You Will Know Me(2)

“I used to watch her in all the parades, marching in those red-tassel booties, hurling her batons up to heaven,” she said, giggling like a girl. “I remember watching her and thinking: That is all I want.”

And she told Katie how she’d stolen a piece of pipe from her father’s tool bench, sprayed it silver, and jabbed a cork on one end.

“I’d twirl in the front yard for hours,” she said. “It looked like a pinwheel in the sun.”

She glanced at Katie, her eyes filling.

“Remember that kind of wanting? That kind that’s just for yourself? And you don’t even have to feel guilty about it? You wouldn’t know to.”

Katie nodded and nodded and nodded, because it felt true even if she couldn’t name the thing she’d wanted. But something. Looking around, she wondered, Is it this?

In front of them, a group of the littlest girls, still in their leotards—they never liked to take them off—started dancing in a circle together, chins lifted high and faces pink like ice cream.

“It’s free then,” Molly said, watching the girls, tilting her head and blinking fast. “It’s never free again.”

“What?” Katie said, because she’d lost the thread, if she’d ever had it. “What?”

But the music swallowed them, and then someone brought out a tray of shots, flaming.

Later, she found herself dancing with Eric (which hadn’t happened in years, since that night they’d snuck to the hotel bar after a TOPs meet, Devon and Drew asleep upstairs, that lounge singer inexplicably crooning “Smells Like Teen Spirit”).

Eric had always been a terrific dancer, and the championship and the lanterned loveliness of the old catering hall—they all enlivened him, his smile and his fingers moving so delicately, his arm grabbing her so firmly, and didn’t everyone in the hall look at them?

A thought came to her rum-soaked head: He’s never loved me more than this. Because of Devon. Because of Devon. Something else I owe Devon.

But they were changing partners, and Molly, who would later pass out in the wrong car, wiggled over, lassoed Eric, while Katie, who was tired anyway, ambled toward the ladies’ room looking for Devon or Drew.

When she returned, there was Coach T. spinning his wife, Tina, around, a splotch of maraschino on her immaculate white shirt.

And the starry new arrivals: Coach’s niece Hailey, yanking at the hand of that boyfriend of hers, Ryan Beck, both of them so tanned and love-blissed.

This would be the piece that mattered most later, months later when Ryan was gone. She would think of their arrival and wonder why she hadn’t seen it all coming. But who could have seen anything at all that night but their bright-spangled beauty?

Hailey, the favored junior tumbling coach, blond and magnificent, a towering five feet seven, was beloved by her eight-and nine-year-olds (Kiss those knees, sweetheart! she’d tell them as they did their back hip circles), all of whom stared at her now from the corner, gaping at her lanky prettiness as if it were an achievement to strive for—after nailing the front tuck, before the back layout.

And Ryan, whose arrival sent all the girls into satellites of whispered frenzy.

“The only one here more handsome than your husband,” said Becca Plonski, laughing.

And suddenly there was Molly Chu again.

Improbably, she was tossing a tiki pole into the air like it was a baton, like she was still the star twirler of Shelby West High.

My, Katie thought, it is like a pinwheel.

The music kept getting louder, the Forbidden Tiki playlist spinning, and Greg Siefert corralled Katie, pitcher of blue Hawaiians in one hand, reaching for hers with the other, and he was telling a story about Eric shouting at some man in the parking lot.

“It was great, it was great. That one who’d been talking trash about our Devon. And Eric just let him have it. Hell, I was glad to see it.”

…But Katie was drunk, and it didn’t register, the music loud in a way that reminded her of when loud music was an urgent necessity, a full-body sensation, and the next thing she knew she was back at the punch bowl and Greg was limboing with Hailey, freckled and game.

Then came the part that seemed like nothing at the time. Later, after Ryan was gone, its meaning would change, as if by magic, every time Katie thought about it:

Ryan, dark-haired and grinning, took Katie’s hand, spun her once, twice, three times, to a power ballad she remembered from age fourteen, an art-class infatuation, a fumbled encounter behind the shop room, then another girl and her heart breaking.

Before she knew it, though, Hailey was grabbing him back, a wink and a gleam in her eye like, Don’t you dare, he’s mine!



At some point, she lost Devon, but there was Eric talking to Gwen Weaver on the chilly loading dock, sharing a purloined cigarette and laughing like they’d been shouting for hours.

Everyone was smoking, it turned out. She’d even caught Ryan sneaking a puff in the hallway, the back door propped open, the cold air giving her goose bumps.

Ryan, who smelled like soap and had the nicked, brambled hands of a cook.

And she’d ended up in some long conversation with someone about something, and she never could remember anything about it after except the feeling of sticky, pineapple-streaked wall against her back.

Finally, she and Eric shared one last dance before everything broke, and pressing against his shirt she smelled candle wax and a dozen perfumes; he was teasing her about the coconut husk furred onto her chest from the dance with Greg Siefert, or Bobby, or Ryan, who’d since been charged with making something called a momtini, carrying a tray for all the ladies.