Anna Jarzab - Tandem

My eyes rested on the framed photographs that sat upon the mantle. Most of them were school photos that charted my evolution from a thick-haired, gawky child to a relatively pretty teenager, all things considered. There were also a few of me and Granddad together in various places, my favorite being one of us standing on a pier at Lake Okobogee, hoisting a ten-pound largemouth bass between us. I smiled at the memory. If it was possible for my parents’ deaths to have a silver lining, it was that I’d gotten a chance to know my grandfather. Even though he could be gruff, I knew that he loved me, and that I was lucky to have found a home with him when mine had been ripped from me.

There was only one picture of my parents. It was from our last trip to Disney World; we were standing in front of Cinderella’s castle, grinning into the sun. It’d been taken only a few months before the accident, and we looked so happy in it, oblivious to the disaster looming on the horizon of our lives. The sadness that always accompanied thoughts of my parents clanged like a bell in my heart, but my smile didn’t fade. The clearest memories of my childhood were from that vacation. I’d been deep in my fairy-tale phase, demanding that everyone call me Princess Juliana, a name that bewildered Mom and Dad. I’d dragged them to the castle more than a dozen times and pranced around inside it, ordering them around like servants. I still had the princess hat they’d bought me, a cardboard cone covered in synthetic pink fabric with Juliana stitched on the brim and a filmy purple ribbon trailing from the top. When Mom asked me why I was called Juliana, I told her I’d heard the name in a dream.

Other than my parents, I’d never told anyone about the Juliana dreams, but I’d had them ever since I could remember. When I was young, they came often, three or four times a week, but as I grew up they were fewer and farther between, though more vivid. Like most dreams, however, they faded almost immediately after I woke up.

In the dreams, I was never myself, but a girl named Juliana who looked exactly like me. They had a linear, realistic quality to them, as if I was literally living Juliana’s life. But things were different in her world than they were in mine. I couldn’t remember all the differences—there were so many of them, and dreams were hard to get a hold on—but this one thing I recalled with absolute precision: in Juliana’s world, the aurora borealis danced in the sky, not just at the North and South Poles, but everywhere. That was always my favorite part.

My latest Juliana dream had happened two weeks earlier, after months of not having them at all. I’d fallen into bed at two a.m., completely exhausted after a long and painful struggle with my physics homework. I only remembered tiny pieces of it—a painting of a beautiful country house, a small origami star that seemed significant, and, as always, the green ribbons of the aurora borealis in the night sky. The overwhelming sense of foreboding I’d felt when I woke up the next morning had stuck with me through most of the day.

The doorbell rang. I took a deep breath and hurried to answer it. My heart felt buoyant, but over-inflated, like it was straining against my rib cage.

I yanked the door open, revealing Grant in all his formal wear glory. I could hear my blood pounding in my ears, and my stomach tumbled when he smiled at me. He was clean-shaven, his hair ever-so-slightly slicked back with some sort of product, and he carried the scent of pine needles with him through the door. The sight of him in a tux sent a sizzle up my spine. Part of me couldn’t wait to be alone with him, and regretted calling in Gina and Jeff as reinforcements, but there was another part of me that felt anxious. I had no idea what to do, or what to expect of the evening. Or, come to think of it, what would be expected of me .

“Sorry, I couldn’t get out of the house. My mom kept trying to straighten my tie.” Grant stepped back to get a good look at me, his eyes traveling the length of my body unabashedly from foot to forehead, until he met my gaze with his own. “Wow. You look amazing.”

A fierce blush crept into my cheeks. “Thanks.” I couldn’t remember the last time someone had said something like that to me, and I knew it had never been in a tone like that . I still couldn’t believe this was happening. Why hadn’t Grant asked one of the many girls he’d dated to go to prom with him instead of me, someone he barely knew? I decided not to let that bother me. What was the point? He didn’t seem disappointed with his choice, and neither was I.

He shook a plastic box with a white corsage inside. “Did you want a corsage? I didn’t know, so I brought one, but it’s probably dumb. You don’t have to wear it.” He curled his arm around it, as if to shield it from my eyes, and I realized that he was nervous, too, possibly just as much as I was.

“No, of course I’ll wear it,” I told him, and his shoulders relaxed. He slipped the corsage around my wrist, then stepped back, the corners of his mouth quirking. As I admired the flowers—an arrangement of snow-colored roses, with some leaves and baby’s breath arranged along the edges—he reached over and tucked a dark brown curl behind my ear. My hair was naturally straight, and I usually wore it pulled up in a ponytail. Gina had declared that style unacceptable for prom, and she’d spent the better part of the afternoon engaging in an all-out assault on my head with a curling iron and hair spray. It’d felt like overkill to me, but the expression on Grant’s face as he looked at me now told me that Gina’s instincts had been right on the money.

“I like your hair down like that,” he said in a low voice.

My skin buzzed where his hand had brushed it. A wave of intense shyness broke over me, and I was anxious to get moving. “Are we ready to go?” Gina and Jeff emerged from the parlor, and suddenly the foyer felt very crowded. All three of them looked at me expectantly. “Oh, right, introductions. Grant, this is Jeff, and that’s Gina.” Grant had gone to school with Gina as long as he had with me, but it was possible they’d never spoken before, high school heirarchies being what they were.

“Hey, guys,” Grant said, pulling a relaxed, affable tone out of his arsenal of charms and shaking Jeff’s hand like they were old buddies. He smiled at Gina. “I heard about your race this week. That’s awesome.” Gina was a fantastic runner, and she’d won all her events at Thursday’s track meet. She shot me a look, surprised that Grant knew this, but nothing about Grant managed to surprise me these days. He’d clearly done his homework. I was proud of him; I knew how hard it was to subdue Gina’s cynical side. “Thanks for waiting around for me.”

“No problem,” Gina said. I could tell she was won over.

“So,” Grant said. “Should we go?”

“You have to meet my grandfather first,” I informed him apologetically.

“Of course,” Grant said. “I’d love to.”

“Well, don’t get too excited. He’s not very friendly.”

Grant laughed. “Just introduce us.”

I shook my head in disbelief. Grant was starting to seem too good to be true. I called upstairs to Granddad, who descended minutes later, looking less than thrilled to have been disturbed. But he had demanded to meet my date, so he couldn’t complain.

“It’s great to meet you, Dr. Quentin,” Grant said, offering his hand to Granddad, who shook it cordially. “Thanks for letting me take your lovely granddaughter to the prom.” Grant shot me a self-satisfied smile, and I rolled my eyes. He was trying so hard to make a good impression, and the more his effort showed, the more I liked him. “Is there a time you’d like me to have her back by?”