wait for an answer, and he’d move around constantly as he asked so you had to keep
turning your head to keep him in sight. I swear he was probably the most annoying person
I’d ever met. If I didn’t get a date, he’d stand off on one side with me all night long, firing
questions like some deranged prosecutor.
So there I was, flipping through the pages in the junior class section, when I saw
Jamie Sullivan’s picture. I paused for just a second, then turned the page, cursing myself
for even thinking about it. I spent the next hour searching for anyone halfway decent
looking, but I slowly came to the realization that there wasn’t anyone left. In time I finally
turned back to her picture and looked again. She wasn’t bad looking, I told myself, and
she’s really sweet. She’d probably say yes, I thought… .
I closed the yearbook. Jamie Sullivan? Hegbert’s daughter? No way. Absolutely not.
My friends would roast me alive.
But compared with dating your mother or cleaning up puke or even, God forbid . . .
Carey Dennison?
I spent the rest of the evening debating the pros and cons of my dilemma. Believe
me, I went back and forth for a while, but in the end the choice was obvious, even to me. I
had to ask Jamie to the dance, and I paced around the room thinking of the best way to ask
her.
It was then that I realized something terrible, something absolutely frightening. Carey
Dennison, I suddenly realized, was probably doing the exact same thing I was doing right
now. He was probably looking through the yearbook, too! He was weird, but he wasn’t the
kind of guy who liked cleaning up puke, either, and if you’d seen his mother, you’d know
that his choice was even worse than mine. What if he asked Jamie first? Jamie wouldn’t
say no to him, and realistically she was the only option he had. No one besides her would
be caught dead with him. Jamie helped everyone—she was one of those equal opportunity
saints. She’d probably listen to Carey’s squeaky voice, see the goodness radiating from his
heart, and accept right off the bat.
So there I was, sitting in my room, frantic with the possibility that Jamie might not
go to the dance with me. I barely slept that night, I tell you, which was just about the
strangest thing I’d ever experienced. I don’t think anyone ever fretted about asking Jamie
out before. I planned to ask her first thing in the morning, while I still had my courage, but
Jamie wasn’t in school. I assumed she was working with the orphans over in
MoreheadCity, the way she did every month. A few of us had tried to get out of school
using that excuse, too, but Jamie was the only one who ever got away with it. The
principal knew she was reading to them or doing crafts or just sitting around playing
games with them. She wasn’t sneaking out to the beach or hanging out at Cecil’s Diner or
anything. That concept was absolutely ludicrous.
“Got a date yet?” Eric asked me in between classes. He knew very well that I didn’t,
but even though he was my best friend, he liked to stick it to me once in a while.
“Not yet,” I said, “but I’m working on it.”