Letter to My Daughter: A Novel - By George Bishop Page 0,30

of a dance two years ago at Zachary High, when I was a freshman and he was a senior. It seemed like half a lifetime ago already.

“But soon you’ll graduate and I’ll be home and we can finally settle down,” he’d written in his letter to me. “Maybe next time you’re back in Zachary you can begin looking at neighborhoods you like.” He’d put his daddy to work, too, checking out home prices. Wasn’t any reason we couldn’t take out a loan and move into someplace nice. Other fellas threw all their paychecks away on fancy cars and what have you, but Tim was saving all his for me and him together. Heck, with the money he earned he might be able to turn around his daddy’s shop yet, expand it to home stereo sales. That’s where the real business opportunities were—

“Sound check!” Christy Lee shouted from the wings of the stage, and all at once the gym filled with loud, lush music. Christy ran out from behind the curtains and slid to a stop in the center of the basketball court. She began miming the song.

I say to myself, “You’re such a lucky guy.”

To have a girl like her is truly a dream come true.

The other girls clapped and cheered her on. Then Christy ran over and tugged my arm. I protested—I was busy, I didn’t know the song, she should get somebody else.

“Come on!” she said, and dragged me out onto the floor. I reluctantly fell into step beside her for a silly Jackson 5 dance routine. She called the moves: slide, kick, turn, and back.

But it was just my imagination

Running away with me …

“Boy in the house!” someone shouted, and then I saw, over Christy’s shoulder, Chip Benton. He was standing in the door of the gym, grinning. He raised his camera and slinked toward us, snapping off pictures.

“SHA girls seen busily preparing for the annual Winter Formal,” he narrated. “Here they are practicing dance steps, hoping to impress boys. SHA student council secretary Laura Jenkins shows off her funky moves.”

“Out! Out!” the girls yelled, throwing crepe paper at him. Christy, laughing, spun me in his direction. He held his camera aside as I thumped into his chest. “Oof.”

“If you insist,” Chip said. He lowered his camera, took my hands, and began to dance with me. My classmates cheered and oohed.

“You dance divinely,” Chip said.

“You’re crushing my fingers,” I answered. Luckily, the record was reaching its end. “Oops, sorry,” I said. “Song’s over. Too bad.”

But Chip held tight, because Christy had disappeared behind the stage curtains and restarted the record.

“Oops, too bad. It’s playing again,” Chip said. “It’d be very rude to leave me now.”

Then Christy threw the switch that cut the overhead flood lamps, and suddenly we were at the Winter Formal, the gym floor bathed in blue and silver lights. As the song played again, the other girls paired up and turned in couples around us, singing along in their high, hopeful voices beneath the cut-out stars and artificial moonlight:

Ooh-hoo-hoo-hooh,

Soon we’ll be married

And raise a family …

“You really do dance well,” Chip said. “I’m not kidding.”

“I guess you do, too,” I said. His right hand rested sure but easy in the middle of my back, his left hand cupped warmly around mine. He pulled me closer and rested his chin on top of my head while the Temptations sang about building a little home out in the country with two or three children, just like a dream come true. Chip asked near my ear, “Are you going to the winter dance already? Do you have a date?”

The tears came on unexpectedly, bubbling up from inside my chest. Chip leaned back and looked at me. “Whoa. Hey. What’s wrong?” His eyes were sincere, his cheeks remarkably pink below that halo of blond hair.

“Nothing. I don’t know.”

“What’d I say? Laura?” When he lifted a finger to wipe my face, I stopped him.

“No, don’t. I’m just … I’m sorry, I can’t. I’m sorry.”

I pulled away, and as I ran out of the gym I heard the other girls whispering behind my back, “What happened? What’s wrong with her?”

• • •

Well. You can probably guess what the problem was.

As much as I loved Tim, I had only seen him once in the last two years—in high school time, that was like one day out of twenty years. And the four semesters I’d been at SHA, I had to admit, had changed me, just like my parents had hoped. It’s