Crash Into Me

"Well, Lynn'n'Colleen, let's get the picture part out of the way so we can get you into the party." He gives us some directions, has us hold hands, bodies facing one another, but heads turned toward him as we stand between two vertical banners: one reading "West Orchard Prep." with the year, and the other, "Star-Crossed Lovers", which explains why the backdrop for the photo is a black sheet with silver sparkles.

After looking through the viewfinder, he brings his head back up. "Young lady," he addresses my sister, "I have a question which I hope you will in no way construe as uncouth, but which I, as a professional, am forced to ask anyway."

Lynn looks down, extends her right leg towards him, and wiggles the fake foot at the end. "About this, right?"

"Yes, ma'am. In-frame or out's all you need to tell me, though judging by the way you're dressed, I think I got the answer already. Since I'm just a shutterbug and not a mind-reader though, I'll let you tell me."

Lynn looks at me for a moment, and I see the wheels turning in her head. Prior to tonight her answer would have been 'crop it.' This is a different Lynn though, and with a confidence borne of a blinding, newfound inner radiance, she looks back at Jeff, held held high. "Keep it in. All of it."

"Kid stays in the picture then," he says with a grin. "You got class and brass, young lady. And you," he says, looking at me, "are one lucky woman to have snagged her." Then he's back behind the camera, giving us the 1-2-3 count, and the flash goes off. He studies a screen beside him which shows the preview, taps the screen satisfied, then looks back at us. "Alright, boring one's done. Let's get the ol' kiss-cam shot and then you can go do your thing."

"We, um..." Lynn starts, but falters as the blush starts to spread across her cheeks.

"She's, actually, we're sisters," I explain, feeling the heat creeping into my face as well.

"Oh," Jeff says, before a devious grin curls his cheek. "Want me take one anyway?" he asks, one eyebrow raised. "Freak out the folks at home, start some interesting conversations on Facebook...?" Titters run through the line behind us, and I can't help laughing. As soon as I start, Lynn does too.

"Maybe...maybe later," she croaks between giggles, then drags me down the other side of the bridge.

"I'll be here all night," he calls after us. "You just let me know! All right, all right, who's next? Come on up here, you two." It's a good thing the room on the other side of those doors is dark, because otherwise everyone would think I applied rouge to my cheeks with a putty knife.

Lynn says something, but I can't understand her in the midst of all the noise. The DJ is spinning a dance remix of the Doctor Who theme, and what his music doesn't drown out is obscured by the simultaneous conversations of over a hundred teenagers talking, laughing, snapping pictures with their phones, admiring one another's outfits, makeup, and hairstyles. It's barely-controlled chaos, and I feel right at home.

The next hour passes uneventfully as everyone arrives, meals are served (the spinach ravioli is just as good this year as it was three years ago), and those in attendance start breaking off into pairs to dance or cluster together in groups to chat. Most of Lynn's classmates recognize me as her sister, and though I have no idea who many of them are, I still connect with a name here or there as collaborators on a group project or from her friends list online. As I suspected, quite a few boys (and more than one girl) do double-takes when their gazes fall on Lynn. Much to my amusement, she rejects a couple guys who ask her to dance on the basis that if they wanted to dance with her, they should have asked to be her date. Finally tired of fending off advances, she suggests we find a corner to ourselves.

The floor is packed towards the DJ's table, both from couples dancing and individuals hanging out to make requests or watch the guy in action. The crowd's thinner towards the back, so we gravitate there, hand in hand. She locates a place she deems acceptable, and we spend a few amusing seconds trying to figure out arm placement. Finally since I'm taller, we settle for my arms looped over her shoulders, and hers around my waist.

She leans in to me, close and intimate, the heady scent of the rose on her corsage making my head reel. There's a part of me which still can't accept this is happening, even though here we are, just the two of us, off in our little corner. I look down to meet her gaze and she smiles back up at me, elfin and mystical, eyes twinkling in the diffused light.

She says something, and because I can't hear her over the music, I watch her lips carefully, noting every flash of her gloss and how they bend and curl around her vowels. I can make out 'thank you' in there, so I lean in close to her ear and tell her she's welcome, and ask if she's having fun.

She pulls me close and we swap positions, her mouth now to my ear, and says she's having a blast. "Anything's better than just sitting at home tonight." She leans back, and I nod in agreement. That's an understatement.

Glimmers of light play across her as she leans closer, resting her head on my shoulder, and for a moment I consider closing my eyes until I realize I don't want to. I don't want to close my eyes, I don't even want to blink, because every moment I'm not looking at her, enjoying her, seeing her so lost in the moment, creates a gap in my memory. And if there ever comes a day when these memories are all I have of her, I want my bank filled to capacity.

The song changes tempo from a slow melody to a fast-paced one, and I look up to see most of the couples breaking apart. A bunch of the more extroverted ones make their way to the center of the floor, showing off their moves. Neither Lynn nor I are any good at this sort of thing, so we stay out of the spotlight where the DJ is critiquing styles and threatening to come out from behind the mic and show everyone how it's done.

I move one arm off her shoulder, and she leans up to my ear. "Where you going?"

"The song's over," I reply. "You want to stop for a bit?"

"Only if you do."

I don't. Dear God, I don't want to stop. I want to stand here, on the dance floor, until my feet go numb and my ankles throb, with my arms wrapped around her, until the lights are out, the music stops, and everyone else has gone home. But I can't very well do that without everyone, my sister included, thinking it's weird, so I'll settle for the next-best thing. "No, but if you need to sit down, it's cool."

"I don't wear out after one dance, Collie." Over the next few hours, she proves it.

* * * * *

"Ladies and gentlemen," the DJ intones into his mic, "I've received word the night is almost over. All those wanting one more dance, take to the floor and let's end things on a high note." A soft piano melody drifts up behind his words, promising a slow, somber, sensual closing.

Couples file out from the tables and chairs to pack the floor for the last time, and Lynn and I find ourselves shuffled further into a corner. Like many other girls, she's long since abandoned her heels and is content to dance barefoot. While my feet don't hurt thanks to the flats, I kicked mine off about half an hour ago anyway because the cool wood feels nice. It also keeps me from towering over her so much now that she's lost the height from her own shoes.

Minutes tick by, and I'm barely aware of the song, lost as we are in the crowd and darkness. I catch her eyes, hold them, and let them go as my gaze wanders to her nose, her cheeks, her lips.

I get the feeling I'm staring too long, so I turn my head and look out over the room. No one is paying us any mind. They're all caught up in their dates, the music, the moment. A lone custodian with a dry mop is circling the periphery, getting a head-start on clean up.

"Guys, if you've been holding back, this is your last chance for that kiss," the DJ says. A soothing violin solo backs his words.

I turn and accidentally meet her mouth with mine as she leans in to give me a peck on the cheek. Her eyes pop open, the surprise in hers meeting the surprise in mine head-on. Her recently-refreshed gloss glides over my lips, leaving a strawberry scent lingering in my nostrils.

This will stop any second now, I tell myself. She'll back off, or I will, and there will be a little laugh, an embarrassed chuckle, and oh my God she's not what do I do now I can't even feel my heart where how why this wasn't I can't breathe can't breathe can't-

The song ends and each of us takes a shuddering step back, strands of hair disentangling from our foreheads. I hear the DJ but it's all gibberish as I try to process what just happened. I see her eyes moving, looking over my face, searching for some reason and unable to find it because the reason is invisible. Her lips move, but nothing comes out. My throat's dry but my drink's across the room on our table, at least ten feet, ten miles, away but I can't move because I can't blink, and I can't blink because her eyes are back on mine trapping me in full-body stasis.

A lifetime passes in the span of a few seconds.

The lights snap on, and the shock of sudden brightness finally breaks the spell she's cast over me as we're both forced to squint.

Slowly her hands drop off my waist and I unwrap mine from her shoulders as she busies herself looking for her shoes and I do likewise, picking them up in one hand but not putting them on. She walks to a nearby chair and sits down, picks up a drink that wasn't hers, gives it a long look, then throws it back with a shrug.

Fuck...

She looks back at me, then stands up and wordlessly walks towards the foyer, her heels dangling off her fingers by their straps. All I can do is follow and hope she can at least salvage some good memory of this evening once some more time has passed. Mom's going to kill me. Might be time to start looking for that apartment after all.

* * * * *

On the drive home there's so much I want to say, but I can't handle Lynn biting my head off. I can't handle the questions I know she wants answered. I can't think about how pissed Mom and Dad are going to be. All I can think about is poetry, Yeats, and how stupid I was for taking his words at anything less than face value.

Having courage equal to desire isn't a merit, it's a flaw. It gets people killed in wars. It's what gets your heart torn out when someone else rejects you. A poor substitute for some goddamn common sense when it comes to something like asking your own sister to prom. It means that when you put yourself in harm's way, you shouldn't be surprised when harm comes barreling right on through like it's got the right-of-way. I hear his tongue-lashing from beyond the grave: "Did you not read the rest and realize she destroyed me? That was the whole point of the poem, yet somehow you got 'kiss my sister'? It's a miracle you didn't fail Mr. Perler's class, young lady." I don't have it in me to deal with disappointing my sister, my parents, and a long-dead poet all in the same night, so I shut down and just focus on driving.

"Collie?"

Her voice breaks my inner monologue, disengaging my auto-pilot. "Huh?"

"Where are we going?"

"Home."

"It's not even midnight."

"Yeah."

"Are you tired?"

"Yeah."

"Oh." She sits back in her seat as I coast to a stop at an intersection, waiting for the light to change, and the car falls back into silence as I focus all my attention on the bright red signal. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"You know. The...at the end there."

She can't even bring herself to say the word because it's wrong on so many levels. "It was my fault, Lynn. I'm sorry."

"No, it wasn't. You didn't know I was gonna do it. It was spur-of-the-moment. Everyone else was making out, so I didn't figure they'd see, and I thought maybe it would be OK if I just gave you a little one. To say thank you."

"Thank me? What for?"

"You know. For tonight. You always watch out for me. You didn't have to do all this, but you did. And I had a really good time. At least until I screwed it all up."

"What are you talking about? I'm the one who messed it up. I'm the one who didn't move, the one who froze up. You were going for my cheek and got my mouth."

"I didn't want your cheek, Collie."

The sound you just heard is my brain snapping in half.

"I was being selfish. I figured you gave one to Brian at the end of the night and I wanted to know what that felt like, to get that last kiss goodnight before the fairy tale has to end, you know?"

"You...didn't want...?" My brain's a manual transmission, and right now I'm stripping the gears trying to keep up with all my shifting thoughts.

I see trembles in the moisture ringing her eyes. "Just don't take me home. Mom'll know something's up and she'll blow a gasket if I walk in like this. Is there some place we can be alone for a little while? And talk? Please?"

We've sat at the light so long it's cycled back to red again, but there isn't anyone behind us to care so I take a few seconds to digest this, cycling through places to go. There's that 24-hour steak burger joint, but dressed as we are we'd attract attention. Same as if we went to the all-night pancake place, or To Bean Or Not To Bean. Besides, other people in Lynn's class could have the same ideas and she wants to be alone. It takes me a little while, but I finally arrive at a solution, flip on my turn signal, and head down a side street.

* * * * *

"Where are we?" Lynn asks as we turn on to a dirt road flanked on a wooded area on both sides.

"Remember when we were little and Dad rented that plot for us to grow veggies and stuff?"

"Yeah, kinda. I was, what, seven?"

We turn off the road onto a gravel path that ends at a field, and I glide the car to a stop. About a mile in the distance, I see a light on in one window of the solitary farm house, but otherwise there's no sign of life. "Well, I can't think of anywhere we'd be less likely to be alone this time of night than a rental garden in the middle of nowhere, so..."

I pop the trunk and drag out the blanket I always carry for weather emergencies, walk a few yards from the car, and unfold it under a nearby tree. I lean back against the trunk, and motion for Lynn to join me.

For a long time we just sit on the blanket, side by side, looking into the sky at the stars which occasionally peek out from behind the clouds. The silence is unreal, like someone dropped a soundproof dome over our little part of the world, with only the occasional zephyr to stir the leaves. Even the cicadas are quiet. I could close my eyes and sleep if I wasn't so wired with nervous energy. I think I know why she wants to talk, and I think she knows why I'm not freaking out, but neither of us wants to take the first step into that minefield. So we sit, watching the partial moon overhead, saying nothing.

After a while, I feel her hand, soft and cool, close over the top of mine. She draws her legs in and folds them in front of her, feet angled to the right, and rests her head on my shoulder. The silence claws at me like a bear, but I can't give voice to the un-voiceable. I know what I want to say just not how, like a frustrated toddler, overflowing with things to say yet lacking the vocabulary to make herself understood. The pressure behind my eyes intensifies, and I keep fighting it back. If it breaks through my wall, I'm done for, but I'm besieged on all sides and can only maintain one area at a time. 'Use your words,' Mom would advise me when I was younger and too worked up to talk. Good advice at the time, now it's as helpful as saying, 'Use your tools' to a construction worker who misplaced his utility harness.

"She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs / But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears," Lynn recites to the sky, and inside I scream with happiness. I might not have my words, but she has hers.

"Yeats," I say, recognizing the lines from one of the poems in his collection that I've read. "What do I win?"

She looks over in surprise, then smiles to herself and leans against me again. "I don't know. I never came up with a prize. Figured I'd have months before you got one right. Never thought the one you'd guess would be my favorite though."

"You mean Yeats?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"Just luck. I read that one in my book a couple days ago. Short, easy to understand. I liked it. Makes a kind of universal sense, I think."

"Yeah."

Another long period of silence drifts by like an iceberg on an ink-black ocean. With a finger, I idly trace around the pattern of a bird printed on the blanket.

Her head slumps against my shoulder. "Collie...how long have you wanted to kiss me?"

I swallow. "I don't know. A couple hours, I guess?"

"Be honest."

"I am."

"No you're not." She sits up and pulls away from me. "I've known you my whole life, and I told you before: I can read you like a book."

"I don't know what you-"

"Damn it, Collie, you're a terrible liar and I'm not that stupid, so if you have even the least shred of respect for me, drop the act. No more pretending." Her demand stabs the air between her lips and my ears. "How. Long."

Everything inside me locks up and it's a good thing, because if it didn't I'm pretty sure the ravioli from before would make its encore appearance. Jammed in neutral as it is, my brain can't come up with a good lie, so there's no squirming my way out of it. I close my eyes, fail to steady my heart, and decide to walk off the plank with as much dignity as is left to muster. "I don't know, and that's the truth. I can't give you an exact answer. It's been...it's been years." The bird on the blanket stares back at me, unblinking. "I've been fucked up like this for years. I just don't know."

The siege is over; my city lies in ruins. All there is time for now are tears. Oddly enough the admission, drawn forth from the shadows and forced into the light, feels less threatening than before. It exists, it has been acknowledged, and despite the terrible truth, I tilt my head backwards and roll my neck as though feeling the release of a long-restrained pressure. The weight, as the cliché goes, lifts from my shoulders. It is no longer my anchor, and I no longer drown under its power.

The words, "I do," escape her lips as a murmur.

I sniffle, fighting sinuses that have closed themselves off for some reason. "What?"

"I said, I do. I wasn't asleep that evening."

The hospital. Her room. Laying beside her in bed, so certain she was unconscious. Leaning over, whispering I would always love her, and would do anything for her. She heard. She knew. She's always known. The single most critical secret I've ever held in my life, the one I swore no one would ever learn, the last way I could protect Lynn, and I blew it years ago.

She shakes her head. "I tried feeding you hints, you know? Little things, here and there, to feel you out, see if I got anything. Lines from poems with a similar theme. I suspected, but you were always so careful I couldn't prove it."

Slowly the puzzle begins to snap together. The picture becomes clearer. Spending that night in my bed. Never worrying about being naked in front of me. Never shy when I helped her out of the tub. Did she even need my help after the last few years? Did everything that happened with that kiss all come about because she had feelings too, the way I did? How long had they been bottled up? How long did I spend with her, so close I could feel her skin on mine just by closing my eyes, so caught up in never making my desires obvious that I was overlooking every signal she broadcast?

"I thought I had the answer when you asked if you could take me tonight, but I wanted everything to be a surprise so I couldn't say anything else. When you and I were in the living room, before Mom started fussing about pictures, you looked me right in the eyes and I thought, maybe, I saw a glimmer. Then when the photographer guy brought it up, you pushed it aside so fast I thought I must have been wrong."