Audrey wasn’t sure this was a good idea.
Yolanda, being the more astute in these things, had stridently suggested it and Audrey, being the more malleable in everything, had agreed nervously to give it a try. Anything was, after all, better than wallowing in the self-absorbed pity she found herself swimming through now her mother had decided to leave the family behind to be with her truck-driver lover who, she’d said laughingly, was in it for the long haul.
The room ahead of Audrey felt like a dark tunnel to oblivion. Yolanda was running late, which was typical, and the people before her were huddled together speaking in indecipherable code, which was typical, and Audrey wanted the floor to swallow her up. Which was typical.
“Are you Yolanda or Audrey?”
The voice snapped her from her terror. “Audrey,” she confessed, as if the cheery woman beside her had already figured out she didn’t belong.
“Come in, then,” the woman smiled, taking Audrey’s arm and leading her into the hall. All chatter stopped. “This is Audrey,” she shouted authoritatively and, turning to find Yolanda had arrived, added, “and this is Yolanda. I’m Shirley!” she told the girls as if they were deaf. “Welcome to Ballistone Dance Lessons for Teenagers.”
Yolanda swept her gaze across the teens before her. “Hi. From both of us.”
Audrey felt sick. There probably weren’t enough boys. She’d end up dancing with Yolanda or, worse, another girl she didn’t know. She wanted to run, now, out, gone, before the embarrassment engulfed her.
“We needed more girls,” Shirley said. “And here are two fine looking ones!”
Several boys nodded enthusiastically.
Audrey’s pathetically furtive glance around the room ceased with a dramatic intake of breath. In one corner stood a boy with his arm around a tall lithe girl with long blonde hair. His relaxed smile pierced Audrey’s fragile heart.
Shirley appeared with a lank-haired youth. “Here’s your first partner, Audrey.”
Audrey allowed her hand to be taken. During the next hour she was handed from boy to boy until finally the boy with the relaxed smile stood beside her. She was sure he could hear her pounding heart and feel the tremor in her hand, but the truth was he paid her no attention at all. At the end of the song he dropped her hand, and Audrey stumbled like a plug pulled from its socket.
“Wanna come over tonight?” Yolanda asked behind her.
“Have to finish an assignment,” Audrey gulped.
“What assignment?” asked Yolanda, puzzled.
But Audrey was gone. She dashed home and wrote a very long story about a girl who meets the love of her life at a teenage dance school.
Joni Page 