While Hannah and Taylor and Courtney spent the day fussing with their hair and makeup, Chloe was done by one. She then sat on her manicured hands and waited, dreaming about Europe and fretting about traveling from Riga to Barcelona.
“It’s two thousand miles by train, Chloe,” Blake had said to her. “What’s the big deal? In July a band of men travel two thousand miles up the French Alps on their bikes. It takes them three weeks. You’re telling me we can’t do the same sitting on a train?”
Chloe had been wrong about Blake. As soon as he heard of the new plan for Europe, he produced maps and atlases, guides on the Baltics, a Latvian–English dictionary, several National Geographics about flying around the Baltic Sea, the 1915 partition of Poland, and a story on the last of the Polish Jews. Absurdly, he acted more excited about going to Riga than to Barcelona. He told her he had always wanted to visit Vilnius. Chloe corrected his geography, told him Vilnius was in Lithuania, not Latvia, and he corrected her right back, telling her that you couldn’t get to Poland from Latvia without first going through Lithuania and the Gates of Dawn. Jostling Hannah, shaking her like a bear shakes a rabbit in his mouth, play punching Mason, filling his notebook with pages and pages of notes and facts and stories and asides about Riga and Vilnius and Warsaw, a thrilled Blake acted as if it was paradise already.
For the prom Jimmy lent the four of them his Durango, and Blake drove them to Grand Summit. Initially they had planned to rent a white limo and go in style, like some of the other kids. But now that they had the expanded trip to the post-Communist world and three weeks of travel to budget for, no one wanted to plonk down eight hundred bucks on a limo. To save money, Blake and Mason even said they would forego tuxes, until Janice put her foot down, thank God, and paid for their tux rental herself.
The girls had seen their boys in suits once before, at a funeral, before Chloe and Mason started dating, but tonight was different. Mason, of course, was groomed like a country-club lawn, but even Blake made an effort to comb his hair and trim his stubble. It was funny how he tried to fit his all-over-the-place self into a black tux and patent leather shoes. Though he looked handsome, he didn’t look as if he were born to it. After the first fifteen attempts to fix his crooked bow tie, Hannah gave up.
Chloe and Mason had been nominated for prom queen and king. The king and queen were voted on as a pair, and Chloe knew she was holding Mason back from winning. Without her he would have been prom king for sure, but she was never going to be prom queen, not even in a dress with beads shimmering and clinking like champagne glasses. It’s an honor just to be nominated, cooed Taylor, trying to stay positive.
The week the nominations had come out, Chloe had found an anonymous note stuffed into her locker. How does it feel to know you are keeping that boy from winning what is rightfully his? Chloe threw the note in the trash, but she thought about it now, on the dance floor with Mason. She couldn’t ignore the sense that other girls were appraising them, and concluding that she wasn’t good enough for that boy.
Fed up with their imaginary glances, Chloe excused herself. In the bathroom, she took off her dress and squirmed out of the suffocating Spanx. Her liberated breasts rose up in rebellion out of their gunmetal V. With cleavage on display, she looked much less like Audrey Hepburn and more like a squat Sophia Loren. Perhaps this was a more fitting look for an almost prom queen.
She strode out into the ballroom where Mason was waiting. The way he smiled at her, it was worth it to overlook for tonight one of her mother’s more critical mottos against revealing clothing.
Mason was a great and special boy. Although he wasn’t much of a dancer, tonight he kept up with Chloe song after song, dancing alongside Blake and Hannah, doing the Macarena, seeing how low he could go under the limbo stick. Pretty low, it turned out. Lower than Blake, even. She touched his face as they danced. She kissed him. On the dance floor she was almost allowed to do this. The Academy’s six vile lunch ladies had transformed themselves into equally vile prom chaperones. They waddled between the tables like malevolent mallards, quacking. What are you doing? You’re sitting too close. No public displays of affection, go dance, but respectably. Are you finished with your dinner? You haven’t touched your steak, your mother and father will be pleased to see their hard-earned money going into the garbage. Fix the straps on your dress, young lady, Miss Divine, your dress is riding inappropriately low. Miss Divine, I’ll thank you to keep your hands on the table, not on your boyfriend’s lap. Mr. Haul, please remove your paws from your date’s bare back. Miss Gramm, do you have a shawl you can throw on? You look cold. Miss Divine, do you have a shawl you can throw on? Mason, honey, you look wonderful tonight. As you were, dear boy. As you were.
Although the occasion was jolly, Hannah seemed less jolly than usual. When they had a minute to themselves on the dance floor, Chloe pulled Hannah close. Keith Urban’s “You’ll Think of Me” was playing.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said to her friend.
“Nothing. Why? Do I seem off?”
“Little bit.”
“No, I’m fine.” She patted Chloe. “It’s all good.”
“You look beautiful.”
“You too. Very va-va-voom.” Hannah sighed. “He’s threatened suicide, you know.”
“Who?”
“Martyn, of course. Says he can’t handle it. What am I going to do? How am I going to go to UMaine, knowing I’ll run into him?”
“I don’t know,” Chloe replied, a little too loudly and brightly, as if delighted by the possibility that Hannah might consider not going to UMaine.
“Maybe I should just join the Peace Corps.”
“What?”
“Why not? I’m an idealistic young person. I’d like to visit Ecuador. They travel all the time. I’d meet new people. Experience different cultures.”
“Um, are you selfless and unobtrusive?”
“Yes.”
“You know they don’t get paid, right? They’re volunteers. It’s not like joining the army.”
“I won’t need any money. I’ll be in Ecuador.” Hannah’s long arms draped over Chloe’s neck. She smelled of Dior Poison. It drowned out Chloe’s gentle musky scent. Chloe patted Hannah’s bare back. She could feel the blades of her shoulders, like wooden fence boards.
“The Peace Corps has been in the news lately,” Chloe said. “And not in a positive light. They may have forgotten their initial objectives.”
Hannah chuckled, pulled Chloe closer, ran her hand over Chloe’s hair. “Silly girl,” she said. “I love how you’re always trying to talk me out of bad choices. Don’t worry, cutie. I’m not serious about the Peace Corps. Besides, I can’t not go to UMaine. I’d never leave you there by your lonesome. So don’t worry. You want to go find our boys?”
A pasted-on smile greeted Hannah when the girls disengaged. “Cheer up,” Hannah said as the girls made their way through the taffeta and satin jungle, searching for their dates. “Like you said, we’re not Darlene Duranceau. Everything’s still ahead of us.”
They got separated. Chloe remained at the edge of the pulsing, strobe-lighting