But I was lying. I wanted the picture.
At the dance, we sat with some girls from the softball team, Kendra and Lilly, and some football guys, Darien and Eric, plus this guy Brian and Brian’s girlfriend, Sarah, the same girl who’d had the Disney Princess party back in elementary school. We had a great time dancing to silly 1980s music. Dancing, in this case, mostly meant jumping around, but near the end of the evening, the DJ played the Boston song “Amanda.” Amanda and I were standing in this photo area they’d made, where you could try on hats and glasses and stuff to take pictures. When it started, I had on a fake mustache and a pirate hat. Amanda wore a tiara. I said, “You need to dance to this.”
“It’s a slow song.”
“It’s your song.”
She switched her tiara for my pirate hat and plopped the tiara onto my head. “I’m not going to dance to it alone.”
“Okay, then.” I held out my hand and walked her out, still wearing the tiara.
I don’t know how to dance, not really. But slow dancing is just swaying. Some people, the ones who were dating, tried to make out, but I held Amanda’s right hand in my left and put my right hand on her back the way my mom (without my asking) had told me to. We swayed.
It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Like, to tease her about the song.
Turned out, though, that if you’re not making out, there’s not much to do during a slow song. And if you’re already a few inches shorter than the girl, and then she wears heels, you end up eye level with her chin.
And you have to crane your neck up not to seem like you’re looking, um, down.
Truth told, I wouldn’t have minded looking down, but I didn’t think Amanda would like it, particularly considering the context. The fact that the song was all about a guy telling a girl named Amanda that he loved her.
Just to break the silence, I said, “I’m glad you came.”
She gave me a weird look, which I had to crane my neck to see. “Really? Why?”
I shrugged, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know. ’Cause you’re my best friend. ’Cause someday, we’ll look back on this, and we probably won’t even know most of the other people anymore. Because everyone else is sort of . . . temporary. But we’ll still be friends.”
She nodded, then took her hand off my back. At first, I couldn’t figure out what she was doing. Then I realized she was kicking back her feet to remove her shoes, first one, then the other. They were the kind with straps, so she dangled them from her finger. “Better?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t step on my feet.”
“Okay.”
She said, “It’s weird. I’m not friends with anyone else from grade school. Like when I look at the pictures from the fifth grade lunch, I don’t even like any of those girls anymore.”
“Sooner or later, everyone disappoints you,” I said, thinking of her mom, but also kind of my dad. When I told him I made the football team, he said he guessed they needed husky guys to play defense. And tonight, he hadn’t been home at all.
“Everyone but my dad,” she said, “and you.”
We kept swaying. The song was almost over, and for a minute, I wanted to pull her closer, like a real slow dance. But that would be all weird, something that couldn’t be undone. And I realized I couldn’t take a chance, couldn’t face the possibility of losing her.
So I just swayed until the song ended, and when it did, Amanda said she had to go to the ladies’ room. She put her shoes back on. I watched her walk away. I went back to the table.
Kendra was sitting there. I didn’t really know her enough to talk to her, and they were playing another slow song, so I couldn’t dance. So I started playing Candy Crush on my phone.
These two girls walked by. One was this girl Sophie, who’d been Amanda’s best friend besides me in fifth grade. The other one I didn’t really know. As they passed, the girl I didn’t know said, “So did you see that girl Amanda?”
Sophie stopped walking. “Yeah. What about her?”
“Um, that dress she’s wearing. Slutty much?”
“What do you expect?” Sophie said. “She has to show off her boobs to make up for the rest of her body.”
I looked up then, right at Sophie, to let her know I’d heard her.
Sophie glanced back at me, laughed, and looked away. She started walking again.
When she did, she stumbled. “Ugh!”
She leaned down. Her shoe had come off. She went to get it, but it was glued, somehow, to the floor.
“Yuck! What is this?” She put down her foot, and that, too, stuck to the floor.
Beside me, I heard Kendra chuckle. I looked at her, and she was staring at Sophie real hard, like she was concentrating.
Finally, Sophie pried her shoe off, but not before she got her other shoe and foot stuck. She and the girl walked away, talking about how gross the place was.
When Amanda came back a minute later, they were playing a fast song again.
“Hey, do you guys want to dance?” she said.
“Sure. But watch out. The floor’s sticky there.”