Katie Williams: Absent

“. . . for coming in today, Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler,” Bosworth is saying.

At the sound of their name, Kelsey thinks of me, Paige. Without a thought, I step into her, and thankfully, she doesn’t resist.

My mother is buttoning up a dark jacket that I’ve never seen before; she must have bought it new for spring. My father reluctantly takes Bosworth’s offered hand, giving it a tepid shake. I scan them for other differences, new wrinkles, dark circles, white hairs, but it’s like trying to think about your parents by their given names instead of Mom and Dad. I can’t see anything except that they’re overwhelmingly my parents right there in front of me. They’re my parents walking past me out the office door. They’re my parents who might leave this school, never to come back.

“Wait!” I shout.

Everyone looks at me. My mother has a polite expression on her face, as if she doesn’t even know me. Which she doesn’t, I remind myself. And I decide that I’d exchange all of Kelsey’s beauty in a second to look like my mother’s daughter right now.

“Wait,” I repeat. I take a tripping step toward my mom.

She raises her eyebrows, forehead wrinkling.

I have no idea what to say. I look down at Kelsey’s hands, still holding the half-folded flyer. I scan its heading and thrust it forward. “You should come to the spaghetti dinner next week.”

“Oh,” my mother says faintly.

“It’s to raise money for the jazz band.”

“Kelsey,” Bosworth warns. “These are—”

“It’s a really good cause,” I talk over him. “Music and the arts and education, and lots of people come to it, parents come to it,” I finish lamely.

“I think that’s enough for now,” Bosworth says.

But my mother steps past him and takes the flyer from me. “Maybe we will come. I like music.” She smiles briefly. “Thank you for telling us about this, . . . ?” She waits for my name.

“Kelsey,” I say. I hold the paper for as long as I can without keeping it from her, and then I let it slide through my fingers. She takes it, running her hand over it to smooth the creases away.

I follow my parents out of the office, pretending to bend over the drinking fountain so that I can keep watching them. They grow smaller and smaller down the hall.

When I can’t see them anymore, I walk to the social studies hall and stand at the window set into the door of Mr. Pon’s classroom as one and another and another of the kids notice me, all of them smirking at the sight of my face peering in. Finally, one of them takes pity on me and nudges Wes Nolan. When Wes looks up from his textbook, I’m praying that his expression won’t be angry. And it isn’t. He raises his hand and calls the teacher’s name.

When we find an empty classroom, shutting the door behind us, I step forward and, before he can say anything, I say, “You can kiss me.”

“Kelsey.”

“What?”

“I think we should talk about—”

“I don’t care. I don’t care if you think of her.”

“Her?” he says, then blanches. “Oh, no. No. I wouldn’t pretend that you’re, I wouldn’t imagine that you’re . . .” Paige, his mind whispers, even if he won’t say it.

But that was not what I meant. Actually, I meant the opposite. I meant that I don’t care if he thinks of Kelsey when he’s kissing me.

“You can hold me,” I say. “Maybe right now you can just hold me.”

He nods. “Okay. That’d be okay.”

His coat smells like cigarettes, his chin rests on the top of my head in Kelsey’s damp hair. His hands don’t rub my back consolingly, but just hold me, like the earth holds me when I set my feet on it. He doesn’t think my name again. He doesn’t think Paige. But I meant it. I don’t care.

WHAT WOULD I HAVE WORN TO PROM?

I’d been to only two school dances freshman year before Usha and I had decided that they were stupid, so I have only two dresses in my closet at home: red and black. The black one is short; the red one is red. Getting ready for those other dances, I’d stand naked in my bedroom, hair wet on my back, and lay both dresses on the bed, trying to imagine how my night would be different if I wore one or the other. Red dress or black? Hair piled on my head or tousled? Dewy cheek and lip gloss or shadowed bedroom eyes? It didn’t matter. I was never the girl in my head.

Tonight, I wonder where those two dresses are now. Are they still hanging in my closet like promises never meant to be kept? Or have they been folded up and closed in a box with my name on it? Or maybe they’ve been donated to charity and are being worn right now by two other girls at two other proms, with entirely different boys and entirely different songs, their dance moves making entirely different patterns of wrinkles in the fabric.

Kelsey arrives early, just after the chaperones, and leans against the wall opposite from the drop cloth. She wears a knee-length shift with straps so thin they look like they’re made to be snapped. The fabric has been woven through with keen silver threads so that the dress winks dangerously, like a thousand needles, as she turns. She surveys the empty hallway once more, and now certain that Wes isn’t there, she steps back against the wall to wait. Stray strands of her hair, brushed into a frantic shine, begin to climb above her head, tiny static snakes against the brick. I remember a page I’d read in one of the left-open library books, how in actual mythology, Medusa didn’t turn you into stone because she was so ugly, but because she was so beautiful, and because you were fool enough to meet her eye.

I draw closer, peering at Kelsey’s face. We both turn at a spike of laughter from people passing the mouth of the hallway, faces stuck in smiles at seeing Kelsey Pope alone at the dance. Kelsey presses a hand to her cheek self-consciously.

“You look beautiful,” I say, not sure whether I’m saying it to apologize or simply because it’s true. As if in answer, Kelsey’s mind whispers, Paige. There’s no more resistance than breaking the skin of a pool as I step into her waiting form, and now I am beautiful, too.

I post myself at the mouth of the hall, watching the dancegoers clump in twos, fours, groups. They all spare looks for me, most of them turning away, expressions laced with laughter.

Then, Lucas Hayes lopes down the hall, the little dark-mouthed burner girl tucked under his arm. I goggle at them. Lucas wouldn’t have taken Brooke to prom—not me either. What does it mean that he’s brought her? A gang of paired ponies and testos come after Lucas, the ponies dropping behind their dates, not sure whether to stare at Lucas Hayes and his low-rent date or at Kelsey Pope and her no-date.

But then there he is, my date, Wes Nolan. He shoulders past them, already muttering apologies. He halts, excuses fading out. “You look . . . shit.” He shakes his head. “You’ll hate it if I say ‘beautiful.’ ”

“You can say it.”

“All right.”

Wes grins. We grin at each other like goons.

“Well, say it if you’re going to say it, then.”

“You look beautiful,” he says, no grin.

A chord rises in me that is both the swell of the music and the pain of the string being plucked.

“Not me.”

“Who else but you?”

When he grabs my hand, I let him take it.

I have never danced like this. But it’s how I would’ve liked to dance. Wes and I leap; we twist and spin. It’s weird. It’s fun. A circle forms around us. With my eye makeup blurring and my hair whipping and Wes laughing in my ear, I can’t tell if they’re admirers or jeerers. Then I think, Does it matter? During the slow songs, I let Wes wrap his arms around me tight, like I’m impossible to break, like I’m invincible. Even the chaperones don’t dare approach us.