Char furrowed his brow. “Why not?”
“I … I don’t really know how.”
Char started dancing then, making weird jerking motions with his arms and stomping his feel at awkward intervals, like a spasmodic soldier. “Can you do better than this?” he shouted over the music.
I nodded, smiling despite myself.
“Great! Then you know how to dance.” He stopped doing the soldier moves and grabbed my hand in his. “Just follow my lead.”
“But I don’t know—”
He just shook his head and sang along in a loud falsetto: “So when the night falls, my lonely heart calls.”
He bent his elbow to pull me in toward him, then pushed me back with his arm. It was so fast that I didn’t have time to say anything before, suddenly, we were dancing. He twirled me in toward him, then switched hands and spun me back out the other way. He passed our arms over my head and then around my side. And the whole time he was doing some crazy, complicated footwork. His legs looked like spider legs.
“Watch my face!” he shouted over the music. “Not the floor!”
“I can’t help it!” I shrieked. “I don’t want to fall.”
“You’re not going to fall!” he shouted.
“I feel like I’m on a roller coaster!”
Char stopped spinning me around and pulled me in to him. “I need to change the song,” he said into my ear. “Playtime is over. Come with me into the booth for a sec.”
He led me into the DJ booth. It was only a few feet off the ground, but I felt suddenly like a god, looking down at the party from on high. The wall behind the booth was covered with Post-its on which people had written song requests or notes. Play some Sabbath! Something with a beat. Do you have anything by the Bluetones? DJ This Charming Man ROCKS! I watched Pippa and Vicky, just below us, still dancing like maniacs. Vicky was jumping up and down and punching the air, while Pippa swayed on her heels, rolling her shoulders and head around. Pippa stared at me for a moment, narrowing her eyes as if sizing me up for something—though for what, I could not have said. Then she tossed her hair and returned to ignoring me.
“I can dance!” I exclaimed as Char bent over his laptop.
“I told you,” Char said. “Everyone can dance.”
“Well, really it’s that you can dance. I just followed. Where did you learn to dance like that, by the way?”
“Church youth group,” Char replied without looking up.
“I don’t believe you.”
“That’s good. That’s a good policy. Try never to believe me unless you absolutely have to.”
“So, where did you learn to dance?”
“My wedding,” Char replied. He transitioned into a Primal Scream song. “I had to take a lot of dance classes before my wedding. You know, for our first dance to Elton John.”
For some reason this gave me a weird pang, which lingered even after I glanced at his ring finger and reassured myself that he was just kidding again. It was like the I don’t belong here feeling, sort of. It hit that same place in my stomach.
“Char,” I said, and asked for a third time: “Where did you learn to dance?”
He looked up at me then, though his hand was still fiddling with dials. “I taught myself,” he said finally. “I go out a lot.”
I nodded like I was very wise and knew all about going out a lot.
“How old are you?” he asked me suddenly.
“Sixteen.”
Char hung his headphones around his neck. “I like that.”
“What?” I felt self-conscious all of a sudden, and I crossed my arms across my chest. “That I’m only sixteen?”
He laughed. “That sounds creepy. No, I like that you’re honest. Some girls might claim to be older, you know, so they seem more mature or whatever. You’re not pretending to be anything you’re not.”
“I suck at pretending to be anything I’m not,” I told him, leaning against the booth’s railing. “It’s not for lack of trying.”
He laughed again.
“Your turn,” I said. “How old are you?”
“Nineteen. Twenty in June.”
“How long have you been doing this?” I gestured out at the room.
“I’ve been DJing at Start for a year and a half now. I’m precocious,” he confided.
“Oh, me, too.”
“Really?” He raised an eyebrow. “At what?”
“Pretty much everything. I started speaking in sentences when I was a year old. I could read chapter books by the time I was six. During fourth grade math class, I just sat in the back of the room with my own middle school pre-algebra textbook. My favorite band in kindergarten was the Cure, because I liked their lyrics.”
Why are you telling him this? Do you think this will make him like you more? In all your life, telling people these things about you has never once made them like you more. Don’t you know this by now?
“Wow.” Char pursed his lips. “So you’re, like, a genius?”
“No,” I said. “I’m precocious, and I work hard. It’s not the same.”
“All of that was in the past,” he said. “The middle school textbooks and all that. What precocious things are you up to these days, Elise?”
I tried to think of my answer to his question. The last thing I had really studied with that sort of vigor, the last thing I had thrown myself into so wholeheartedly and whole-mindedly, thrown myself into until I was covered in it, breathing it in until I almost drowned. The last thing was how to be normal.
“I’m not really doing that anymore,” I told Char. “I’m too old to be precocious.”
“Pshh. You’re a baby,” he said, and I felt that same pang again, deep in my stomach. “I am too old to be precocious. But I’ll keep claiming it anyway.” He turned back to his computer and clicked around some more. “All right, if you’re so smart, help me out here. What should I play next?”
“Well, what do you have?” I asked, trying to peer at his song list over his shoulder.
“I have everything,” he told me.
“‘Cannonball,’” I suggested. That had been the last song I was listening to on my headphones as I walked over here.
“The Breeders? Sure.” I watched as he pulled up the song on his computer, then put on his headphones and fiddled with the turntables in front of him.
Pippa came over and tugged on Char’s pant leg. He bent down to speak with her briefly, then stood up and said to me, “Hey, can you do me a favor? I’m going outside with Pippa for a sec. Take these”—he plopped his headphones around my neck—“and then, when this song ends, take this slider here and push it over to the other side.”
“What?” I said.
“It’s really easy. It’s already cued up. Just move this thing here, and it will transition into the next song. I’ll be back before you have to do anything else.” Char laughed. “Don’t look so panicked, Elise.”
I looked out at the room of dancing, kissing, drinking people and asked, “But what if I screw up?”
Char placed his hands on my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “You won’t screw up. I believe in you.”
Then he hopped down from the booth, linked hands with Pippa, and ran out of the room with her. It was just me, standing alone, overlooking the party.
Anyone who said I believe in you obviously didn’t know me very well.
The Primal Scream song was nearing its end. I could hear the music beginning to fade out, and I could see on Char’s computer program that only twenty seconds remained. I took a deep breath, and then I shoved the slider over, as fast and as far as it would go.
The response from the crowd was instantaneous. As soon as the opening chords of “Cannonball” came out, everyone in the room screamed as one. People raised their hands and their drinks to the ceiling. A big group of boys in the center of the room started jumping up and down like they were on a trampoline.