Matt & Zoe - Charles Sheehan-Miles Page 0,28

was paying her father so little that she could be on the free lunch program. Her father had been with the circus for many years. It didn’t seem fair that he should be struggling so much financially just because there had been an accident.

###

One week after that word spread around the school: at the beginning of December there would be a winter formal dance. I’d never paid attention to such things before, although I did remember there were some the prior year. I didn’t attend. Nor did anyone I knew.

This year, however, the formal presented me with a quandary. Carlina and I weren’t dating. Were we? I honestly didn’t know. We’d spent a lot of time around each other over the last few weeks, but that was at school. Every day I fell a little deeper under her spell. Every day I put myself in greater danger of being broken.

As the date of the dance approached, whenever it came up in discussion I would get stomach cramps, sweaty palms, tension in my chest. How could I possibly ask her to a dance? She was in eighth grade. I was in the seventh.

She was thirteen. I was twelve.

She was beautiful. I was nothing.

On the Thursday one week before the dance I got myself into trouble. It was 8 p.m., homework was done and we had all eaten a light dinner then headed to the gym. It didn’t matter whether or not final exams or anything else were approaching. My father insisted we practice three nights a week and on Sunday afternoons. I was standing on the platform when he shouted, “Matty! Get down from there!”

I jerked in position, and started to open my mouth and ask, “What?”

Before I could get the word out my father screamed, “Silence!”

I knew better than to make him angry at this point. I dropped in a ball to the net, scrambled to the edge and dropped to my feet in front of him. “Yes, sir.”

I almost trembled as he approached so close that our noses were touching. “Why aren’t you paying attention? I called your name twice! Do you think you are immune to the laws of physics? Or the laws of our home? Have you lost your mind?” I took a breath, but didn’t even attempt to answer the onslaught of questions. First, because my involuntary inhalation flooded my senses with the smell and taste of his cologne. Second because even I knew they were rhetorical questions and that he didn’t expect me to actually answer them. Not when he was screaming.

“Twenty laps.” He was stern as he pronounced the sentence. “Then I want you to explain to me what you were thinking about.”

As I began what was going to be a very long run—one time around the gym was about a third of a mile—I started to give serious thought to what I needed to say to my father. He would expect a real answer from me, but I could hardly tell them that I was thinking about Carlina’s breasts. But that’s what I had been thinking about. I tried to avoid such thoughts when practicing or in the ring—because it’s all too obvious when wearing tights—but I had fallen victim to my own scattered brain.

At the point he first screamed my name—for the third time apparently—I had just pictured her lips slightly parted as I cupped my hand on her right breast.

Of course, I had never done any such thing. I was twelve. And Catholic. Mamma would have had a heart attack if she had been able to see into my brain. Perhaps the running was what I needed to tire me out.

I was on my third lap when the answer came to me. I would need to tell at least part of the truth—that the winter formal was approaching and I didn’t know if I should ask Carlina to the dance. It presented a number of problems over and above the question of which you say yes. I had no clothes to wear to a dance. Did guys wear suits to dances? Tuxedos? Or were khakis and a shirt okay? Should I buy her flowers? I didn’t have the money for flowers. I didn’t have the money to pay admission to the dance. None of this was good news.

By my fourth lap around the building, I was sweating profusely despite the fact that it was late November. And not just because of the running.

Practice was nearly over by the time I finished