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“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.
“‘Ca
“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 begi
The response from the crowd was instantaneous. As soon as the opening chords of “Ca
The disco ball overhead scattered a million little lights over me, and I felt like I was sparkling from every inch of my body.
“Oh my God,” Vicky said right into my ear. I had been so focused on the crowd, I hadn’t even noticed her climbing into the DJ booth next to me. “Not you, too!”
“Not me, too, what?”
“You’re smiling,” Vicky said accusingly. “You’re smiling like a crazy person. Are you in love with Char now, too? Does everyone just have to go and fall in love with him on sight?”
I was smiling like a crazy person because I had just made a hundred people dance, I had just made a hundred people scream, I had just made a hundred people happy. I, Elise, using my own power, had made people happy. But I didn’t try to explain this to Vicky. All I said was, “I’m not in love with Char. I don’t even know him.”
“You see why they call him This Charming Man now, though, don’t you?” Vicky demanded.
I thought about Char for a moment as I stared out over the party. I thought about the way he smiled at me, the way he touched me when we were dancing, the way he said I believe in you. “I guess he could be kind of charming,” I conceded.
“Oh, ha,” Vicky replied sarcastically. “Ha, ha, ha.”
* * *
My entire childhood, I embarked on projects. Big, all-encompassing projects. When I was eight years old, my project was a dollhouse. I was everything to this dollhouse: contractor, architect, carpenter, electrician, furniture maker, and, once it was ready for dolls to live in it, I also played the roles of Mother, Father, and Baby.
When I was eleven I became fascinated by collages. My bedroom was filled floor to ceiling with catalogs, magazines, and fabric samples. I spent hours every day gluing paper to paper, and I was very happy.
When I was thirteen my big project was stop-motion animation. I spent most of my time writing scripts, crafting characters and scenery, filming them, editing the film, and uploading them to the Internet, where roughly three people watched them—my dad, my mom, and Steve.
My last big project was becoming cool. That one didn’t work so well. I don’t know why, exactly. I put as much effort into becoming cool as I ever put into my collages, but my collages turned out beautiful, while becoming cool turned out ugly and warped. Since then I focused on smaller projects. Waking up in the morning. Doing my homework. Walking around at night. Breathing.