New Year's Eve by Caroline B. Cooney

Author:Caroline B. Cooney [Cooney, Caroline B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-5177-3
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2013-09-27T01:46:00+00:00

Chapter 10

BETH ROSE AND GEORGE danced three dances together. He was energetic, and that was about all you could say for his technique. But at least he was willing. A lot of the boys simply would not dance. Ever. They would buy tickets to dances, and they would dress up for dances, but once they got there, they would eat, drink, talk, or watch. Period. So Beth counted herself lucky.

Gwynnie’s knot of hair bobbed between them. “I am very attracted to your date,” she informed Beth Rose.

And not for the first time, Beth thought.

“George,” Gwynnie demanded, “what languages do you speak? English is too boring.” She was so truly strange, in her feathers and white tower of hair, with her orange sunglasses and her black boa, demanding George to speak in a foreign language. Maybe Gary was dating Gwynnie strictly for entertainment value and not because he liked her. Was Gwynnie a circus and Gary had bought a ticket? Even Gwynnie could not want that. Even Gwynnie must want to be asked because she was special, not because she was crazy.

“Illway you anceday?” George suggested.

“Well, I like that, George,” Beth Rose said. “All this time you’ve been fluent in Pig Latin and you never told me?”

George grinned. “I was saving the important stuff for later, when we’re alone.”

Beth Rose laughed. “Take her,” she said to George. “Dance the night away.”

“The night?”

“Five minutes of it,” Beth Rose corrected. Gwynnie danced George backward, using him like the prow of a ship to push through an ocean of crowd.

“Hold your dinosaurs for you?” Gary offered.

“No, thanks. They’re tethered securely.” She was getting the quivers now, with the two of them alone, their dates traded off.

“You look lovely,” Gary said after a while.

“Thank you.” She brushed her dinosaurs aside to look out the window. The sky was dense with falling snow. Far down, the lights were not distinguishable as dots, but simply as yellow blurs. It was too bad the evening was not clear.

“Getting on toward midnight,” Gary said.

“What happens then? Does Gwynnie turn back into a pumpkin?”

Gary laughed. “You’re mixing your mice and your Cinderellas. No, I meant midnight as in New Year’s Eve.”

If he asked her to dance, would she say yes?

After all, George and Gwynnie were together. It was logical that now Beth Rose and Gary should be together. If only she could believe he wasn’t asking because he was afraid of falling apart, too! But he was waiting for Gwynnie to return. Asking Beth to dance had not entered his mind. He discussed dinosaurs. Anne was not the only one who cherished an early dinosaur passion.

I quiver for a lost love of Gary, Beth Rose thought, and he quivers for a lost shoebox with a dinosaur diorama.

Gwynnie quit mid-dance anyhow and returned, George in hand. George had hung his sunglasses down over his bowtie so Beth could see his eyes again. She smiled at him, and he smiled back. At least she hadn’t lost George to Gwynnie, too!

“Forget dancing,” Gwynnie said, “I can’t dance until I’ve visited a mirror.

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