When Women Were Dragons(89)
I looked at him. “How would they ruin prom?” I asked. “They’re just dragons.”
He choked. Reddened again. But he steeled himself and decided to muscle through. “You know. By being . . . those things.” He drained his glass. “And all their related nonsense. In public, and everything. Where anyone can see. It shouldn’t be allowed. My father said they wouldn’t have let any of this stand during the war.”
I laughed out loud. “What are you talking about? Of course they would have,” I said. “They wouldn’t have had any choice.”
Randall reddened, and not from embarrassment this time. He did not like it when I laughed at him, that much was obvious. He hardened his mouth. “Well, you know. There’s, well, rules during a war. And honor. And, you know. Armies that follow orders. With guns.” He glared at the window.
“Randall Hague, that is the most foolish thing I’ve ever heard.” I didn’t know why he was making me so mad. But something about the way he was talking to me made rage grow in my chest, hot and bright and enormous. I thought I would never be able to contain it. “Bullets don’t have any effect on dragons. It’s not a matter of letting anything stand. It’s a matter of accepting that the world isn’t the same as you thought it was before. We thought there weren’t any dragons. And then there were. We thought the dragons were gone. And now here they are. Any choice we think we have in the matter is an illusion.”
Randall glared at me. “That’s a very un-American sentiment.”
I snorted. “Oh, really.” I handed him my glass and folded my arms across my chest. I tried to set my face, but I believe my expression was harder and sharper than I intended. Randall blanched and backed up slightly. “Explain how.” I held up one finger before he could start. “But please use a clear thesis and logical arguments backed up by examples. I am very much looking forward to hearing your conclusions, and I’m sure you will appreciate my unvarnished feedback in response.” He flinched. It occurred to me briefly that this may be the reason why I didn’t have very many friends. I decided not to care.
“Uh . . .” Randall said.
“No need to rush.” I looked at my watch. “I’ll wait.”
I didn’t have to. Another group of ribbons and skirts and pretty arms swirled by and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Ladies only!” they crowed. “The boys can watch and learn.” And I was pulled into the tangle of arms and skirts and stockinged legs, absorbed by the gravity of girls.
Dragons settled at each window looking into the gymnasium. They pressed their paws against the glass. No one seemed to notice this. I couldn’t look away. The girls were too busy dancing, utterly taken in the moment. The boys were too busy scowling, utterly enraged by the moment. I was both present and separate, both observing and observed, both here and everywhere, both now and then. A dichotomy, and a paradox. I was in all moments, all at once. The music played and played, looped in and around itself, pulling in tight. The girls twisted and shimmied, then wound their way from one end of the dance floor to the other, threaded together through the touch of their hands. Two boys fought near the refreshments table, one boy bloodying the other’s nose, only to be knocked straight into the bowl of punch and then crashing into a sticky puddle on the floor. No one else looked up at the dragons. I couldn’t stop looking at the dragons. I thought of that day in the hospital, when my mother died, and how I wanted my aunt to come crashing through the window to save us—an explosion of rage and grief and vengeance. An explosion of hope and care and connection. All at the same time. She didn’t come then, and the dragons stayed in their places. Again, I found myself in all moments at once, past and present and worrying future, the threads of time and space looping through my experience, intersecting with one another, forming a knot at the center of myself, where each touched each—each place, each moment, each heartbeat, each discrete unit of time, each twist in the thread of my life. The music pulsed. Two hands took my hands and twirled me around, setting the world spinning. When my mother died, she was only a husk of what she used to be—paper and dust and air. (The woods decay, the woods decay and fall.) Another girl looped her arm around my waist, and I felt the heat of her hip pressing against my hip, and the earth shifted under my feet, making me dizzy. I saw a dragon when I was four years old and on that day I learned to be silent; I was given no context, no frame of reference, no way in which to understand my experience, and the adults in my life hoped I would forget, and by doing so, nearly forced me to forget. A girl ran her gloved hand along my sweaty collarbone and down my arm. I shivered. My aunt nearly destroyed her house and flew away from her life and my cousin became my sister, and an entire section of my family was erased forever. Or so I thought. A girl pressed the backs of her fingers on my cheek, and gazed at my face. I felt the skin on my neck begin to flush. There were galaxies in her eyes. There were dragons who explored the cosmos, and dragons who explored the sea, and dragons who settled deep in the jungle—they left and they did not look back. We thought they weren’t coming back. They weren’t supposed to come back. And yet. Here they were. The music enlarged itself. I could feel it in my bones. The dancers swirled. They were entrancing, these girls. And entranced. They moved like a single organism—or, rather, they moved with a single collective mind. A hive of girls. A swarm of women. A murmuration of dancers. They threw their heads back in ecstatic joy. Pleasure radiated from their bodies in waves—pleasure at the simple fact of being this very person, at this very moment, living this very life. Cheeks flushed. Lips reddened. Fingers lingered on fingers and hips curved against one another through the frothy rustle of skirts.