day for miles. Your dress is pretty, Blake might have said. Very sparkly. You and Mason light up the floor.
“What did you say?” she yelled. Her heart was full.
“You smell so good,” he said, his head near her perfumed earlobes. “What is that?”
“Jovan Musk,” she yelled back. “And Love’s Baby Soft!”
Where was Mason? She flew across the bodies, searching for this mysterious Mason, and found him entombed in a bevy of loathsome beauties dazzling him with their best cheer moves. Come hither, said the spiders to the fly.
“He’s not happy,” Blake yelled, warm breath in her face, his eyes merry. “No boy likes that kind of attention. Makes him feel like a hog at a fair.”
In a moment of swoony weakness, Chloe leaned her cheek against Blake’s black lapel. His big hand tightened around hers. His palm opened wider against her back.
She caught herself, and blessedly “She Will Be Loved” ended.
In silence the four of them chased dreams with time to lose in the empty ballroom. They were the last to leave. The overhead lights had been switched on. “A Hundred Years to Live” turned off in sync with the honk of Mackenzie’s dad’s rickety Buick. The waitresses were clearing the last of the teacups and the janitors were dragging black trash cans around. Most of the white balloons had run out of helium and floated down to the floor in tired gasps.
Chloe watched a red balloon twitching under a table. She and Mason didn’t win. Was he disappointed? He didn’t say. But he also didn’t say something corny like, don’t worry, you’re still my queen. He wasn’t a corny guy. Chloe appreciated that. Mackenzie had invited them all to her house for an after-prom sleepover. They didn’t go. Chloe wasn’t allowed, and Hannah didn’t want to. Go if you want, Chloe had said to Mason. I won’t mind. Are you sure? he asked. The briefest of glares from Blake interrupted him. Mason’s just kidding, Blake said. Yes, I am, said Mason. And now here they all were.
“They’re going to throw us out.”
Hannah, wrapped around Blake, her head thrown back, looked up at the lights. “Let them try.”
Mason was next to Chloe. He was perspiring, and his bow tie had come undone. His tux jacket off, his hair wet from dancing, still slightly out of breath, he sat glazed, staring across the deserted dance floor, squeezing and unsqueezing Chloe’s hand. He was staring into the space by the wall where a short while ago he had been flanked and fondled by smiling shining soon-to-be-extinct nimble-bodied cheer queens.
Only Blake remained fully animated. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he sang, yeah, yeah, yeah.
“I don’t know what you’re so happy about,” Mason said to him. “Once high school’s over, our life as we know it is over. Everything familiar slides across the floor, out those double doors, and vanishes.”
Blake cheerfully thumped his brother on the shirt sleeve. “Duuude, no. Wrong attitude. The magic is just around the corner.”
Chloe pulled on Mason’s hand to redirect his attention from the spectral past to the material her. Obligingly he leaned over and she kissed him to make him forget whatever it was he couldn’t.
“I hope we find some good souvenirs,” Mason said. “Everyone is dying of jealousy that we’re going. I want to bring something back for them.”
“Like the clap?” Blake asked.
“That’s what you hope to get out of our adventure?” said Hannah. “Cheesy trinkets for your dumb friends? Perhaps a fridge magnet from Auschwitz?”
“Let’s see if his friends can spell Auschwitz,” muttered Chloe.
“I’m afraid,” Mason said, “that the best part of my childhood is done. That when we come back, we won’t be kids anymore. Won’t see each other anymore.” Slowly he turned his head to stare at Chloe.
In shame she looked away.
“You and I will be kids forever, bro,” said Blake.
“And we’ll be only two hours from here, Mase,” said Hannah. “It’s not like we’re going cross-country. You’ll drive up one weekend, we’ll come down the next. You’ll see. It’ll be awesome.”
Now it was Mason who looked away. “Will it?” His dull voice faded into the white tablecloths.
Blake nudged Chloe, his black patent foot pushing the satin heel of her sandal. Nudged her, eyeing his brother, as if to say, don’t give up. Do something. Say something.
Not knowing what to say, Chloe stared up at a lonely blue balloon clinging to life. It had drifted off and hid around a glittering chandelier. Soon Spain. What would it be like? Noises of cities, flickering lights, midnight music, endless dancing, now and forever. A raucous man to swoon and sing the words, I want you to be queen. I want to tremble and laugh, Chloe thought, I want to cascade down the waterfall like a goddess, to see the substance of my fortune, to find the answer to my prayers. I want to see things I’ve never seen. Holy nights, intoxicating nights. I want to feel things I’ve never felt.
“I just figured out what’s in my blue suitcase,” said Blake. “Oh God. Of course. How could I have not seen? It’s fantastic. But don’t even ask. I won’t tell you. You’ll have to read to the end to find out what happens next.”
One half of me is yours, the other half yours Mine own, I would say; but if mine, then yours, And so all yours.
William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, 3.2
Chloe
Chloe truly hoped, really and truly, that the bulk of the twenty-one precious days in life-changing lands would be better than the travel to said lands because the travel sucked. If Dante lived now, what a book he’d write about the road to hell. Long, full of delays, unforeseen and expected trouble, stultifying waiting, wrong seats, terrible food, numb swollen legs, aching back head knees neck throat and throbbing glands—and not any glands that would be fun, at least theoretically, to have throbbing.
She had never traveled before, except in a car with her parents, and this wasn’t at all as she imagined, or as the movies made it out to be. It wasn’t in the least romantic. This was more like being stuck for nineteen hours in motionless traffic on the highway, except less comfortable, because instead of being inside a car, it felt as if the car were on top of Chloe. The carry-on
