How They Met, and Other Stories(26)
Author: David Levithan

I knew immediately that there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t ask him to pull over the car or turn around. I couldn’t get out of it. If I went to my parents to complain, they’d find a way to turn it back on me—I hadn’t asked them if it was a prom, had I? They’d never said it wasn’t a prom, right? I was too stunned to cry and not detached enough to laugh. I couldn’t even speak, and he showed no inclination to speak. So we sat there in awkward silence until we got to his prom.

I know this will sound strange, but after a short while, Andrew Chang and Mr. Chang started to blend in my head. I don’t even know if I’d ever met Mr. Chang. I just had this idea of him as one of my father’s generic business partners—hair slicked back, comb marks visible; an expensive suit that looked average; no enthusiasm for anything but talk of business; a scowl across his face while he thought of new ways to make money. I’m sure there was more to him than that—more to all of them—but from my daughter perspective, that’s all they were. And Andrew Chang was like that, too. Younger, yes. But younger in body, not in spirit.

We sat at our table. He was polite, getting me a soda, pulling my chair out for me when I sat down, then pushing it in. I tried to make conversation. I asked him how long he’d lived in Fairview. He said three months. I figured that was why he didn’t seem to know anyone else at our table, or in the whole room. The other girls at the table were nice enough, complimenting me on my dress, asking me where I was from. But the guys didn’t seem to have anything to say to Andrew, and he didn’t seem to have anything to say, either. When the table cleared out to go to the dance floor, he stayed seated. I stayed seated next to him. I watched the dance floor. He stared off somewhere.

Finally, he said, “You can dance if you want to. I’ll be here.”

He had no idea how ludicrous this was. There was no way I was going to dance alone with a school of strangers.

I compromised and said I would step out to the ladies’ room for a moment. He nodded. I fled.

I didn’t even have to go, but I ended up in the ladies’ room anyway. I stood in front of the mirror and realized I did in fact look good. And that it really didn’t matter. I washed my hands. I looked at myself again. I tried to stay there as long as I could.

Girls came and went behind me, beside me. One girl, drunk, put her hand on my shoulder and asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Andrew Chang’s date,” I said.

She nodded, swerved away, then swerved back.

“Who’s he?” she asked.

“Friend of the family.”

She nodded again. I wanted her to stay, to ask me something else. But she left to be with her friends.

I returned to the prom but hung in the back, against the wall. It was strange to be watching all these people I didn’t know. At first, I felt like an observer. But gradually it didn’t even feel that interesting. I understood for the first time what the term wallflower meant. Because that was what I was. Just hanging there. Nobody noticing. Useless decoration.

I looked at our table and saw Andrew Chang sitting there alone. I didn’t know whether he was simply hiding his misery or if he was somehow able to close himself off from it. He looked like this was work, that this was just something he had to do. I felt sorry for him…but mostly I felt mad that I had been trapped, too.

A guy from our table walked by me, on the way to the men’s room. We’d all exchanged names at the beginning, but I’d already forgotten them. He walked past on the way in, but on the way back he stopped at my spot on the wall and asked me how I was doing.

“Fine,” I said.

He laughed and said, “Yeah, right.”

I concentrated on him then. He was Chinese, too, taller than my date, all of his features narrower. His hair wasn’t a comb job—there was definitely some spiking going on.

“Do you want to know the truth?” I asked. He said yes, and I told it to him. The whole story.

“Well,” he said when I was through, “all I can say is that right now my date is dancing with her boyfriend.” And he told me his story, about how he’d asked this girl as a friend, and then two weeks ago she’d started dating this guy he didn’t particularly like. She wasn’t going to bail on the prom plans, but of course the minute she got to the dance, she wanted to be with her real boyfriend. So he let her. He’d danced with a few of his friends who’d also wanted to abscond from their dates, and now he was here with me.

“Do you want to dance?” he asked.

And I said yes.

I went to the table and asked Andrew if he minded. He said no. I told him to watch my purse. And then I absconded.

The new guy couldn’t dance to save his life. I mean, he couldn’t move his feet and his arms at the same time. But still, he kept drawing me into the dance, including me. And then when the prom song was played, he asked me with the sweetest expression if I would stay. We didn’t do much more than sway there, his arms around me, my arms around him. But I found myself thinking, It can’t be this easy.

When the fast dancing started again, I flailed along with him. The flower who fell from the wall.

He couldn’t dance, but he could make me laugh, and he could make me happy.

And he still makes me laugh. And he still makes me happy.

I have no idea what happened to Andrew Chang.

FLIRTING WITH WAITERS

I have always flirted with waiters. I think it was my parents who first encouraged this—when I was a little girl, they loved it when I acted cute for the waitstaff. Winsomeness made them proud. I know most parents do this, and I know that in some girls it wears off well before puberty sets in. But for me it never wore off. For me it’s still a thrill.

I did, however, narrow my scope. First I lost interest in the younger waitresses, the ones who took orders between chews of gum, who wanted the jobs so they could flirt with the boys who came in. They had no use for girls like me. Next to go were the older men—the waiters like butlers, the ones as old as the oldest wine on the wine list. Most were too grandfatherly, and the ones who weren’t grandfatherly were just wolves with flimsy teeth. While I never lost respect for older waitresses—I still love being called darlin’ and hon—I knew I could never be anything more than a sob sister with them, our intimacy limited to knowing looks, pats on the shoulder, and comfort food.

That left the boys, the guys, the young waiters and their marvelous eyes, their hair grown long, their nonchalant way of pleasing, their rebellious asides, their erogenous hands, their clean white shirts and black ties, often a little askew. I knew early on that resistance wouldn’t work. I was destined to flirt with these waiters.