“Paulie?” Ambrose asked, ignoring Jesse's distress. “You in?”
Paulie looked a little stricken, his loyalty to his friends warring with his self-preservation. “Brose . . . I'm a lover. Not a fighter,” he said seriously. “The only reason I wrestled was to be with you guys, and you know how much I hated it. I can't imagine combat.”
“Paulie?” Beans interjected.
“Yeah, Beans?”
“You may not be a fighter, but you aren't a lover either. You need to get laid, too. Guys in uniform get laid. A lot.”
“So do rock stars, and I am a lot better with a guitar than I am with a gun,” Paulie countered. “Plus, you know my mom would never let me.” Paul's dad had been killed in a mining accident when he was nine years old and his younger sister was a baby. His mom had moved back home to Hannah Lake with her two little kids to be closer to her parents and ended up staying.
“You may have hated wrestling, Paulie. But you were good at it. You'll be a good soldier, too.”
Paulie chewed his lip but didn't answer and the car fell silent, each boy lost in his own thoughts.
“Marley wants to get married,” Jesse said after a long lull. “I love her, but . . . everything is moving so damn fast. I just want to wrestle. Surely some school out West wants a black kid that likes white people, right?”
“She wants to get married?” Beans was stunned. “We're only eighteen! You better come with us, Jess. You gotta grow up some before you let Marley put a collar on you. Plus, you know the saying. Brose Before 'Ho's,” he quipped, playing on Ambrose's name.
Jesse sighed in surrender. “Ah, hell. America needs me. How can I say no?”
Groans and laughter ensued. Jesse had always had a pretty inflated ego.
“Hey, doesn't the army have a wrestling team?” Jesse sounded almost cheerful at the thought.
“Paulie?” Ambrose asked again. Paulie was the lone hold-out, and out of everyone, Paulie would be the hardest for him to leave behind. He hoped he wouldn't have to.
“I don't know, man. I guess I gotta grow up sometime. I bet my dad would be proud of me if I did. My great grandpa served in WWII. I just don't know.” He sighed. “Joining the army seems like a good way to get myself killed.”
There wasn't a fancy hotel or a posh location anywhere near Hannah Lake to have the Prom, so Hannah Lake High School made do decorating their gymnasium with hundreds of balloons, twinkle lights, hay bales, fake trees, gazebos, or whatever the prom theme dictated.
This year's theme was “I Hope You Dance,” an inspirational song which offered no inspiration with regard to decorating ideas. So the twinkle lights and balloons and gazebos made yet another appearance at yet another Hannah Lake High School Prom, and as Fern sat next to Bailey, staring out onto the gymnasium floor filled with swirling couples, she wondered if the only thing that had changed in fifty years was the style of the dresses.
Fern fiddled with the neckline of her own dress, smoothing her hand over the creamy folds, swishing her legs back and forth, watching the way the skirt draped to the floor, thrilling at the hint of gold sparkle when the fabric caught the light. She and her mother had found the dress on a clearance rack at a Dillards in Pittsburg. It had been marked down over and over again, most likely because it was a dress made for a tiny girl in a color that was not fashionable among tiny girls. But taupe looked good on red heads, and the dress looked wonderful on Fern.
She had posed for pictures with Bailey in the Taylor's living room with the bodice pulled up around her chin the way her mother liked it, but two seconds after she left the house she pushed the ruffled neckline off her shoulders and felt almost pretty for the first time in her life.
Fern hadn't been asked to the big dance. Bailey hadn't asked anyone either. He had joked that he didn't want to make any girl dread going to her prom. He'd said it with a smile, but there was a flash of something mournful in his face. Self-pity wasn't Bailey's style, and his comment surprised Fern. So she asked Bailey if he would go with her. It was Prom, and they could sit home and sulk that they didn't have dates or they could go together. They were cousins, and it was completely lame, but being uncool was better than missing out. And it wasn't like going to Prom together would cause any image problems. They were both the epitome of lame–literally in Bailey's case, figuratively in Fern's. It wouldn't be a night for romance, but Fern had a dress for her Prom and a date too, even if it wasn't a conventional one.