Dance of the Happy Shades

would work in the cafeteria and in the summer she would do farm work, like picking tobacco. Listening to her, I felt the acute phase of my unhappiness passing. Here was someone who had suffered the same defeat as I had—I saw that—but she was full of energy andself respect. She had thought of other things to do. She would pick tobacco.
    We stayed there talking and smoking during the long pause in the music, when, outside, they were having doughnuts and coffee. When the music started again Mary said, “Look, do we have to hang around here any longer? Let’s get our coats and go. We can go down to Lee’s and have a hot chocolate and talk in comfort, why not?”
    We felt our way across the janitor’s room, carrying ashes and cigarette butts in our hands. In the closet, we stopped and listened to make sure there was nobody in the washroom. We came back into the light and threw the ashes into the toilet. We had to go out and cut across the dance-floor to the cloak-room, which was beside the outside door.
    A dance was just beginning. “Go round the edge of the floor,” Mary said. “Nobody’ll notice us.”
    I followed her. I didn’t look at anybody. I didn’t look for Lonnie. Lonnie was probably not going to be my friend any more, not as much as before anyway. She was what Mary would call boy-crazy.
    I found that I was not so frightened, now that I had made up my mind to leave the dance behind. I was not waiting for anybody to choose me. I had my own plans. I did not have to smile or make signs for luck. It did not matter to me. I was on my way to have a hot chocolate, with my friend.
    A boy said something to me. He was in my way. I thought he must be telling me that I had dropped something or that I couldn’t go that way or that the cloakroom was locked. I didn’t understand that he was asking me to dance until he said it over again. It was Raymond Bolting from our class, whom I had never talked to in my life. He thought I meant yes. He put his hand on my waist and almost without meaning to, I began to dance.
    We moved to the middle of the floor. I was dancing. Mylegs had forgotten to tremble and my hands to sweat. I was dancing with a boy who had asked me. Nobody told him to, he didn’t have to, he just asked me. Was it possible, could I believe it, was there nothing the matter with me after all?
    I thought that I ought to tell him there was a mistake, that I was just leaving, I was going to have a hot chocolate with my girl friend. But I did not say anything. My face was making certain delicate adjustments, achieving with no effort at all the grave absent-minded look of these who were chosen, those who danced. This was the face that Mary Fortune saw, when she looked out of the cloakroom door, her scarf already around her head. I made a weak waving motion with the hand that lay on the boy’s shoulder, indicating that I apologized, that I didn’t know what had happened and also that it was no use waiting for me. Then I turned my head away, and when I looked again she was gone.
    Raymond Bolting took me home and Harold Simons took Lonnie home. We all walked together as far as Lonnie’s corner. The boys were having an argument about a hockey game, which Lonnie and I could not follow. Then we separated into couples and Raymond continued with me the conversation he had been having with Harold. He did not seem to notice that he was now talking to me instead. Once or twice I said, “Well I don’t know I didn’t see that game,” but after a while I decided just to say “H’m hmm,” and that seemed to be all that was necessary.
    One other thing he said was, “I didn’t realize you lived such a long ways out.” And he sniffled. The cold was making my nose run a little too, and I worked my fingers through the candy wrappers in my coat pocket until I found a shabby Kleenex. I didn’t know whether I ought to offer it to him or not, but he sniffled so loudly that I finally said, “I just have this one Kleenex, it probably isn’t even clean, it probably has ink on it. But if I was to tear it in half we’d each have something.”
    “Thanks,” he said. “I sure could use it.”
    It was a good thing, I thought, that I had done that, for at my gate, when I said, “Well, good night,” and after he said, “Oh, yeah. Good night,” he leaned towards me and kissed me, briefly, with the air of one who knew his job when he saw it, on the corner of my mouth. Then he turned back to town, never knowing he had