I can see myself now, standing in the middle of the room, burning too hot to touch, a star with nothing in orbit and black empty space around her.
“Come on,” Laura says excitedly. “We have to find you something to wear.”
It’s all right, I tell myself. Just go through with this. Don’t cause trouble. Do what’s expected. Go to the dance and let them laugh at you and then come home right away. There will still be time to leave.
I find a dress in my closet and put it on but I can’t zip it up. I go back outside to the front room. “Can you help me?” I ask Laura.
She doesn’t hesitate. “Of course,” she says, and she zips it right up, but her hands never touch me at all.
The transport drops me off in front of the gymnasium built above our classrooms. The doors stand open wide, and inside I can see figures moving.
I don’t want to admit it to myself, but I am curious. Last year, I didn’t come because I wasn’t asked to the dance, but I didn’t know that I never would be. Even with my father getting more and more quiet, I didn’t realize how much his absence would change things. How it would change me.
I pause in the empty doorway to watch.
People dance in couples, so close, so tight against each other. The air smells like flowers and tastes like strawberry. A spring flavor. If it were fall, we’d smell spices and taste apples.
Traditions from long ago. There’s a wedding scene in the films from the Beautiful Time. In the scene, the woman wears white. The man wears a dark suit. In front of the couple is a lovely cake, flowers, a pile of sumptuous gifts. But it’s what is behind them that makes you breathless.
It’s the sunset.
And it is bigger than our whole world.
“There you are,” says a girl whose name I don’t know. “Every-one’s waiting. Come on.” I look where she’s pointing and see the sun and moon and the other stars standing together at the front of the gymnasium. I’m supposed to join them. I follow the girl along the side of the room.
Twentieth century, only two hundred and fifty years ago, but different in so many ways. Slow, sluggish cars instead of light-fast transports. Girls with skirts with silly little dogs on them and boys with slick black jackets.
This could happen then. They had dances and they crowned kings and queens too.
No. That’s not the right time.
Mia is the moon, of course. I can tell by the crown on her head, made of large silver circles. The other girls who are stars have smaller crowns, and the girl ahead of me turns and hands me one, the silver points of each star sharp and precise in my hand. “Put it on,” she whispers. “It’s time for the
star dance.” Something like pity flashes across her face. “You can leave after this song. The next dance is for the sun and the moon.”
I’m lifting it to my head when I see him.
Elio.
He’s the sun.
I know it even though the boys don’t wear crowns like the girls do.
And I don’t know if my crown caught some of the light from some part of the room and reflected it at him, or if he heard the girl talking to me, or if he just happened to move at that moment, but he looks at me just as I settle the stars in my hair.
I drop my hands down and look back.
If anyone were to tie me here, it would be him.
But I have to go. And now I know where and when.
There’s never really been any question.
The Time of the Beautiful People.
Two hundred years ago. The early two thousands.
The best years.