Enthralled: Paranormal Diversions (Wicked Lovely 5.50)

The kind years.

The years where my father has gone.

When the music starts for the star dance, two of the boys reach out their hands to two of the girls. The other boy, the last star, doesn’t even glance my way. He asks Mia to dance.

She turns toward me, her face a pale flash in the pretend starlight filtering down from the ceiling. I don’t wait to see her smile. I turn back out to look at the watching crowd. Some people laugh. Some people just look. Some turn away. I don’t know who is more cruel: those who watch, or those who pretend they see nothing.

I lift my chin. After this dance, I can leave. It won’t be long.

I feel their breath in this crowded place and smell their sweat. I’m in the middle of them and I can’t get away.

I don’t want them to matter. They haven’t, for so long. But I don’t know if I can do this.

Someone else laughs, and I close my eyes, trying to block it out, for practice. I think of my father and I remember him making animals for me out of bits of folded paper. Small. Smaller, until the paper became a tiny frog, or a little winged bird. But then he stopped making things. He started bending inward, and I was left with nothing to hold.

Someone says my name, and my eyes fly open.

Elio. He walks toward me. In the artificial starlight, his hair is no color at all, but I know his face.

He stops in front of me.

He puts his hand out for mine. “Will you dance with me?”

“Look,” someone behind me whispers. Across the floor, Mia dances on, oblivious for now. The circles in her crown flash in and out of the lights.

I look back at Elio but I don’t take his hand.

“Sora,” he says. He runs his other hand through his hair, an impatient gesture I remember. “This isn’t right. You’re supposed to be dancing.”

The music behind us from the musicians sounds like everything does here. Like everything looks here. Bright, shiny, hard, with no place for anything deep.

I look down and so I see the moment when his fingers close around mine. I’m glad I’m not looking at him because I gasp, just barely, when our fingers touch.

I didn’t remember this. I didn’t expect this.

He is so warm. It feels so good.

I look back up. People still watch us, and I watch him. He smiles at me, the way he did when we made it rain, and then he pulls me close.

People behind us gasp in surprise. “What?” Elio says, over my head. “She hasn’t been Untouchable for months. It doesn’t matter.”

But it does.

The music suddenly seems so full and beautiful. I look up at Elio. He reaches for the crown. “Do you want this?” he asks, and I shake my head. He pulls back long enough to give it to me and I take it and drop it behind me. I don’t look to see where it falls. He pulls me back where I was, and this time he rests his cheek on my head. I feel the warmth through my hair, all the way down to my toes.

Maybe all the Beautiful People aren’t gone. Maybe Elio is one of them. And I never knew. All I had to do was show the pain.

Could it be that easy?

I wish they’d do a weather pattern; that they’d let it rain or snow above us to explain the drops on my cheeks and those I must be leaving on his shirt. But no—because this is the stars’ dance, the weather in the room is black sky and showery silver light. When it’s Mia’s turn, the room will be bright and white. Everyone will see her dance and everyone will want to look, but for a completely different reason than they wanted to look and laugh at me.

He runs his hand down my back just as the music ends and the silver lights dim.

And suddenly I think he might kiss me. He whispers, “Sora. Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I say, and I think he holds me a little tighter.

Please kiss me, a voice in my head whispers, and though I’m hearing my own thoughts, I almost don’t recognize them. There has to be a reason to stay here.