Snapshots (5 page)

Before the last dance, Mr. Helms climbed the steps to the bandstand. He intoned something into the microphone about the revels at the hotel being over, that mumble mumble we were a fine group of young people, that he harbored great mumble hopes as he loosed us on the rest of the world. He also said, his voice lowering on a note of seriousness, that none of the gatherings at the hotel after midnight were school-sanctioned. He'd sent flyers home stating that very fact, much to the satisfaction of my father.

The last dance was slow and dreamy, and Rick appeared as if by magic and took me in his arms. This time, unlike during our other dances, he rested his cheek against my temple, making me conscious of how well we fit together. For a few minutes, I imagined how it would be if Rick were really someone I dated. I'd had boyfriends, a few that I liked a lot. I never fell in love with any of them, and to the guys I went out with, I was just a date who had a few interesting things to say and knew how to shag really well. No, that doesn't mean what you're thinking. The shag is what we call our South Carolina official dance, and I'd learned it from my parents, the 1970 shag champions of Myrtle Beach. Okay, okay, I can't help it if that's what they call the sex act in England. A shag can also be either a rug or a haircut, take your pick.

Anyway, as the band wound the song to a close, Rick held me close for a moment. Then it was over, and everyone started calling out their good-nights. One boy stumbled over the edge of the dance floor, and Rick pulled me back in case the guy fell in our direction.

“That's Bill Kryzalic,” Rick whispered. “Drunk as a skunk.”

“What did he do—bring booze in a flask?” The chaperones were keeping a sharp eye out for any flouting of the rules, which were clear: we catch you drinking at the prom and you get a stern lecture, plus we deliver you in disgrace to your parents. Serious infractions were penalized by school suspension, and with final exams in the offing, this could jeopardize a student's graduation.

“Some guys had flasks in the restroom,” Rick acknowledged. “Pretty stupid, if you ask me.”

“Have you seen Martine lately?” I asked, frowning.

“She was dancing with Hugh Barfield about twenty minutes ago.” A lightning streak of alarm rippled through me, a warning, an alert. A glance passed between Rick and me, an instant communication of alarm. We each knew what the other was thinking, as we so often did.

I kept my voice calm. “Think I should check out the ladies' room?”

“Sure. We don't want to be late for Alec's party,” Rick said, devilishly trying to distract me from worrying about Martine.

Exasperated, I punched him in the arm and left. He leaned against a column, hands in pockets, to wait.

The ladies' room was not as crowded as it had been earlier. “Martine?” I called as I entered the anteroom, where a couple of girls were applying lipstick or tucking stray wisps of hair into their elaborate hairdos.

“She's not in here,” drawled Kaytee Blackmon, one of the girls from Spanish class. “Are you two heading up to the sixth floor for the parties?”

I didn't feel like launching into the poor-pitiful-us explanation. “Not sure yet,” I said, pretending that everything was normal and breezing out of there as quickly as I could.

Rick was still leaning against the pillar where I'd left him, but he had loosened his tie so it hung around his collar. He lifted his eyebrows. “So where is she?”

“I haven't a clue. Rick, I'm worried.”

“Let's check the ballroom,” he said.

The only people still around were members of the hotel cleanup crew, our principal and Mrs. Huff, who was packing up the punch bowl.

“Do you know,” she said, smiling as we approached, “this is my aunt's Waterford that she willed to me? Aunt Eulalie would be so pleased that I've put it to good use.”

“Mrs. Huff, do you know where Martine is?”

“Oh, she was out dancing the boogaloo with some John Travolta look-alike a few minutes ago,” Mrs. Huff said.

Rick and I exchanged grins. Boogaloo? John Travolta? What century was Mrs. Huff living in, anyway?

Still, I couldn't shake the sense that something was wrong, terribly wrong, with Martine. My concern mounted as we pressed into the lobby behind a couple of football players who were friends of Rick's. We asked them if anyone had seen her.

“Didn't she go upstairs with some of the other kids?” asked one of the guys.

“I doubt it,” I replied.

“I'm sure she got on the elevator,” said one of the others.

“Oh, shit,” Rick muttered. “What the hell is she up to?”

I rested a hand on Rick's sleeve. “Rick, she could have gone up for a while and meant to be back but lost track of the time.”

“You're right,” Rick said, a line of worry appearing between his eyes. He knew as well as I did that Martine had no business being on the sixth floor.

We crowded into the elevator, and the exchange among the other kids was loud and jocular. When the doors opened and we all tumbled out, someone behind us yelled, “Party!” at the top of his lungs.

Most of the doors to the rooms lining the corridor were open, and music blared from several. Shannon Sottile, one of my colleagues on the school newspaper, lounged in a doorway, sipping from a paper cup.

“Hiya, Trista. Whassup?”

“We can't find Martine,” I told her. Shannon had changed into hip-huggers so tight that she must have slithered them on.

“She's not in my room,” she said, “but come in anyway. We've got a bunch of food that my mother sent over, Triscuits and cream cheese with hot-pepper jelly. Half a ham.”

“Later,” Rick said, pushing past her.

The next room's door was closed, a discarded bow tie draped across the doorknob in a not-so-subtle signal that the occupants wanted privacy. I wondered who was in there doing the deed; I wondered whether I'd be having sex, too, if I had a boyfriend. I had never let anyone get past second base, though I was curious about how I'd feel if I ever did. Happy? Scared? In love? Who knew?

Rick's hand in the small of my back guided me to the next door, behind which a raucous gathering was in progress. Sam Gambrell, wearing a pair of wrinkled Bermudas and nothing else, staggered into the hall. In the room behind him, the cheerleaders' captain danced on one of the beds to an MTV video playing loudly on the television set behind her. She was bouncing up and down, her hair loose and unruly, a group of onlookers egging her on.

“Has Martine been around here?” Rick asked Sam.

“Ummmm, yeah. A while back. She went through there.”

Something was wrong with Martine, I felt it in my bones. I slipped my hand into Rick's as we craned our heads far enough inside the door that we could see where Sam was pointing. A corridor in the room led past a bank of closets on one side, and an open door adjoined this room and the next. Rick stepped into the murky gloom inside and pulled me in after him.

The closets in the hall between the two rooms faced a bathroom, where someone was washing her face.

“Hi, Rick,” said Kim Yarbrough. “Hi, Trista.” She was stuffed into a royal blue satin dress like a sausage into a casing.

“We're trying to find Martine,” I said, standing on tiptoe to peer over Rick's shoulder.

“She was with Hugh Barfield,” Kim said in a confidential tone. “They went in there.” She angled her head over her shoulder toward the other room.

“Hugh had a date with Abigail, didn't he?”

“They were fighting, and she ran down the hall crying,” Kim said.

Just then we heard someone vomiting in the bathroom next door. I was right behind Rick when he rounded the corner into the brightly lit vanity alcove. The open door to the tub and toilet area revealed a pale Martine leaning over the white porcelain john and retching miserably.

My heart sank. Somehow Rick and I had to get Martine out of there, and it didn't look as if she'd be in any shape to leave for quite a while.

1990

“M
artine!” I said, brushing past Rick, who stood frozen in the doorway.

“Tris, oh Tris. I'm so-o-o-o-o sick.”

I knelt beside her and held her head, murmuring to her. When she leaned back against the bathtub, I stood, rinsed a clean washcloth in cool water and passed it to her so she could wipe her face.

She handed the washcloth back, eyes sunken, cheeks hollow.

“Are you going to be okay?” I asked, not at all happy with the state she was in. We'd have some explaining to do if we didn't manage to remove the stain down the front of her dress before Mom saw it.

Martine nodded wearily. “Hugh gave me something to drink. I had too much. Or maybe it was because I mixed it with all that sickening punch—” She clutched her stomach but managed to get her nausea under control.

“You're going to be just fine,” Rick said from behind me. “Let me help you up.”

“Where's your purse?” I asked.

Martine only moaned, and I went into the other room. Unlike the room we'd passed through earlier, this one was dark and quiet. I groped for a light switch, my eyes unaccustomed to the darkness after the glaring brightness of the bathroom. Someone reached out and grabbed my wrist.

“Where've you been, Martine?” asked Hugh Barfield, looming out of the darkness. I recoiled at his boozy breath.

“I'm not—”

“They have names for girls like you. I'd never have pegged you for a tease. Now, come on and I'll show you the fun I promised.” Behind him I saw a king-size bed with its bedspread flung back and the sheets all rumpled.

“I'm Trista, not Martine,” I said. “She's in the bathroom, throwing up her guts. Let me
go.
” I wrenched away from him, but he was too quick for me, also very strong. He played guard on the football team and was built like a Hummer on steroids.

“You're Martine. You can't fool me,” he said, and in horror I felt him fumbling with the top of my dress. I said, “No!”, but he lurched against me and before I knew it, I was on the bed and he was lying on top of me.

I was terrified. Sure, there were other kids nearby, but now this guy was yanking my dress up. My futile struggles only incited him more.

“Stop,” I said, but the word was muffled by his chest pressing against my face so I could hardly breathe. I turned my head aside and tried to scream, but all I managed was a grunt.

And then Hugh's weight suddenly lifted off. Rick yelled something and tossed Hugh across the room, where he landed on a table and yelped. Hugh was up in an instant, slamming Rick into the wall. Out of the corners of my eye, I saw classmates crowding around both doors.

Martine was wailing, but Rick kept his cool. Pinned against the wall as he was, the only thing he could do was crack his head against Hugh's. It worked. Hugh loosened his grip, and Rick twisted away. Blood ran down his cheek, staining his white shirt.

Hugh staggered backward, but Rick wasn't through with him yet. He grabbed a handful of Hugh's shirt and unleashed a punch that connected with Hugh's jaw. Rick would have kept hitting him except that Sam, Shaz and some of the others inserted themselves between them. Hugh, his nose bleeding copiously, struggled to lurch to his feet.

I ran to Rick, collapsing against him, and Martine joined us, hugging us both. Martine and I were sobbing, me with considerable relief.

“Hurry,” Rick said. “Let's get out of here.” We broke apart, Martine and I linking arms around each other as Rick aimed us toward the door. Which was where we encountered a couple of stern hotel security guards, who took a dim view of the situation, though they eased off when we told them we were going home. Shaz was tending to Hugh, and everyone stood silently aside while the security guards escorted us from the room and then out of the hotel, where the limo driver was waiting patiently under the front portico.

I'd managed to pull myself together, to be strong for Martine and Rick because that was what they expected of me, but apart from my indignation and anger, I was just plain scared. Even so, damage control was uppermost in my mind. I was already thinking ahead to how to keep Mom and Dad from finding out what had transpired that night. Finally I understood the dire looks that had passed between my parents when we'd all sat around the dining-room table the night Martine and I had asked permission to stay at the hotel. “Stuff happens” is the way Dad had put it, and now I understood what kind of stuff he meant.

On the way home in the limo, Martine lay with her head cradled in my lap. Beside me, Rick dabbed silently at the cut on his forehead, which was still bleeding. We sped away from downtown Columbia, leaving its bright lights and nightlife behind. Commercial buildings gave way to residential neighborhoods, and soon we reached the suburbs with their neat houses and quiet streets. Before long I spotted a white H on a blue road sign. We were near the hospital where Mom had gone to have her broken foot X-rayed some years ago.

“Should we stop by the emergency room? See if you need stitches?” I asked Rick.

“No,” he said. “It's nothing much.”

Martine groaned. She'd be feeling the aftereffects tomorrow morning, I was sure. Part of me sympathized with what she'd done—I'd wanted to go to the party on the sixth floor, too. Still, I was furious with her for getting Rick and me in such a mess.

As we climbed out of the limo in front of our house, a gentle breeze soughed through the oak trees. I curved my arm around Martine's shoulders while Rick tipped the driver. Above us a myriad of stars spun through the sky, gleaming points of white. You think the stars will always be there, yet they blaze into life and then drift away, eventually burning themselves out. Like people, I thought. Like us.

“You sure you kids are going to be all right?” our driver asked. He'd waited patiently outside the hotel, expressed concern about Rick's cut and given him a handkerchief with which to blot up the blood.

Rick's gesture encompassed the cul-de-sac. “We all live here. We're okay. Thanks, man.”

The driver nodded but didn't leave until we'd gone into the house.

Only the dignified ticking of the grandfather clock punctuated the silence inside. Mom and Dad had left a night-light burning in the hall as they always did when Martine and I were out in the evening.

I peeked into the garage to check on the Lincoln. It was in its usual spot, so I hurried back to the hall, where Martine was leaning with her forehead against the wall and Rick was awkwardly patting her shoulder.

“Wait here,” I whispered.

I made my way up the stairs as quietly as I could. My parents' bedroom door was open and the room was dark, the red digital display of the alarm clock glowing beside the bed. A board creaked under my light footsteps.

“Martine?” my mother said sleepily.

“Trista,” I corrected her. I stopped at the door. Dad was snoring; nothing ever woke him, but Mom was a light sleeper.

“Did you enjoy the dance, honey?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That's wonderful. Have a good time at Alec's party. You can tell us all about the prom tomorrow morning. Dad's going to cook one of his belly-buster breakfasts, so be sure to invite Rick.” Every once in a while, Dad outdid himself on Sunday morning—eggs, ham, grits and flaky batter biscuits made from scratch the way his mother taught him.

“That's good. G'night, Mom.” I moved toward our room.

“Have fun, Trissy.” I heard her roll over and sigh.

After a minute or so, I tiptoed back downstairs. By this time, Martine and Rick had moved to the kitchen, Martine pale and sitting in a chair, Rick's cut still bleeding a good bit.

“Go on up and get into bed,” I directed Martine. “If she hears you, Mom will assume we're changing clothes for Alec's party. Dad's not going to wake up—he's dead to the world.”

“What about the party?”

I glared at my sister, disheveled and clutching her stomach. “I'd say that's out, Martine. You can't show up at the Finnerans' like this, and there'd be too many questions if I went without you.”

“Okay,” Martine said weakly. “You'll be up to bed soon, right?”

“Yeah, but I suggest you take a few Tums. Dad's planning a belly buster for tomorrow.”

I pushed Martine toward the hall. “Go
on.
Before Mom decides to wake up again and get chatty because she can't go back to sleep. And hide the dress. We'll drop it off at the dry cleaner's Monday.”

Martine went.

“Now you,” I said to Rick. “I'm afraid you're going to resemble a piece of raw hamburger tomorrow.”

“I guess, considering where the cut is, I can't pass it off as a shaving nick,” Rick said.

“There's always running into a door.”

“Or falling downstairs,” he said.

We kept a well-stocked first-aid kit in the hall bathroom, and I made Rick sit on the toilet lid while I washed out his wound with peroxide. He winced but didn't complain.

“This is deeper than I thought,” I said as I studied it. “No wonder it bled so much.”

“The shirt is ruined,” he said, gazing down ruefully at the blood-spattered tucks and pleats.

“I'll handle that,” I said. “Take it off.”

As he shrugged out of the shirt, I peered at the cut on his head again. I didn't like the way it splayed from the center. Stitches might be required, and I said so.

While I ran cold water into the sink, Rick stood and inspected his reflection in the bathroom mirror. “It could be worse. Just stick a Band-Aid on it.”

He sat back down, and I pressed the bloody shirt into the water before rummaging in the first-aid kit. I remembered how, when Dad cut his hand while sharpening a lawn-mower blade, he'd refused to go to a doctor. Mom had positioned the two sides of flesh together before securing them with a butterfly bandage, and I was lucky enough to find such a bandage in the kit.

I squirted a liberal dose of Bacitracin on Rick's wound, padded the cut with gauze and applied the butterfly. I did a pretty good job, and I was sure that when Rick washed his hair and it fell in its natural pattern over his forehead, the cut would be barely noticeable.

“There,” I said. “We're finished.” I turned my attention to the sink, where the blood had colored the water bright pink. I swished it, rinsed it, squeezed some of the water out and studied it. “The bloodstains are fading,” I said.

“Are you going to tell your parents that we went to Alec's party?” Rick asked as he followed me into the kitchen, where I rolled up the shirt and shoved it into a plastic bag.

I shook my head. “No point in lying if we don't have to. I'll invent some reason we didn't go.” I handed the bag to Rick, who squished it smaller and stuffed it into his pocket. He picked up the tux jacket and slung it over his arm.

“Like what? Let's coordinate our stories.”

“Cramps. One of us had cramps and had to come home, so the rest of us skipped the party, too.” I'd let Martine have the cramps, I figured. That way Dad might exempt her from his belly buster in the morning.

“Okay. That'll work.” I felt no embarrassment talking about something as intimate as menstrual cramps with Rick. He'd heard many discussions of female topics over the years.

“I might stop by the party after I change,” Rick said. “I could explain to Alec that you're staying home. That way no one will call here to find out why we haven't shown up.”

I certainly didn't want anyone calling us. Any unusual activity at this hour or later had the potential for raising our parents' suspicions, and if either of them woke up and found Martine soused, both of us would be grounded for weeks.

“Not a bad idea,” I agreed.

I preceded Rick into the kitchen, switching out lights as we went. Rick walked to the door, and I followed him onto the porch. A sweet breeze whispered through the dogwoods, trembling the blossoms on their stems. A mist of petals drifted through the air, sinking to join those that already blanketed the grass. The moon was a pale crescent floating through the night. The sky seemed not only alive with stars but with possibilities, promise and the excitement of being. I shivered, but not from a chill.

Rick grinned down at me, and I recalled how we had danced and how being held in his arms had touched something magical inside me.

“Quite a night, huh?” he said.

“It was supposed to be one of the happiest nights of our lives,” I replied wistfully.

“That's the usual PR on proms.”

“It's all hype,” I retorted.

“At least this one will be memorable.”

“Unfortunately. Rick, thanks for what you did at the hotel. It was awful. I—I was scared. If it hadn't been for you—” I stopped, tears filling my eyes.

“All for one and one for all,” he reminded me. His eyes were dark, his face silvered in moonlight.