Who was this exotic, sexy, near-woman looking back at her? She looked at herself. Imagined him looking at her the way he had outside her window that night. And felt herself tingle with pure feminine power. She wanted to go out and find him right now, just like this. Walk right up to him in the middle of the dance, strike this pose for ten seconds, and then walk away, slowly. He would follow her like a dog on a leash, she knew it. Well, that wasn’t a practical fantasy to carry out, but she would find her chance. She returned to the stall.
She had considered, and rejected with her usual distaste, wearing pantyhose. Had thought about surreptitiously borrowing one of her mother’s garter belts, along with some nylons, but it had seemed too unfamiliar and complex. Had finally settled for shaving her legs as closely as she dared.
Now she carefully stepped into her velvet dress, struggling somewhat to reach behind her to zip and clasp it. She took out her sandals, brushed a tiny smudge from the side of one of them, and slipped them on. Then she took out her make-up bag and hairbrush, just in case, before folding up her other clothes and placing them in the garment-bag. She placed her sneakers on top of the pile, sliding her folded-up glasses into one of them for protection. Then she stepped out of the stall and went to the mirror again.
Now she couldn’t decide if she looked like a woman or a little girl playing dress up. The velvet dress had a lovely dark luster, and she had been right in her choice of lipstick to go with it, but it was, she thought, too shapeless. Hers was a petite figure and where the lingerie had accented her small curves, the dress seemed to hide them completely.
She desperately wished she had tried it on again before coming; maybe she could have found a belt or something to give it, and her, more shape. Too late now, she thought, somewhat discouraged. Still, there was somebody new there, someone with a graceful neck and beautiful eyes. And a few freckles on her nose. Oh well. Her make-up had survived perfectly and her hair just needed a little touching up with the brush. She was as ready as she was going to be.
She restored the make-up and hairbrush to the garment-bag, zipped it up, and carried it out of the bathroom, turning off the light-switch as she went. After squashing the bag into her locker, she made her way back up to the entranceway and mingled with the others heading into the dance.
As she entered, one of her teachers startled her by saying her name and telling her how very nice she looked; she hadn’t been aware that this or any other teacher knew her as anything but a name on an attendance record. A moment later a girl she had been friends with in grade school complimented her on her dress. Even one or two of the boys in her class seemed to be glancing at her with interest. She wasn’t at all used to being visible like this–except to him–and she wasn’t sure she liked it.
Well, if things got tough there was always the coatroom.
She settled for vanishing into the shadows that surrounded the brightly lit floor where the dancers were, losing herself among the shy, the unattractive and the socially inept–the ghosts who haunt every such event. She looked around, wondering if he was here already. Or even if he were, whether she’d be able to spot him without her glasses on. She began to drift among her fellow ghosts, slowly making a circuit of the dance floor, squinting to see among the girls in their bright plumage and the boys in their darker hues.
There he was! He was on the dance floor, but he was standing with a small group of people in the corner, all moving intermittently to the music, but mostly just talking and laughing among themselves. As she got closer she was able to recognize some of them as people she’d seen performing in some of the school plays. One of them, a tall, skinny boy with horn-rimmed glasses and a shock of black hair that seemed to stand straight up, was apparently telling a joke or an anecdote, contorting his face into masks of surprise and anger and gesticulating wildly as the rest of them listened.
She watched, wanting to see him in this situation, to see who he became with other people. He was wearing a thin corduroy jacket the color of mahogany and a white shirt with a tie that brought out the color of his eyes. He stood with his hands in his pockets, watching the performance unfold with an expectant smile, waiting for the punchline.
Yet it seemed to her that he stood somewhat apart from the others. There was again, or still, that faint aura of sadness around him, a resigned quality, as if he felt himself to be among this group under false pretenses and was expecting to be discovered and cast out at any moment. She couldn’t understand it.
The skinny boy’s story reached its climax, which apparently had turned out to be an anti-climax, as everyone in the group began to groan and roll their eyes and wave their hands in front of their faces as if warding off a bad smell. The music changed just then and the group began to disperse as boys grabbed girls’ hands, and vice versa, and headed into the cluster of gyrating dancers at the center of the dance-floor.
He had remained at the periphery though, along with a couple of the girls, both of whom seemed to be urging him to dance with them. He was holding up his hands, laughingly demurring, and at the same time he seemed to be glancing over their heads, as if searching the room without wanting to appear to be doing so. The girls were becoming more insistent, grabbing on to his arms, laughing and pretending to drag him into the dancing throng by sheer force.
Jane stepped out of the shadows.
She moved directly into his line of sight. She stopped and pretended to be looking at someone on the other side of the room. She pretended to yawn and stretch, briefly raising her arms and placing her hands behind her head. Then she lowered them to her sides. And walked slowly away.
She made her way out of the hall and headed back down the corridor where her locker was. She took her time, giving him a chance to disentangle himself from his situation and come looking for her.
As she knew he would.
To kill time, she slipped briefly back into her role as the Thief of Ridgeton, checking for lockers that weren’t quite closed and testing the locks on the classroom doors.
Near the end of the hall she discovered a door that had been locked, but not closed tightly enough for the mechanism to latch. The sign on the door said “Band Room”. She eased it open, stuck her head in and looked around, then slipped all the way in.
There was a door-wedge near her feet, and she nudged it with her foot until it was where it would prevent the door from closing all the way. Then she raised her hand to the wall and fumbled until she found a panel of light switches. There were a lot of them, so she switched on the two nearest to her. Instantly a pair of floodlights came on, illuminating a small stage to her right, not much bigger than her living room and raised about three feet off the floor.