Her arched eyebrow spelled doom for my request. I had hoped for sympathy, a smile, maybe even an immediate drafting of a plan of action if she was in a really good mood. Not the eyebrow quirked in a way that meant fourth period was about to turn from the usual lunchtime break into yet another classroom complete with a lecture and a pop quiz at the end.
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“Are you serious? The dance?”
Was I serious? Well, yes.
Shanna said, “Sue, these after-school events are for suckers. Their Party City decorating best efforts are a joke. Don’t even get me started on Valentine’s Day itself, with its ridiculous diamond commercial-spewing, chocolates-and-one-true-love encrusted horrors that punch us all in the face whether we like it or not.”
Shanna continued, “The ones who are single feel like crap while love songs blare all month to taunt them – and by them, I mean me. And anyone who’s hitched is faced with the expectation that they bust out some grand token of love on this one assigned day, or else feel the wrath. Ugh. Not my thing.”
Clearly turning to Shanna for dating advice was not the best decision I’d ever made, but as my closest friend, she was the first person I thought of to ask for help. I just forgot the one key detail of why Shanna was Shanna and we got along so well: namely, her sardonic streak was a mile long. We shared the same sense of humor. I liked it a lot when it wasn’t completely turned on me.
Honestly, we pretty much shared the same views on most things, apparently except for totally hypothetical situations in which one Sue J. Dells decides to plunge forward and ask out a totally hypothetical crush to the Valentine’s Day dance hypothetically held in two weeks.
I gave my turkey sandwich and salad a hard glance.
I said, “I’ve been thinking about it a lot.”
“So you are dragging me into this?”
“Yes. Come on! What’ll it take to get a humble snippet of advice from you? Want me to do all your homework for a week? Shovel your driveway? What?”
Shanna practically snorts with laughter.
“You wouldn’t last an hour doing my homework,” she said. “As I recall when I signed up to take French, you persisted on with Spanish and deserted me cruelly to my own devices in the Language Arts hallway. Aside from a couple of phrases I taught you, my teacher would think it a cruel joke once she saw your sentence conjugations in my otherwise pristine workbook, that I—her model student en Français—was cut down in my glory. I ought to cry into a baguette.”
“Fermez la bouche, Jones.”
“Testy, testy. But I’m glad something stuck!”
I took another bite of the sandwich before looking out from my seat at the lunch table, searching for a familiar face in the crowd.
I was pretty nervous. I’d never asked anyone out, not like this. Calling up a friend I’ve known since sixth grade to see a movie or hang out was not nearly on the anxiety caliber as working up the guts to ask someone to be my date… even it if was to a cheesy school dance.
To make matters worse, I had no idea what to do. While I was interested and willing, Shanna was the one with actual ‘going up to someone and professing one’s profound attraction’ experience, but she wasn’t interested in much beyond her art project this year. Just my luck.
I decided to push on with a different tactic.
I said, “I think the dance is hokey, too, okay? It’s not like their theme this year is exactly appealing. And you’re right. It’s a fabricated holiday and all, but I just really want to do this and need your expert help.”
It’s not like I was exactly lying about any of it. Manville High selected a masquerade theme, so the fliers for the dance had horrible clip art masks in the corners. I could already imagine the lackluster decorations of barely inflated balloons and scrunched up crepe paper streamers on the walls; the trays of chewy cheese cubes and overripe grapes on tables lining the gym; and awful pop music clashing with the décor’s attempts at setting a mysterious mood. Public high schools aren’t elegant places of intrigue. When would they learn?
I turned to Shanna, hands held in pleading.
“Help me, Shanna-wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope.”
Okay, I was pushing it a little, but the Star Wars reference ought to have counted for something in her book.
Shanna’s thick, curly hair bounced a little as she gave me a nod. “Okay, lovergirl,” she said. “Who’s the lucky victim of your charms? Anyone I know?”
I took a breath. “It’s Nat. From theater?”
Shanna gave no sign of recognition. I pushed on.
“She transferred here this year. And we worked on the last show together. I was doing tech as usual while she played a really great supporting role in ‘A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.’ So we talked here and there during rehearsals. I really like her! She’s smart and funny and, uh, hot.”
With that, I blushed hard enough to match my hair. So sue me, I liked that lanky punk rocker look, especially when there are brains to match!
Shanna sighs. “It’s hopeless.”
“It is? What is?”
“You. This situation. You’re not going to just go over and say something like, ‘Hey, want to go with me to the dance?’ ”
My stomach drops just at the suggestion. “I can’t do that!”
“Well, how do you want to do this? You need a first step, figuring out what to say. Second step, you say it. Third step, either get rejected or pick a ridiculous dress and go to the damn dance, then talk about it for the next few weeks on end either way.” Shanna said, “This is how it’s gonna go down, I can already see it.”
“But what if she says no? What if I’m utterly humiliated and rejected? Oh gods, and then we’d have to work together for the rest of the year! And each time she catches me looking, she turned away and I’d want to hide underground so deep I’d be bunking with brontosaurus remains!”
Shanna groaned. “What if you get a grip, Sue? The worst that happens is she says no, we find something better to do instead of the dance, and I tease you about it forever. I’ve already been doing that for ages, so I’m sure you’ll adapt nicely.”
She flashed a smile then added more seriously, “If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.”
I scrunched in, messy red hair falling in my eyes. “But… how?”
Shanna looked at me with another expression I knew well by then, the ‘I’m in, but you’re going to be mercilessly taunted for a long while before I get down to business’ smirk. Before she could say more, the period bell shattered her sadistic meditative state and we had to pack up.
Over the next two days, I kept finding notes in my locker with scribbled illustrations of Shanna’s suggestions, torn from her sketchpad. It was some of Shanna’s best work.
Option one, passed to me on my way to sixth period math: make a cheese plate and spell out an invitation with the food—possibly a dig about how cheesy the dance was or possibly just because she knew I liked cheese.
Option three: after telling her I was working on some creative writing, a mini play I’d give Nat to look over involving a character feeling too shy to ask out their crush to the dance. A bit roundabout, but Shanna had a point.
Option four, texted to me on the bus ride home after my GSA meeting: make Nat a gelatin bleeding heart, like the one we loved from a book of Penn and Teller tricks, and put a message inside. While awesome, it probably risked looking like a practical joke more than a sincere, if macabre, message of intent.
Option six, suggested before homeroom the next day, involved a whole lot of 80’s Rom-Com montages and was soundly vetoed.
Option eight involved bribes, the school’s debate team, the drama club’s costume closet, a janitor’s bucket, and some volleyballs. The less said about it the better.
The more fun Shanna had with my anguish, the more interested she became in helping out. By the time the last bell rang the following day, she was more excited about it than I was.
She would probably have been content to spent the next week, if not month, inventing more and more interesting (read: horrid) scenarios to get Nat’s attention, but time was running out. No more plans for the perfect playlist or subtlety.
Truth be told, Shanna’s suggestions were actually helping a lot, along with her now-sincere “You can do it!” sticky notes she’d tape to my back before walking off to another class.
We created a mini battle strategy, and decided to do the deed the next day, Friday, so I could have the weekend to freak out accordingly.
It looked like the best option, though I still was ready to back out at any moment. Shanna made it clear that, while quittin’ was for losers, she would nurse me back to a semblance of my former self in case of chickening out or being told no. One set of ministrations involved more loving ridicule than the other, but they were pretty much the same.
On the day I was going to do it, I missed my alarm and woke up twenty minutes later than planned. No time to pretend to be a Zen monk, or get breakfast, or do more than jump in the shower, throw on my clothes and run out the door with my backpack.
Shanna kept giving me thumbs up and wagging her eyebrows when we saw each other. Part of the drafted plan involved knowing where Nat might be—okay, you might say stalking, but you’d be heartless and wrong—and picking the ideal time to make a fool of myself.
Shanna, having been briefed with visuals and background info, texted me before lunch. “Subject noted in Science hallway after fifth period. Go get ‘em!”
Better late and nervous and awkward than never.
Nat was unmistakable, wearing dark jeans and some band shirt, her shoulder-length hair ending in blue tips. She held some books with fingers decked in black nail polish that looked a little chipped.
I approached.
“Hi, um, Nat?”
“Yeah? Hey, Sue. What’s up?”
A head quirked to the side and a smile. Okay, that’s a good sign. And she knows I exist!
I said, “How are you? Planning on trying out for the next play?”
“If Schuster had his way,” Nat said, “I’d be doing more acting and less lab bio experiments but it depends on what he elects to put on. I prefer Shakespeare over High School Musical, you know?”
“Me, too. For sure.”
Danger, danger, perilous conversation death approaching!
“So, listen,” Nat said, “class is about to start. Can I catc–”
“Iwaswonderingifyouwantedtogotothedancewithme.”
“Uh, what?”
“Dance? Valentine’s Day? Manville High? Masquerade? Us? Going? Dancing? I’m going to go over to the physics class now and die on one of their lab tables. I donate my brain to science. Excuse me.”
I turned away.
“Wait! Sue!” Nat said, “I just didn’t get what you were mumbling. Here, gimme your notebook.”
And with that, cool as anything, Nat took a pen out of her pocket and scribbled something down before giving me a bigger smile than the first. She waltzed off to her class (an impressive feat considering her clunky black boots), leaking confidence all the way out of my sight. It was one thing to admire that from a distance, to feel drawn in by her self-assured demeanor, and rather another to be on the receiving end.
I was late to my class, but history professors are gullible enough that a bit of revisionist history about my own reasons for the late arrival smoothed things out. I could happily look at Nat’s note in peace under a drone about Henry Ford’s assembly lines.
“(555)672-1174 – Madam, I am most apt to embrace your offer. J”
I floated through the rest of my classes and the bus ride home. I then spent a good while with my phone clamped in my increasingly sweaty hands, pacing. Banner, my tabby, looked on unimpressed.
I dialed the number and Nat picked up. I was getting better at this forthright, direct thing.
It was easier to talk on the phone than in person. I could squirm and fidget without being seen. We talked about the dance and Mr. Schuster’s collection of old-time musicals, and Nat’s science project, and the masquerade ball theme and what it meant for costumes. We talked the next day, and the next.
The fourth time, I ditched Spanish homework to talk more with Nat and there was a pause. She sounded a bit unsure before pressing on. Being on the sidelines a lot means I am pretty good at observing and ear-lending so I listened, and thought best how to respond to her question.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” I said. “I think you’re tremendously gorgeous and sharp, even if I have no idea who half the people on your band shirts are. Your spontaneous “Twelfth Night” quote in response to my asking you to the dance? Who does that? And – no, no, I mean that in a good way!
“Uhuh… Natalie is a much nicer name than Nathan anyway,” I continue. “It suits you… Shanna? She wouldn’t care. She’s an art student; to her we’re all lesser beings unable to be in touch with the world and see it in its full depth the way she does…
“Yep, I just don’t say that to her face. She lets me hang around because, as a theater kid, I come pretty close… Heh, yeah, she is. That’s what I love about her.
“So, uh, about you. That’s really cool. And your parents are okay? Well, as much as any parents can be…? Yeah? Mine are too busy with my sick grandma to pay much attention to my comings and goings. Only my cat, Banner, pays attention.”
I laughed at her comment. “Uh, yeah, actually, he was! He doesn’t turn green but he’s so big he may as well be the incredible Hulk of the feline species. So, do you want to go with me to the next GSA meeting?”
We continued from there. The next conversation was lighter, and about our Valentine’s Day costumes. With both of us in theater, fun outfits were non-optional. And I revealed Shanna’s ridiculous suggestions; Nat sounded sad about not getting that cheese board invitation.
We kept talking and planning more after that until the night of the dance.
I arrived at the oh, so illustrious Manville High clutching a Venetian-style mask. Shanna had helped me make it; it matched the one Nat wore.
The dance was exactly as Shanna predicted, with awful music and the two of us making our own fun while surrounded by myriad masked classmates and bored chaperones. Nat told me bad science jokes and I retaliated with impressions of her dancing. The grapes were, indeed, overripe.
In short, it was the best Valentine’s Day I could have imagined.