in the arms of her friend. It looked so much more fun than dancing with someone like Randall—the swish of skirts and the click of heels. I took a sharp inhale and brought my hand to my cheek.
“Thanks!” I called back. “My friends call me Alex,” I added, which wasn’t exactly true—I didn’t have any friends—but oh! I wished it was true. I had never felt lonely at school before. But now . . .
One girl smiled at me—like a sudden burst of light. I thought my knees might give way. “Alex is a beautiful name,” she said, blowing me a kiss. I wish I knew her name. I wish I remembered. I fingered the knots on the lace my mother had made, feeling tied to the ground, and tied to this life, in a way I had never noticed before.
“Your shoes are perfect,” a girl from another clump enthused.
“Your hair is so pretty with that rose clip!” An entire girl clump began twisting their own locks mindlessly, like small children.
“I’m so glad you came!” Another clump, from across the room. More girls left their dates. They moved together, inexorably bound, like the amassing of innumerable particles in the formation of a star. What makes such things happen? Safety in numbers, maybe. Or maybe this is how small things become something impossibly large. Or maybe they just all preferred the company of girls. And really. Why wouldn’t they?
The air shifted, slightly. I felt it in my hair first—a dry, sharp sensation, like static electricity. I was afraid to touch anything in case I might experience a shock.
The clumps drifted in, and complimented me and everyone else, and drifted away. They swirled, split apart, and pulled back together—a dance of attraction, accretion, ignition, and acceleration. The girls sashayed with their arms wound together, with their cheeks resting against one another, with their hair winding into complex love knots. They were beautiful, and dizzying. I was not part of it, of that sense of intimacy and closeness, of any of it. I never had been. My mother didn’t have friends, either. She had her sister, and no one else. I had my sister, and no one else. I had no idea how to even do it. I was always the girl who stood apart. A lone star in a sea of galaxies. I was always happy to be the girl who stood apart. Or, I had been. Now I wasn’t so sure.
A dragon paused at one of the west windows. Leaf green. Eyes as red as apples. She winked. Randall noticed me looking. He furrowed his brow and his mouth became grim. “They better not ruin prom,” he grumbled. “It’s our big night. It wouldn’t be fair.”