Purity

  “Let me know if you need any help,” Mona says. “I’ve been planning my wedding since I was, like, three. I have this idea with orchids….”

  I never thought I would be so grateful to hear the words “Ladies and gentlemen, our waltz lesson begins now!”

  While Mona goes back to her father, a tiny old woman makes her way to the front of the room. She has a cane, but doesn’t seem to really need it for balance, and wears a very tight black shirt that looks surprisingly good on her. She’s trailed by a young blond man who looks like he might be an underwear model. He sighs when he checks his watch. The room twitters into silence as the woman clasps her hands at her waist.

  “I am Madame Garba,” she says, coughing, decades of cigarettes and a German accent in her voice, “and this is Waltz 101. Welcome.”

  A few students politely applaud; I don’t catch on till the clapping is almost over and end up giving out a single, loud clap at the very end. Garba gives me a hard look.

  “Moving on. The proper waltz position.” Garba grabs the hand of the underwear model and slams it against her waist with a devilish sort of grin. She places her corresponding hand on his shoulder, then grasps his other hand in her leathery fingers. She tilts her head back slightly, and there’s a hint of old Hollywood in her—like she might have been a starlet back in the day.

  “Watch your arms. See how they stay lifted?” she snaps. The class nods obediently. “Then assume the position!” she says, dropping her partner’s hand. She walks over to an old CD player and starts a muffled-sounding song.

  My dad turns toward me. We both grimace. And we assume the position.

  At the sixth-grade formal, there was a kid named Michael who hadn’t figured out the proper use of deodorant and was covered in speckled, diseaselike facial hair. I felt bad for him, so I danced with him—after all, at eleven my hair looked like a cracked-out poodle’s, so who was I to judge? But when I say that we “danced,” what I really mean is this: I left my arms stiff around Michael’s neck, locking my elbows so he couldn’t wander any closer; he let his hands sit on my hips with all the tenderness of an assembly-line robot; and we rocked back and forth, out of time with the music. I remember counting down the moments till the song ended and I could dash back to the refreshment table and drink sherbet punch.

  But I would give just about anything to be dancing with Michael instead of my dad right now.

  Here, there’s no refreshment table or sherbet punch. Just the slow, painful clicking of the clock and the never-ending piano song. Dad and I stand as far apart as possible, and we lean backward like the other has something horribly contagious, perhaps the bubonic plague.

  “Ladies, step back here; gentlemen, forward. And one-two-three, one-two-three, see-how-I-step-two-three. Now, you do it.” Garba abandons her partner and begins to clap, the sound so sharp that I worry her tiny wrists are going to snap in half.

  No one moves.

  “Now you do it!” she repeats. Her tone implies an “or else,” and no one wants to see the punishments an ex-starlet can dish out. Everyone fumbles into the steps. Dad and I klutz around, each of us dancing to an entirely different beat. Dad stares over my shoulder while I watch the rest of the class in the mirrors. They look beautiful and happy, and I can picture them waltzing around in formal wear. I look like I don’t have knees. I grimace as I stomp on Dad’s foot, and we accidentally make eye contact for a fifth of a second.

  “Yes, yes!” Garba cries. “Now you are dancing!”

  I disagree. What I’m seeing in the mirror more closely resembles helping a drunk friend stand than it does dancing. I watch the other girls, trying to take notes on what they’re doing that I’m not. I recognize their faces from school and my church youth group days, but now they look less like my peers and more like models for the Princess Ball pamphlet. They so seamlessly slid into the part of devoted daughter. Do they really care about the ball and the vow? Are they even virgins to begin with?

  It doesn’t matter. Liars or not, they’re the girls the church, their fathers, the Princess Ball, and my father want to see, and I’ll never be them, no matter what dance I learn or what vow I take. I’ll always be the one without a mother, the one who questions God, the one who takes vows seriously. I look down at my father’s and my feet shuffling clumsily over the floor, a more welcome sight than fifteen pamphlet photos.

  “No, the other foot,” Dad whispers.

  “How do you know?” I ask.

  Dad avoids my eyes as he answers. “Your mom made me take dance lessons before our wedding. She wanted to start off dancing the waltz, then break out into ‘Thriller.’ ”

  “I didn’t know you did that!” I say, louder than I intended and unable to hide a grin. My voice draws a stern look from the instructor. Luckily, another couple backs into her and she’s distracted again.

  “We didn’t,” he says. “I finally got the waltz okay, but ‘Thriller’ was a little out of my reach.”

  “Yeah, no offense, Dad, but you don’t seem the type to rock out to Michael Jackson.”

  “I know. We waltzed, though, briefly. That’s the key: only stay on the dance floor long enough to make everyone think you know the steps, then get out of there before you lose the tempo.”

  “Don’t we have to do the whole song at the ball?” I ask.

  “Yes—oh, sorry,” he says as he steps on my foot. “But I figure one of us can fake an injury before too long.”

  I laugh—too loud. The couple next to us look over, but in doing so they tangle their legs together and almost fall. Dad snickers under his breath and I realize I can’t remember the last time we laughed together.

  Class goes by faster than I expected—a little bit. I suppose time flies when you’re trying to not fall over or get stepped on, and to keep your arms up. Madame Garba bows as we politely applaud; I race for the door before Mona can stop me to talk.

  Outside, it’s already dusk. Cicadas have started shouting from the trees, and the blistering heat from the day has faded to calm, lukewarm air.

  “That was, um…” Dad says as he starts the car. “That was interesting.”

  “To say the least,” I say. “Remember, you’re dropping me off at Daniel’s.”

  “Oh, yeah. Right.” Dad pauses. “Are you still dating him?”

  “No,” I say, a little surprised—I didn’t know Dad realized we were ever dating. “We’re just hanging out.”

  “Good, good,” Dad says. “You know, his mom was on the historical committee with me. She was nice. Nice people…” He nods, playing with the keys in the ignition for a moment. I fiddle with the lock on the door.

  “So… are you dating anyone?” Dad asks. His voice cracks, like it’s confused about how to say those words.

  I cough. “No. Not now,” I say, still surprised. I’ve always thought Dad overlooked the fact that I’d aged—like when he saw me, he had that feeling you get when someone you haven’t seen in years shows up. You’re confused that they look so different even though you know time has passed, so it makes sense that they’ve changed. Since I was ten, that’s how Dad has treated me—like he’s confused that I could have changed so much and can’t make sense of the current me versus the ten-year-old me he remembers. Sure, he knows I’m sixteen; I just didn’t realize he really knew—knew enough to ask me about dating.

  “What about Jonas?” he asks after a strange, stilted moment passes. He coasts through a stop sign.

  I laugh. “Jonas is my best friend.”

  “Oh. Sorry, I didn’t mean…” Dad explains fast, like he’s afraid I’m mad.

  “It’s fine,” I say quickly.

  The car falls silent. I refuse to think about my destination or the sea of awkwardness Dad and I just sailed through. Instead, I think about the class and, eventually, about “Thriller.” About my mom wanting to dance to Michael Jackson at her wedding. Mom loved to dance. When she was in remission for a little while, I came downstairs to find her dancing around the living room, spinning, cra
shing into the couch. I thought she’d lost her mind, but when I tried to stop her, she just pulled me into the dance.

  “I’ve been too sick to dance for two years,” she yelled across the bad nineties music. “Come on, Shelby. I’ve got a lot of dancing to make up.”

  And so I gave in and we crashed around the living room, singing the choruses when we knew them. Dad showed up and laughed and wrapped his arms around Mom when a slow song came on, and they slow-danced together. I wonder if they were thinking about their wedding, the “Thriller” dance.

  “Thriller” at your wedding. That’s living without restraint, I think, smiling. Most of my memories of Mom have to do with her being sick or the tiny, fluttering moments between being sick. Sometimes I feel like I don’t even know who she was before the cancer got a hold of her—but “Thriller,” that’s something, a hint to who she was beforehand. I wonder what else Mom did without restraint that I don’t know about. Dozens of things? Nothing else at all? Did she make me promise because she lived her entire precancer life without restraint and wanted the same for me, or because she wished she’d done it more often? Would she have made a vow of purity? I wish I could ask her—

  “Shelby?” Dad says.

  We’re here.

  I don’t know how we got here so quickly. I freeze.

  “Huh? Oh, sorry. I… spaced out,” I say. I grab the door handle and force myself out of the car. No turning back. Promise One and Promise Three.

  “I guess I’ll see you later tonight?” Dad asks. “Daniel can drive you home, right?”

  “Right,” I answer quickly. I shut the door and step from the curb onto Daniel’s lawn. The grass is wet from the heat of the day. I trudge through it as I hear Dad’s car pull away behind me. I have to do this. I reach forward and ring the doorbell.

  It doesn’t take Daniel long to answer. He swings the door open, wearing an old T-shirt and jeans.

  He looks at me, like he’s evaluating something. “Hey,” he finally says, leaning against the door frame.

  “Hey.”

  We stare at each other for a moment before Daniel steps aside and lets me in.

  Daniel can afford to do the whole costume-making thing because his mom is heir to some sort of pharmaceuticals fortune. I don’t think she actually has a job, yet she still goes to charity galas and owns a yacht and all sorts of stuff. So naturally, Daniel’s bedroom is their house’s “second master bedroom.” It’s not only huge, but it also has a wall of video games with a built-in cabinet for a zillion different consoles. The “reading area” has been converted into some sort of costume-making office. The walls are lined with pictures of him and his friends wearing Daniel’s various creations. He’s pretty brilliant at it. No one else could make the school’s mythology club actually look like a horde of Spartan warriors.

  “What movie did you bring?”

  I hold up a DVD of this eighties movie full of puppets and costumes and weird songs. A strange wanna-have-sex movie, but I thought all the fancy outfits would thrill Daniel. My evil plan has obviously worked, because his face lights up.

  “I have the special edition of that! Awesome,” Daniel says, taking it from my hands. He walks over to the gross display of electronics and puts it in the player. I sit on the futon beneath his lofted bed, painfully aware that my rainbow camisole straps are slipping off my shoulders.

  Daniel fiddles around, pressing various buttons until the movie cues up with surround sound. I cringe at the THX theme that makes my teeth vibrate, it’s so loud. He finds the correct remote and joins me on the futon—on the opposite end. I give him a nervous smile, which he immediately returns.

  This movie is questionable at best. As is my ability to get this guy to sleep with me, especially if I don’t make a move soon. I draw my feet up on the couch and move so I’m leaning against the arm and my toes brush against him. He meets my eyes quickly and, in classic teenage-guy oblivion, goes back to watching the movie.

  Ten more minutes pass. I lean forward. Brush my hair back. Laugh at jokes that I really don’t think are funny.

  Daniel stares at the television, and I can tell he’s analyzing glues and costume-sewing techniques and appliqué patterns. I nudge him with my feet to distract him; he looks over at me, eyebrow raised.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Um…” Think fast, Shelby, think fast. “Could I have some water?”

  “Oh, yeah. Hang on.” Daniel pauses the movie. I grab my cell phone and dial Ruby as soon as he’s out the door.

  “I’m at Daniel’s,” I whisper.

  “Huh? Oh!” Ruby says, giggling. “How’s it going, Aphrodite?”

  “Awful, we’re just watching a DVD.”

  “Try lying down.”

  “What?”

  “Well, you’re on a floor or the couch or something, right?”

  “Yeah, a futon.”

  “Try lying down on him. Like, pretend to be tired. Come on, Shelby, you’ve got some natural seduction techniques in there somewhere.”

  When I hear Daniel’s footsteps, I hang up on Ruby and silence my cell phone. I inhale quickly and lie down, taking up the entire futon and lifting my arms over my head so a line of skin is showing between my shirt and jeans. I always see girls doing it in movies. There’s got to be at least some truth to the trick.

  “Here you go,” Daniel says. I catch his eyes darting down to my waist as I raise a hand to take a sip of the water I didn’t really want. I don’t make a move to let him back on the couch. Daniel analyzes my position for a moment, then, without so much as a shrug, sits on the floor, leaning his back against the futon. He grabs the remote and hits play.

  Damn.

  Daniel’s head is right about where my neck is. I sigh.

  “So… any conventions lately?” I ask.

  “Huh? Ah, no, not really. I went to a big one in Atlanta a while back, but that’s pretty much it. I’m taking the stagecraft class next semester, though.”

  “Oh, finally fit it into your schedule?”

  “Yeah. It’ll be fun,” he says without looking back at me.

  “Sounds like it…” Now take my clothes off, Daniel.

  I inhale and let my fingertips slide forward toward the nape of his neck and stiffly touch the tips of his hair. Daniel tenses for a moment, then leans backward slightly. He turns his head toward me.

  “Wait… what are you doing?”

  “I, um…” This is the death trap I was afraid of. If I say, “I just need to have sex with you once, that’s it,” then he’ll likely say no. If I pretend that I’m interested in getting back together, then I’m a horrible human being.

  “Nothing,” I say quickly. “I just… there are some things about our relationship that I miss.” Ooh, good one. Nice and vague.

  “Okay…” Daniel says slowly, but even as he does, his head sinks farther back, until my fingers are fully entwined in his hair. Truthfully, it feels kind of gross. He should probably wash it more often.

  Shut up, I tell my inner voice. You’re not after him for the hair. You just need to have sex with him. It’ll take, like, a minute, probably.

  I lean over and tug on his arms, urging him to join me on the futon. In a tangle of arms and legs involving a lot of “Oh, sorry” and “Hang on, let me move my arm/leg/hip/foot,” he does so, and a sweet five minutes later we’re lying side by side on the futon. The musical number ends in the background.

  “So, was this the only real reason you came over? Because you missed… um… me?”

  I pause. “Something like that. Well…” Maybe honesty will work? Or something close to honesty, I mean. “I haven’t dated anyone since you, and I was just thinking maybe we could… do this for a while…” I let a hand run up his thin chest as I say it, and he gets chill bumps.

  “Right,” he says, breathing heavily. His breath smells like Cheetos, but I kiss him.

  It’s just like I remember—not a bad kiss, but not a great one, either. He could put a little more force behind his lips
, I think, and I wish he’d shaved before I came over; the speckling of facial hair scratches the skin around my mouth. Whatever—I pull him closer to me and don’t protest when he puts a hand on my lower back, underneath my shirt. We kiss for a while longer, and finally I decide I’m going to have to take some initiative here. I sit up and pull off my shirt, leaving only the camisole and boring, nonlace bra underneath. He doesn’t seem wowed. Damn the girls who wear these thin little shirts as real clothing, desensitizing the male population! I inhale and pull the camisole off.

  Daniel has seen my bra before, even had his hands under it, but we never got so far as actually removing it. To be honest, the prospect of it is a little frightening. I bite my lip and try to quell my nerves, then lie back down to kiss him again. Finally, the Cheetos smell has dissipated. Daniel moves to pull his shirt off, displaying a level of pale skin that rivals any white powder makeup he has in his collection.

  Stop being a bitch, Shelby. You dated him. You put him at the top of the list. I press my boobs against his chest. He shudders, but I take it as a good sign and kiss him again. Halfway there, I tell myself.

  “Whoa,” he exhales, grinning. “It’s been a while….”

  “It has,” I say. Should I take off more clothing? Probably. I lean forward and kiss him again, and while I do, I unbutton my pants. I try to think sexy thoughts.

  Daniel seems both bewildered and thrilled that I’m removing my pants, and before I can do much else he unbuttons his own, revealing boxers with shamrocks all over them. I look away. Not quite ready for clover underwear, I don’t think.

  We kiss again, but God, I’m ready to stop kissing and just get this over with. Simple act, it’s just sex, it’s no big deal. Daniel grabs one of my boobs the way someone might catch a baseball. Jonas would probably point and laugh at Daniel’s ineptitude; I pretend to like it and reach into my pocket for a condom before twisting out of my jeans entirely.

  “What are you doing?” Daniel asks under his breath as he grabs my other boob. Sexy, man. Way sexy. I smile in what I hope is a seductive fashion and hold up the purple condom wrapper. Grape-flavored, apparently.