Birds In Flight
Everyone in Mrs. Stemnock's homeroom eagerly received the papers getting passed down the rows, because this time it wasn't a test or a homework assignment: it was the info packet for this year's prom. The theme, the location, the dress code, everything about the night each student at West Orchard high school had been looking forward to the entire 1998-1999 school year was contained within. I turned and, when no one else was looking, cast a quick glance and a smile at the girl sitting three seats back and two aisles over from me. Her eyes met mine, there was a brief flutter of an eyelash, hardly mistakable for a wink to anyone except me, and I turned back around. Jamie was good at masking it.
We'd been together now for almost a year, but we'd kept it quiet, with only our closest friends privy. The teachers and faculty didn't need to know that I had fallen for her like a penny dropped from the Empire State Building. We decided earlier in the year that if we made it this far, prom would be the perfect time to announce our commitment. I'd been dreaming about it for weeks: the two of us in our dresses, riding together in a limo, getting out one after another, and shocking the whole rest of the class by walking to the event hand-in-hand.
What would people say?
How would they react?
I didn't care. As long as I had her, nothing anyone could say or do could ruin the night. Whatever happened after? Well, that was the future's problem.
Travis turned around in his seat and shoved the pile of papers for our row practically in my face. "Take one, pass it back," he grunted in a rough approximation of Mrs. Stemnock's order to the front row. As if I needed to be told twice. I grabbed them from him, peeled my own copy from the top, and handed the rest to Karen behind me without bothering to repeat Travis's instructions. He was such a dork. Everybody in the world knew he'd be going with Melanie. They'd only been together since, like, fifth grade. Weirdos.
I read casually through the first page. The theme was "Spring Into Love," a not-so-subtle attempt by the planning committee to mix in the seasons and romance without reusing "Love In Bloom," which was last year's theme.
Whatever. It was better than some of the other suggestions I had heard were thrown about. The goth crowd calling for the theme to be "The Last Night of Your Life" had been nixed. Like the school board would have given that the thumbs-up.
I skimmed the details of where it would be held, ticket prices, and what food and drinks would be available. I made a mental note to cut off the form at the bottom of page one which parents could fill out to volunteer as chaperons. Mom and Dad wouldn't be seeing
that
, thank you very much. No need to complicate my life by having one of them there to ruin my evening with Jamie, or witness the shock and horror on their faces when they found out that I, Hannah Cregor, their darling first and only daughter, was in fact dating another girl. I'd hit them with that when I really wanted to wreck their day, though since Jamie and I had made things official, I hadn't really been in the mood to wreck anything.
I changed my mind as soon as I flipped to the second page. I read each word slowly and carefully, turning everything over in my mind, and I felt my stomach sink into my shoes.
I read the top of the page again and again, looking for some way to twist what had been written to my benefit, but I just couldn't manage.
The dress code for each male/female pairing shall be as follows
...
'Each male/female pairing'? What the hell was that? Why couldn't the damn paper just say 'each couple'? I dropped my head and stared at the wood grain of the desk. I wanted to raise my hand, ask about it, but I couldn't. People would
know
.
Maybe...maybe they weren't serious? Maybe that was just the old standard, used by the school ever since it had become co-ed back in the 1970s. Old habits and templates die hard, you know. But this is the 90s, the last decade of the 20
th
century for crying out loud. They have to know
some
of their students might not be interested in bringing an opposite-gender date to a dance, right?
I raised my head as I heard Mrs. Stemnock say, "Yes, Miss Simmons?", then turned back to look at Jamie, who also had her hand raised.
"I just had a question," Jamie said. "About the dress code?"
"Really?" Mrs. Stemnock cocked her head to one side, like a dog who is trying to understand you but really wishes you would speak Canine instead of English. "It seems quite clear to me. What's the trouble?"
"Doesn't it seems awfully specific?" Jamie said. "I mean, 'each male/female pairing'? What if, you know, two guys wanted to go together? Or two girls?"
A chorus of snickers rolled through the classroom at the first option, which turned to whistles at Jaime's second suggestion. Jamie was known for a troublemaker's wit, and nobody caught that she might be asking because the situation applied to her.
"Miss Simmons," Mrs. Stemnock said, her face contorting into a frown, "there is nothing that prevents young men or young women from attending the prom without a date. However, what you are suggesting? Why, it would be the very
height
of impropriety."
'Impropriety.'
The word rolled out of her mouth with a casual but effective force behind it that said everything she herself believed without saying anything at all. Of course, maybe she was just grumpy because she thought Jamie was getting a rise out of the rest of the class. I didn't know. I put my head down on my desk, praying nobody would notice.
"Oh," I heard Jamie say after a moment. Even with my eyes closed, I could picture the impish grin she always adopted when she was exaggerating for comic effect. "Well, we couldn't have that now, could we?"
"No," Mrs. Stemnock agreed entirely too readily, "we could not." A pause, then, "Miss Cregor, is there a problem?"
I snapped my head up a little too quickly and blurted out, "No!" After seeing the expression on the face of Mrs. Stemnock, who wasn't used to being blurted at anywhere, least of all in her own English classroom, I added, "I mean, no, no problem. I felt a little dizzy, that's all."
She fixed me with a stare that scared me with its intensity, as though she was probing directly into my brain, trying to get at the truth she knew sat behind the lie. After a moment of not being able to read me though, her expression softened and she said, "Well, I suppose I can't blame a student for being excited. Do you need a pass to see Miss Whitfeld?"
"No, ma'am," I replied. Nobody in his or her right mind ever wanted to visit the school nurse, who had to be at least seventy years old and reeked of vapo-rub. "I'll be fine."
"Good," she informed me just as much as the rest of the class. "Now, if all that is out of everyone's system, you have some homework to turn in, yes?"
The collective groan that ran through homeroom as the reality of the school day settled in took my mind off of things while I dug in my backpack for the assignment. I started to put the prom information packet into my bag, but I made the mistake of not flipping the pages around again, and I made eye contact with
the line
again.
I wanted to throw up.
* * * * *
I had to wait for a couple of days to talk with Jamie about this turn of events. She was in drama club, and they were practicing for the play after school almost every night. I was excited to attend, since Jamie had both speaking and singing roles, including a solo, and I'd purchased my ticket the day after she'd told me she'd gotten the part. Finally the one night she didn't have practice I called her at home only to have her dad pick up and tell me that Jamie had gone to bed already, exhausted. Did I want him to wake her up?
I told him it wasn't anything urgent and to let her sleep. Besides, in a couple nights, I'd be seeing her after the show anyway. This whole stupid prom thing could wait until then.
The night of the play, I was as close to the front row as I could get. I held my program lovingly, the way you might hold a very old photograph, careful not to fold or crumple it in any way. I read each line again and again, always stopping at Jamie's name and feeling that familiar flutter in my heart, knowing that before long, she'd be on stage, performing the way she always did, and dragging the audience along with her on a ride that none of them would ever forget.
Well, at least that
I
would never forget.
The whole performance was a blur, a magical story that swept me up in its tale of a girl who was forced into a cruel bet with the gods over whether love was stronger than death, and by the end, as the performers strode on stage to take their bows, I was in tears as I stood, clapping harder and louder than anyone else around me. I'm a sap, I guess. But when she smiled out over the audience, her eyes locked right on mine, both before and after the first bow and the encore bow. They broke as the curtain fell, she met me briefly afterward to say she was expected at the tear-down party, and as I drove home, only half of me was in the car. The other was in the clouds, where I belonged. Jamie always said we were like two birds in flight, defying even gravity for love. I'd never heard anything so right, and I gladly soared with her.
The next day after school, I was brought straight back down to Earth. We met up after class and drove over to the little taquiero place down the street to get a snack, and that's when she broke the news.
I guess, to be fair, I forced her into it because I brought it up, but I wanted to know. How, I asked her, were we going to work this whole prom thing if the school wasn't going to let us go as a couple?
I was counting on her, because she was already out to her dad. Her mom (last I heard, touring Europe with husband #3) didn't know and to be honest probably wouldn't care even if she did know. But I figured if anybody could do anything or say anything to the board, it would be her dad. Jamie's father wasn't a zillionaire or anything, but he made an annual contribution to the school, his own alma mater, that was more than what my parents combined brought home in two years' worth of work. His generosity was part of the reason I and a bunch of other West Orchard kids could attend, as it bolstered their financial aid department.
Instead what I got was silence, and then a soft voice suggesting that maybe...maybe I should just go by myself this year.
I flipped. I freaked. I started laughing and crying at the same time, part of me trying to convince myself that she was kidding, the other part knowing full well that she was serious.
"What are you talking about?" I said. "What about our plan? We were going to shock the whole school. Make it official. I already bought my
dress
, for God's sake. What happened?"
"I talked to dad," she said quietly, after I'd calmed down enough that I could listen to her. "I showed him the dress code page. He was angry, he called the board, even met with them after school. He didn't know it, but I stood in the bathroom next to the boardroom with a glass up to the wall and listened to the whole thing. They said they were sorry, but West Orchard was a private school, and they weren't going to allow that sort of thing."
"'That sort of thing,'" I snorted. "So a guy and a girl who don't even
care
about one another can go as a couple, but why not us?"
