Absent (Katie Williams)

as long as I can without keeping it from her, and then I let it slide through my fingers. She takes it, running her hand over it to smooth the creases away.
    I follow my parents out of the office, pretending to bend over the drinking fountain so that I can keep watching them. They grow smaller and smaller down the hall.
    When I can’t see them anymore, I walk to the social studies hall and stand at the window set into the door of Mr. Pon’s classroom as one and another and another of the kids notice me, all of them smirking at the sight of my face peering in. Finally, one of them takes pity on me and nudges Wes Nolan. When Wes looks up from his textbook, I’m praying that his expression won’t be angry. And it isn’t. He raises his hand and calls the teacher’s name.
    When we find an empty classroom, shutting the door behind us, I step forward and, before he can say anything, I say, “You can kiss me.”
    “Kelsey.”
    “What?”
    “I think we should talk about—”
    “I don’t care. I don’t care if you think of her.”
    “Her?” he says, then blanches. “Oh, no. No. I wouldn’t pretend that you’re, I wouldn’t imagine that you’re . . .” Paige, his mind whispers, even if he won’t say it.
    But that was not what I meant. Actually, I meant the opposite. I meant that I don’t care if he thinks of Kelsey when he’s kissing me.
    “You can hold me,” I say. “Maybe right now you can just hold me.”
    He nods. “Okay. That’d be okay.”
    His coat smells like cigarettes, his chin rests on the top of my head in Kelsey’s damp hair. His hands don’t rub my back consolingly, but just hold me, like the earth holds me when I set my feet on it. He doesn’t think my name again. He doesn’t think Paige. But I meant it. I don’t care.

22. PROM NIGHT
    WHAT WOULD I HAVE WORN TO PROM ?
    I’d been to only two school dances freshman year before Usha and I had decided that they were stupid, so I have only two dresses in my closet at home: red and black. The black one is short; the red one is red. Getting ready for those other dances, I’d stand naked in my bedroom, hair wet on my back, and lay both dresses on the bed, trying to imagine how my night would be different if I wore one or the other. Red dress or black? Hair piled on my head or tousled? Dewy cheek and lip gloss or shadowed bedroom eyes? It didn’t matter. I was never the girl in my head.
    Tonight, I wonder where those two dresses are now. Are they still hanging in my closet like promises never meant to be kept? Or have they been folded up and closed in a box with my name on it? Or maybe they’ve been donated to charity and are being worn right now by two other girls at two other proms, with entirely different boys and entirely different songs, their dance moves making entirely different patterns of wrinkles in the fabric.
    Kelsey arrives early, just after the chaperones, and leans against the wall opposite from the drop cloth. She wears a knee-length shift with straps so thin they look like they’re made to be snapped. The fabric has been woven through with keen silver threads so that the dress winks dangerously, like a thousand needles, as she turns. She surveys the empty hallway once more, and now certain that Wes isn’t there, she steps back against the wall to wait. Stray strands of her hair, brushed into a frantic shine, begin to climb above her head, tiny static snakes against the brick. I remember a page I’d read in one of the left-open library books, how in actual mythology, Medusa didn’t turn you into stone because she was so ugly, but because she was so beautiful, and because you were fool enough to meet her eye.
    I draw closer, peering at Kelsey’s face. We both turn at a spike of laughter from people passing the mouth of the hallway, faces stuck in smiles at seeing Kelsey Pope alone at the dance. Kelsey presses a hand to her cheek self-consciously.
    “You look beautiful,” I say, not sure whether I’m saying it to apologize or simply because it’s true. As if in answer, Kelsey’s mind whispers, Paige. There’s no more resistance than breaking the skin of a pool as I step into her waiting form, and now I am beautiful, too.
    I post myself at the mouth of the hall, watching the dancegoers clump in twos, fours, groups. They all spare looks for me, most of them turning away, expressions laced with laughter.
    Then, Lucas Hayes lopes down the hall, the little dark-mouthed burner girl tucked under his arm. I goggle