Holly Grace had barely said more than three words to Dallie Beaudine since he'd picked her up for the football game in a burgundy 1964 Cadillac El Dorado that she knew for certain didn't belong to him. It had deep velour seats, automatic windows and an AM/FM stereo radio blaring out, "Good love…" She wanted to ask him where he got the car, but she refused to be the one to talk first.
Leaning back into the velour seat, she crossed her legs and tried to look like she rode in El Dorados all the time, like maybe the El Dorado had been invented just for her to ride in. But it was hard to pretend something like that when she was so nervous and when her stomach was growling because all she'd had to eat for dinner was half a can of Campbell's chicken noodle soup. Not that she minded. Winona couldn't really cook anything more complicated on the illegal hot plate they kept in the small back room they'd rented from Agnes Clayton the day they'd left Billy T's house.
On the horizon in front of them, the night sky glowed with a patch of light. Wynette was proud of being the only high school in the county with a lighted stadium. Everybody from the surrounding towns drove over to see Wynette play on Friday nights after their own high school game had ended. Since tonight was homecoming and the Wynette Broncos were playing last year's regional champions, the crowd was even bigger than normal. Dallie parked the El Dorado on the street several blocks away from the stadium.
He didn't say anything as they walked along the sidewalk, but when they reached the high school, he slipped his hand into the pocket of a navy blazer that looked brand new and pulled out a pack of Marlboros. "Want a cigarette?"
"I don't smoke." Her voice came out tight with disapproval, like Miss Chandler's when she talked about double negatives. She wished she could speak the words all over again, say something like, "Sure, Dallie, I'd love a smoke. Why don't you light one up for me?"
Holly Grace spotted some of her friends as they headed into the parking lot and nodded at one of the boys she'd turned down for a date that evening. She noticed that the other girls wore new wool skirts or A-line dresses bought just for the occasion, along with low square-heeled pumps that had wide grosgrain bows stretched across the toes. Holly Grace had on the black corduroy skirt that she'd worn to school once a week since her junior year and a plaid cotton blouse. She also noticed that all the other boys held hands with their dates, but Dallie had shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks. Not for long, she thought bitterly. Before the evening was through, those hands would be all over her.
They joined the crowd moving across the parking lot toward the stadium. Why had she said she would
go out with him? Why had she said yes when she knew what he wanted from her-a boy with Dallie Beaudine's reputation, who'd seen what he'd seen.
They drew up next to the table where the Pep Club was selling big yellow mums with little gold footballs dangling from the maroon and white ribbons. Dallie turned to her and asked grudgingly, "You want a flower?"
"No, thank you." Her voice echoed back at her, distant and haughty.
He stopped walking so suddenly the boy behind him bumped into his back. "Don't you think I can afford it?" he sneered at her under his breath. "Don't you think I've got enough money to buy you a goddamn three-dollar flower?" He pulled out an old brown wallet curled in the shape of his hip and slapped a five-dollar bill down on the table. "I'll take one of those," he said to Mrs. Good, the Pep Club adviser. "Keep the change." He shoved the mum at Holly Grace. Two yellow petals drifted down onto the cuff
of her blouse.
Something snapped inside her. She thrust the flower back at him and returned his attack in an angry whisper. "Why don't you pin it on! That's why you bought it, isn't it? So you can grab a feel right now instead of having to wait till the dance!"
She stopped, horrified by her outburst, and dug the fingernails of heT free hand into her palm. She found herself silently praying that he would understand how she felt and give her one of those melty looks she'd seen him give other girls, that he would say he was sorry and that sex wasn't what he'd asked her out for. That he would say he liked her as much as she liked him and that he didn't blame her for what he'd seen Billy T doing.
"I don't have to take this crap from you!" He knocked the flower out of her hand, turned his back on the stadium, and strode angrily away from her toward the street.
She looked down at the flower lying in the gravel, ribbons trailing in the dust. As she knelt to pick it up, Joanie Bradlow swept past her in a butterscotch jumper and dark brown Capezio flats. Joanie had practically thrown herself at Dallie the whole first month of school. Holly Grace had heard her giggling about him in the rest room: "I know he runs around with the wrong crowd, but, ohgod, he's so gorgeous. I dropped my pencil in Spanish and he picked it up and I thought, ohgod, I'm going to die!"
Misery formed a hard, tight lump inside her as she stood alone, the bedraggled mum clasped in her hand, while the crowd jostled past her toward the stadium. Some of her classmates called out a greeting and she gave them a bright smile and a cheery wave of her hand, as if her date had just left her for a minute to go to the rest room and she was waiting for him to come back any second now. Her old corduroy skirt hung like a lead curtain from her hips, and even knowing that she was the prettiest girl in the senior class didn't make her feel any better. What good was it to be pretty when you didn't have nice clothes and everybody in town knew that your mama had sat on a wooden bench most of yesterday afternoon at the county welfare office?
She knew she couldn't keep standing there with that stupid smile on her face, but she couldn't go into the bleachers, either, not by herself on homecoming night. And she couldn't start walking back to Agnes Clayton's board-inghouse until everybody was seated. While no one was looking, she slipped around the side of the building and then dashed inside through the door by the metal shop.
The gym was deserted. A caged ceiling light cast striped shadows through the canopy of maroon and white crepe paper streamers that hung limply from the girders, waiting for the dance to begin. Holly Grace stepped inside. Despite the decorations, the smell was the same as always-decades of gym classes and basketball games, reams of absence excuses and late passes, dust, old sneakers. She loved gym class. She was one of the best girl athletes in the school, the first to be chosen for a team. She loved gym. Everybody dressed the same.
A belligerent voice startled her. "You want me to take you home, is that what you want?"
She spun around to see Dallie standing just inside the gym doors leaning against the center post. His long arms were hanging stiffly at his side and he had a scowl on his face. She noticed that his slacks were too short and that she could see an inch or so of dark socks. The ill-fitting slacks made her feel a little better.
"Do you want to?" she asked.
He shifted his weight. "Do you want me to?"
"I don't know. Maybe. I guess."
"If you want me to take you home, just say so."
She gazed down at her hands where the dirty white ribbon on the mum was woven through her fingers. "Why did you ask me to go out with you?"
He didn't say anything, so she lifted her head and looked over at him. He shrugged.
"Yeah, okay," she replied briskly. "You can take me home."
"Why'd you say you'd go out with me?"
She shrugged.
He looked down at the toes of his loafers. After a moment's pause, he spoke so quietly she could barely hear him. "I'm sorry about the other day."
"What do you mean?"
"With Hank and Ritchie."
"Oh."
"I know it's not true about you and all those other guys."
"No, it's not."
"I know that. You made me mad."
A little flicker of hope flared inside her. "It's okay."
"It's not. I shouldn't have said what I did. I shouldn't have touched your leg like that. It was just that you made me mad."