Jess Walter - Land Of The Blind

Eli went home and I called Susan and canceled our afternoon of Wagoneer tag. Then I got out the phone book and called Dana Brett at home.

"Clark," she said breathlessly. I had never called her before.

"Dana, are you going to the prom with anyone?"

There was a brief pause. "No," she said.

I drove over to talk to her. She lived in a part of town that had been built on old apple orchards – a nice neighborhood of older houses and newer California splits. I was surprised to find her parents on the front porch when I arrived, smiling. All I knew about them was that they were both community college professors and, according to Dana, somewhat overprotective. Her mother had an Instamatic camera and she demanded to take pictures of Dana and me, leaning us against opposite sides of their porch railing. It was weird but okay with me. They told me to say cheese. I said cheese. Her father shook my hand firmly, clapped my shoulder, and asked where I was planning to go to college.

"Well, I was accepted at the University of Washington," I said. "And then I want to go to law school somewhere."

"Outstanding," he said.

"Thank you," I said.

"Dana was accepted to Stanford," her mother said.

"That's what I heard," I said. "That's really something."

"Mom," Dana said. She rolled her eyes. "Please." Her dad burst out laughing for no reason. It startled me. I had never met such nice parents.

Dana's chestnut hair was pulled into a ponytail and she was wearing jeans and a tight T-shirt. I could see those breasts again, round and straining against her shirt. I wondered why she didn't dress like that more often at school. Dana's mom brought us some lemonade and we walked around to her backyard. Her parents watched us from the kitchen window, their arms around each other's waists.

"Before I start, you can say no if you want to," I began.

Dana laughed. "You don't have to worry about that."

So I launched into the story of Eli and me, our humiliation at the hands of Pete Decker and Matt Woodbridge, how Eli had saved me at the bus stop in elementary school, and saved me again the day my eye was shot out, about the moment in battle ball when Eli and I stood side by side and the day a few weeks later when he asked for my help, about my four-month project to rehabilitate him, to clean and clothe and cloak him in high school acceptability. I had told no one about Eli and me, and it felt good getting it off my chest, even if the effect on Dana was a bit confusing.

She listened for a while, smiling, then looked back at her house, then slumped against their swing set. She stared at the ground and nodded as I spoke. I told her about giving Eli my clothes and teaching him to walk and comb his hair, getting rid of his old glasses and practicing what to say to people. I told her how we met sometimes on Sundays and how hard Eli was working.

"That's nice of you," was the only thing she said, and it was so quiet I wasn't sure I'd heard her right. The whole time I talked, she never looked up at me. In retrospect, of course, I see my obtuseness as a kind of cruelty, but at the time I couldn't see past my concern for Eli, and I just kept talking. And talking.

I explained how impatient Eli had become, and how desperate he was to show people that he was more than they thought he was. But time was running out, and he needed something drastic. He needed a girl to notice what everyone else had failed to notice up to that point, someone to break the ice so that the other girls would see it was okay to date him. He needed a pretty girl, I said – Dana Brett put her hand over her mouth – a pretty girl whom the other guys wanted to date. He could ask a girl out on his own, of course, but he couldn't stand the weight of rejection. If the first girl said no to him, then no other girl would be able to say yes, even if she wanted to. He would be a lost cause, a goner.

"Why me?" she asked.

I looked back and saw her parents wave from the kitchen window. I waved back.

"Well," I said, "you're so much smarter than the other girls and, well, you're pretty and, I don't know, I guess I thought you'd understand."

"I do," she said.

"You probably don't remember this," I said. "But when we were kids, and Eli first got transferred into our class, you weren't mean to him."

"I remember," she said.

"So I thought you'd sympathize. And since you and I are friends…"

Finally she looked up at my eyes. "We are," she said, not as a question.

"You can double-date with Susan and me." I hoped she saw that by offering to double-date I was taking as much of a social chance as she was, driving to and from the dance with Eli. But of course that wasn't what she was thinking.

"Okay," Dana said, and she looked at me with down-turned eyes, and she seemed again like the smart, shy little girl from grade school. "Have him ask me. I'll say yes. But don't tell him you talked to me. It'll be better if it doesn't look like a setup."

"Thanks, Dana."

We walked back to the house and her parents came out to greet us, holding hands, her mother holding out a plate of cookies. I took four.

Dana walked right past them into the house. Her mother, seeing something was wrong, turned and watched her go inside. I took another cookie.

Her father was as clueless as I was. He stood there, still beaming at me. "What kind of law?" he asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"You said you're going to study law. I was wondering if you knew what kind?"

"Well," I said between bites of chocolate chip pecan cookies, "I don't know. Maybe contract law at first. But later I want to go into politics."

"Outstanding," said Dana Brett's father.

The Davenport Hotel was decked out and lit up for our prom, its once-grand second-floor ballroom littered with folding chairs and covered with green and blue streamers, shimmering paper fish, giant clamshells, and a trident that looked for all the world like a big dinner fork. At the last minute, however, the prom committee (Clark Mason, chairman) had rejected "A Night in Atlantis" as a theme, even though the decorations had already been purchased; and so a sign declaring the scene as BOOGIE WONDERLAND hung behind a foam-rubber faux grotto.

Boys stood around in little circles in their ruffled tuxedo shirts and flopping bow ties, the girls in candy-flavored lip gloss and taffeta dresses. Courage for this event was gathered outside in cars, from water bongs and ceramic pipes, from flasks and sixers. Unmufflered Chevelles and Novas pulled up in front of the grand hotel, windows shaking. Car doors opened and girls with piled hair and tight dresses emerged onto the sidewalk, shuffling feet while their dates went to park the wheels. Two girls who thought it would be "hilarious" to come to the prom in jeans and without dates sat silently in the lobby in big overstuffed chairs, the very portrait of second thoughts, while two guys in tuxedo T-shirts stood next to each other, hoping that their own bad idea could be divided in half. The rest of us strode into the hall in our shiny shoes and store-bought haircuts, parroting antiquated adult behavior, rules handed down from some point deep in the past, utterly pointless rules like the required pinning of small flowers on shuddering lapels ("That's okay," Eli said when Dana told him she'd bought him a boutonniere. "I rented my own testosterone, boys rented rooms and upgraded their wallet rubber supply. Girls, too, had their delusions, their mimicking of wedding rites, their manicures and stylings, their practicing picture smiles in front of bathroom mirrors. The night itself was a letdown for most, but there were minor intrigues – surprise breakups, throw-ups, and feel-ups. But without a doubt, no one drew more attention that night than Eli Boyle and the lovely Dana Brett.