Slow Dance in Purgatory

Maggie ducked her head and blushed at the tender endearment. Nobody had ever called her baby….except Shad, who flung it at her like a leash. When Johnny said it, it sounded like a totally different word.

Johnny moved his hand over the burn and without warning, pressed his right palm down into the weeping sore. Maggie cried out sharply and yanked her arm back, but Johnny held it firm, and with his eyes closed as if he were praying, shushed her softly. The heat from the wound built steadily until Maggie was blinking back the tears and biting her lower lip to keep from crying out.

And then, incredibly, the pain began to slowly recede. It started at the outer edges into an ever shrinking diameter and eventually disappeared altogether. It had taken two minutes at the most. Johnny removed his hand gently, and Maggie stared down at the glossy pink skin; it was slightly raised and puckered around the edges. It looked like it had had two months to heal instead of two minutes. There was a scar, but the burn was completely healed.

“Did I hurt you too much?” Johnny brushed his fingers over the half moon scar.

“You…you healed it!” Maggie whispered, stunned.

“No. Your body did all the work. I just accelerated the natural healing process – at least, that’s what I think I did.” Johnny shrugged, looking down at his handiwork with a pleased half-smile.

“How, exactly?” Maggie couldn’t have been more impressed if she had seen him walk on water.

“Light and energy. Healing takes both. I wasn’t sure it would work, but I thought it might. I just focused on what I wanted to have happen, imagined the skin healing rapidly, and transferred the energy through my hand into your burn.”

“Okay. Yeah. Sure.” Maggie’s head was spinning. She decided that what had just happened wasn’t any more remarkable than Johnny himself. She couldn’t think about it. It fell under the ‘accept, don’t question’ category. She shoved the miracle into a mental drawer with all the others he had performed and locked it tight.

“I’m not sure it will work on those dark circles, though.” Johnny traced the purple bruises under her eyes that she had tried to cover. Her blue eyes were world weary and worry worn. “You look tired, Maggie. Is everything okay?”

Maggie didn’t want to tell him about Shad’s accusations or about the confrontation they had had.

“I’m more than okay.” And she was. Since the moment she’d walked into the school that morning and seen Johnny Kinross, all had been right with her world.

Johnny studied her for several heartbeats, and then sighed, giving up on getting the rest of the story.

“Are you dancing today?” he asked hopefully.

“I wish. I don’t have much time, though. People are going to start arriving pretty soon. I wish I had the entire day to just spend with you.” Maggie leaned her forehead into his solid chest and breathed in his citrus and sunshine smell.

He kissed her bowed head and murmured into her hair, “Hmmm. That sounds good. But where would we go? Would we hide out under the bleachers, or maybe sink down in the back seats of the auditorium where the floor is sticky and the lights are dim? Or maybe we could occupy a couple of stalls in the girl’s bathroom and lift up our feet when the hall monitors check for sluffers. Oh wait - I don’t have to lift my feet.” Johnny’s voice was light and playful but there was an undercurrent of hopelessness that he was unable to hide.

“As long as I’m with you, bathroom stalls and sticky floors are as good as 5-Star Restaurants and sandy beaches,” Maggie said sincerely, blushing a little at her romantic confession. She knew her words were syrupy sweet, but she meant them all the same, and she didn’t dare wait to tell him, for beneath the bliss of new love lay the threat that it all could end in an instant.

His silence fed her insecurities, and she forced back her need for reassurance. She would take what he would give and not look beyond that.

“I’ll be nearby,” was all he said, and with a soft kiss on her forehead he slipped away.

***

Maggie slid into her spot just after the bell sounded, and Mr. Marshall frowned mightily at her from his lectern. “What kind of high school teacher had a lectern anyhow?” Maggie thought crossly, wishing that she was anywhere but Chemistry class. She had thought this class would be experiments and hands-on projects. Instead, the majority of the time they spent reading aloud from their chemistry books and taking quizzes on what they read. Maggie hated reading aloud. The words swam around on the page, teasing her with their squiggly lines and deceptive curves and corners. The d’s looked like b’s, the W’s looked like M’s – and half the time the letters danced right off the pages and into the margins. She wished she could dance right out of this class and into the hallway.