“Oh. Good.”
The questions were weird, but at least they gave her something to say— “Sorry again,” Jake added.
—whereas she had no idea what she was supposed to say to him now. It’s okay? It wasn’t okay. I understand you think I’m a disgusting freak, and you’re probably right, but my parents are making me go to school anyway, so please be nice to me? That was true, but she wasn’t going to say it. If only he would go back to the inane questions, at least she would know what to say.
“So. Wanna dance?”
She had no idea what to say.
She looked at the completely empty middle of the gym where nobody—nobody—was dancing. The music was so loud she could feel it through her shoes, but no one was so much as wiggling to it. He looked up from his toes for the first time all night (month, year, lifetime, eon) to follow her gaze to the uninhabited, masquerading-as-a-dance-floor basketball court. He grinned—like the Jake Irving she’d sat next to in third grade who brought his grandma in for show-and-tell—and said, “We’ll be the best ones out there.”
How could she say no to that?
The song that was playing as Poppy followed Jake Irving onto the dance floor started to end, and she closed her eyes and willed Mr. Menendez not to play a slow song. She was a woman of the world now and saw that this was exactly the sort of move adults liked to make. Here were two lonesome souls, braving a wilderness together—what could be cuter than to put on some sappy slow song and do a little experiment in sociological torture? Don’t. You. Dare, her brain told Mr. Menendez’s brain at the telepathic volume of a howler monkey. And she was in luck, not because Mr. Menendez did not indeed think it would be lovely to put on a slow song for this fine young couple, but because his kid had preprogrammed the playlist, and the principal had no idea how to do anything with his phone but make phone calls.
So she regular-danced with Jake Irving. It was hard because everyone in the entire world was watching them, but it wasn’t that hard otherwise. You moved your feet one way and your hips the other and kept your arms mostly at your sides and your eyes mostly on the floor.
Jake said, “So.”
“Yeah?”
“How was Thailand?”
“Kind of amazing,” said Poppy. “I got to teach little kids.”
“Really? What?”
“English.”
Jake looked impressed. “I mean, I speak English, but I wouldn’t know how to teach it.”
“You figure it out.”
“I guess. I bet you were a good teacher.”
“I guess. What makes you say that?”
Jake shrugged and looked back to his toes. “You’re nice. You’re smart. I remember when you helped me with that report on dolphins in second grade.”
“You’re nice and smart too.” Poppy said it mostly only because she didn’t know what else to say, and when someone says something nice to you, you’re supposed to say something nice back.
“I’m smart”—Jake frowned at his toes—“but not very nice.”
She remembered in fourth grade when he let Owen Gregg win the fifty-yard dash at Field Day because Owen’s parents were getting a divorce. She remembered in third when Aggie dropped her brownie at the Halloween party, and Jake just handed her his without even waiting to see if there were any extras. “You’re nice,” Poppy told her own toes.
“Not to you.”
She shrugged. “Not once. But other times.”
“I’m really sorry, Poppy. I really, really am.”
“I know,” she said.
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
She made herself look up at him. “You asked me to dance.”
Then a slow song came on. He looked up at her too. “Wanna get some juice?”
*
Rosie and Penn had replied to the email asking for volunteer dance chaperones at the speed of sound. Then they spent forty-eight hours vowing to their youngest child that they would not talk to her, look at her, take pictures of her, intimate knowledge of her, stand near her, offer her food or beverage, or address her in any way. Should the building catch on fire, they would not approach her but would allow her to find her own emergency exit and then seek one—a different one—on their own.