She was fourteen when she first knew him, and not an old fourteen. She’d never kissed a boy, unless you counted a sloppy encounter during a game of Truth or Dare, which she didn’t. He was a junior. He had long legs and thick, unruly hair. At seventeen he already carried himself with an air of amused experience. He was good at eye contact. He had an all-inclusive smile. Everybody wanted to be near him, even—or especially—the ones who were too nervous to approach. Truth and beauty, he was truth and beauty, the beauty part probably more important than the truth, or at least what made the truth so interesting. Was he even, objectively, as handsome as he seemed? It was hard to tell, impossible to be objective in the face of his charisma. To Jennifer her longing for him seemed natural, inevitable. She made no effort to explain. Above his right eyebrow was a beauty mark—probably he would have called it a freckle or a mole, but she studied it surreptitiously every day and she called it a beauty mark.
It was geometry class that offered her this opportunity. As a freshman she should have been in algebra, and as a junior he should have been in trig. She was good at math; he was bad. She used to imagine the story would unfold the way it did in teen movies and TV shows—she’d be asked to tutor him, they’d meet after school, he’d grow to depend on her until suddenly he’d realize she was all he needed. She believed that she sensed something beneath the careless smile and the cool, a powerful undertow of longing and hurt. She imagined scenes in which he confessed his deepest emotions, told her she was the only one he could talk to, really talk to. The words would be all the more affecting because they were so hard for him to say. It didn’t happen like that. For months they sat in desks next to each other without exchanging more than a sentence or two. For months she perfected the art of watching him without appearing to watch him. She was good, he was bad, but they both liked the back of the class.
There was nothing particularly interesting about her, at least not at school. In the dance studio, she was a star. But that was her secret life, and she kept it secret. Dancing was for her a deep privacy. This despite the yearly public recitals. In rehearsal Miss Suzanne was always having to remind her to look up and out, to watch herself in the mirrors. She succeeded in school without attracting attention, or at least not attention that outlasted a teacher’s occasional unsuccessful effort to get her to speak up in class. She always nodded a lot and said she’d try, and then she never did try. She couldn’t really understand the urge that made her more eager classmates wave their hands. If she spoke, everyone would look at her. If she didn’t speak, what had been lost?
Her mild, forgiving parents didn’t mind that she was shy, though they sometimes remarked—mildly—that it seemed odd for a shy person to want to be a dancer. She didn’t like to explain herself—no matter what she said, it always sounded wrong—so she only nodded, or sometimes shrugged, or once, irritably, said, “You always say that,” her eyes fixed resolutely out the front passenger window of her father’s car.
“It’s not a criticism,” he said that time. “Just an observation.” He hesitated. Her parents were never anything but supportive, spending their money and driving her to lessons without a word of doubt. They’d both had difficult parents, and they’d told her directly and indirectly that they wouldn’t make her life any harder than it had to be. She could hear in his voice that it cost her father something to press on. “It’s not an easy road, is it? I just want to be sure you’re sure.”
“I’m sure,” she said. She was sure. She was sure beyond sure, and maybe that was why she couldn’t be sure of anything else. A person came equipped with only so much certainty, so much confidence. She’d spent all of hers in one place.
This was how it happened: She had a friend whose older brother was often pressed into chauffeuring them both, very, very much against his will. He was driving them to the movies. It was a Saturday night in January. He took the scenic route, cruising the usual gathering places—the parking lots of churches and fast-food establishments—in search of people he knew. In the front seat his sister scolded and protested, threatening to kill him if they missed the previews. In the backseat Jennifer leaned her forehead against the window and stared at things until they blurred and faded. Trees, streetlights, people, cars. She couldn’t bring herself to care whether they missed the previews. It was her friend who wanted to see this movie. What she herself wanted seemed very far from here.