I unfolded the note for the hundredth time and spread it out on my lap. The paper had begun to split at the fold lines, and it had only been in my possession for little more than a day. I analysed every letter - every pen stroke - for signs of a ruse, or of sarcasm.
I can take you. Meet at 7p.m. at Hodges Field. Yours, An Admirer.
The note had appeared as if by magic in my locker, delivered sometime between the 3:30pm bell and little more than a half-hour later. The after class excursion had been to the Community Centre where my Senior Prom was being held the following evening.
I had decided not to go. I didn’t have a date. No one had asked and I had no one to ask now. Mark Horschel had been my last best bet. We had been friendly for the time my friend Suze had dated his friend Jim. For a time I thought he fancied me. But with one week to go I overheard Jim telling Nick that his cousin from the city was coming down and was Mark’s date. She wanted to see what went on at a Prom out in the sticks.
The side door to the auditorium was unlocked. From the ceiling, ribbons and streamers hung in graceful curves, bright reds and yellows and shiny silvers. A heavy blue curtain backed the stage, adorned with stickers shaped like stars. A banner hung above the stage with our year written in huge letters smeared with glitter. Tables topped with white cloth stood in a carefully arranged geometric pattern. Even in the light of the day there was a magic to the whole affair.
I had considered going alone. It wouldn’t be so bad and my social standing could weather the storm. I am not unpopular, but rather one of the invisibles. We are the sort whose name you hear ten years after graduation and you say, Whatever happened to her? All the while struggling to put a face to the name.
While everyone else danced, I could go and find a seat, not in the back corner, but somewhere on the side, neither centre stage nor out of the way. There but not noticed. Hell I may even get to have a dance. But no, I had made up my mind.
Until I went back to my locker and found the note.
Three weeks before Prom I drove two towns over to see about a dress. I couldn’t risk doing it at the local store. Already then I feared my lot was to be home in my room, and I couldn’t have people talking about how I had wasted money on an unused dress because I couldn’t find a date. But I had to have a dress. Just in case.
The woman in the store smiled and touched my arm. I was petrified and she could sense it. A young girl without her mother or a friend asking after a formal dress. She knew not to ask.
She looked me up and down and led the way. With a flourish she whisked a blue gown with spaghetti straps off the rack and held it against my body. She asked me what I thought and I shook my head. Four gowns and four shakes of the head later and she gently took my hands in hers and asked what I had in mind.
Truth was I didn’t know. I figured in these moments something would speak to me. Isn’t that how it worked? I ran my finger over the coat hangers. It was the colour that spoke. Ruby Red. I pulled the long flowing gown off the rack and an electricity ran up my arm.
Why don’t you try it on?
I broke into a sweat in the changing room, my skin flushing pink. I pulled back the curtain and straightened my arms and wiggled my fingers. I had no idea what else to do. The woman smiled and ushered me to the mirror. She said the colour suited me. Her job is to make the sale and sometimes that involves telling a lie, but this felt like the truth.
My stomach sank. I hadn’t looked at the price tag. I reached behind to find it and she sensed my worry. She held it up so I could see. The dress was half price. I couldn’t believe my luck. It’s the colour, she explained. The girls here say it is bad luck, after what happened to Louise.
Everyone in the area knows about Louise Fuller. It happened when my parents were at school. It was the night of her Senior Prom. Her date, a boy named Gary, waited and waited but Louise never showed. They found her battered body at about the time she should have been sharing the final dance with Gary. She lay at the bottom of a ravine with injuries consistent with a high speed car accident. Deep gashes all over her face and arms suggested she had flown through a shattered windshield. Impact with the road, or a tree, or both, explained her mangled bones.
When they found her the red of her dress masked the blood. There was a moment they thought she might yet be alive. They were wrong.
Back up on the road they searched for the tell-tale signs of an accident. No car was one thing, it was not unheard of for vehicles to flee the scene. But there were also no shards of glass from the windshield or black streaks on the road from a driver trying in vain to prevent disaster. Nothing.
Someone suggested the body had been moved and it was a matter of time before they found the site of the accident. But they never did. It was a strange enough occurrence to send the small town gossip machine into overdrive. Twenty years later without an answer left the story with a heartbeat. The ravine became a pilgrimage site on Halloween.
I took out the dress now, hidden away at the end of the closet so Mama wouldn’t see. Mama had paused when I told her I wasn’t going to Prom, and then she had raised her eyebrows and shrugged. I had half expected her to talk me into it, or at least try. She didn’t. It was one less hassle for her. But spending money on a Prom I wasn’t even attending would not be so easily dismissed.
Back when things had been a little better, they had never been good but they had been better, Mama had shown me her old yearbook. Her and Papa were crowned King and Queen their senior year. In the photo they looked like dolls. Flawless skin and white teeth that seemed to glow.
Papa had gone to college on a football scholarship. He lasted a little less than a year. It was not the fault of injury, there was no blown out knee or shoulder to blame. It had been instead a first season riding the bench and all the while racking up disciplinary warnings over drinking and fitness. One missed training session too many broke the back and put him on the road to the small town auto shop. Mama had followed.
The photos arranged on the mantle in our living room are all from that time. Mama in white on her wedding day, a slight rounding at the stomach impossible to hide. Dad kneeling in his football uniform. A holiday picture from their trip to the lake. Papa with his leather jacket and quaffed hair doing his best James Dean impersonation. Mama with her summer dress and sunglasses. They looked happy and maybe they had been.
The closest I came to being in any of the photos on the mantle was the small bump on Mama’s stomach as she wore her wedding dress.
I put on the dress. It was a perfect fit, as if the dressmaker had me in mind when sewing the seams. I closed the door on my wardrobe so I could look in the mirror. I took a step forwards so the lightbulb hung just behind my head. In this light it looked better.
My parents had their Prom night. They had been King and Queen. There hadn’t been much since then, but at least they had that. The one night where they were something. In our small town they were everything. Their glittering crowns and their wide smiles captured by the flash of the camera. For all the disappointment that followed, they had that.
I smoothed a wrinkle in the dress that had formed above my hip. I gave myself a faint smile. Almost beautiful. Almost.
At a quarter to seven I slipped out the window, the note tucked away in my purse. It could be a prank. It was possible. My school has its share of bullies, but I thought it unlikely. Right now my classmates were sitting down to dinner, nerves in overdrive for the night to come. They had better things to do.
A small part of me hoped that I would get to Hodges Field and no one would show. That I would turn around an hour later and walk home unnoticed. Another part of me hoped for magic.
Hodges Field is an easy ten minute walk from our house. It took longer in Mama’s white heels, but I made it before seven. I chose a place in the gloom between two streetlights to lean on the railing. The dark of the night obscured the field. Here and there faint edges of concrete seating reflected dully under the light of the moon. The cold air brought with it a blanket of mist. I wrapped the thin scarf around my shoulders and let my lower jaw rattle a little.
I checked my watch. The second hand ticked its way towards the twelve. It was almost seven. Headlights from a turning car swept into my vision and were gone again. An ancient black car idled at the kerb. Strange, I hadn’t heard it approach. I don’t know enough about cars to give a make or a model, I can only say that it was what people around here called an old-timer. My grandfather had one and I used to ride along with him in the annual parade. But this car was even older, it could have been from the fifties. Something out of a black and white gangster movie.
I waited for someone to get out or for the car to move on. Neither of those two things happened. Instead the car stood there, idling softly in the silence of the night.
I pushed off the railing and took a tentative step, and then another. I moved into the cold glow of the streetlight and tilted my head to get a look at the passenger side window. The dark tint gave nothing away. I knocked at the window and instantly recoiled. The surface of the glass was freezing. The car continued to idle.
My stomach did a merry dance as I wrapped the scarf around my hand and pulled at the handle. The door gave and swung open under its own weight. I breathed in the stale, tepid air. It had the same smell as a stack of old clothes left too long in a box.
The best thing I could think to say was, “Are you lost?”
The reply came in a thin and raspy voice. “I can take you.”
“Are we going to the prom?”
“Get in.”
I peered into the car to get a make on the driver. If only there had been a roof light, or something from the dashboard, but everything inside was cloaked in darkness. The driver was nothing more than a silhouette.
“Who are you?”
“I can take you if you want to go.”
After weeks of telling myself that I wouldn’t go to Prom and that it didn’t matter, I was now within touching distance of walking into that auditorium, in my red dress, and with a stranger on my arm. What didn’t matter suddenly mattered more than anything. I hated myself a little for it. But I had asked for magic. I got in the car.
The car accelerated away from the kerb the moment the door clicked shut. It felt like being on a ride at the summer fair. Almost unnatural, but not unpleasant. But where I had expected the sudden roar of an engine, there was only the faintest of whispers. I grabbed at the inside of the door, searching in the dark for a handle. Unsuccessful, I pressed my hands between my knees.
“Who are you?”
The driver didn’t answer. He turned right down Fourth Street and then made a hard left onto Cemetery Road. The weak headlights barely penetrated the mist, we could see only a few yards ahead. Another right turn pushed my shoulder against the door and we powered down the open road. The Prom was in the opposite direction.
“Are you taking me to Prom?”
“No.”
“You said you could take me.”
“I can take you where you want to go.”
The car lurched forwards. We cut through the mist like a rocket ship tearing through the clouds. I gripped the seat. I turned to the driver and caught a faint outline of his face. He had long and angular features and skin so pale it was almost translucent. I breathed in and almost gagged. His breath carried the thin smell of death that filters out of an air duct after a mouse has crawled in and died.
“Where do I want to be?”
Impossibly, we gathered speed. I squeezed so hard at the leather seats the skin on my knuckles almost split open. I whimpered. The outline of the trees lining the road flashed by.
“Can we slow down?”
“You have one chance,” he said. “You can make it count. But only tonight, only now.”
“To do what?”
“To have what you want.”
“And what do I want?”
“To be noticed. To be talked about. To have your name on everyone’s lips.”
“That’s not what I want.”
“It is.”
Another burst of acceleration. The broken lines in the middle of the road merged into a single unbroken strip. The car began to rattle like it was on the verge of falling apart. Terror replaced the last shred of fun from the joyride.
“Slow down.”
I shut my eyes and prayed for it to be a dream. The sensation of motion did not cease. I was on this ride and it would not be over until it was over. I opened my eyes. I wished I could see where we were going. I wished I could jump into the driver’s seat and slam my foot on the brakes. I wished I was at the wheel and had some control. But the car, like the second hand on my watch, kept on going.
“I can give you what I gave to her,” he said.
“Who?”
“Louise Fuller. I gave her the gift of immortality. I can give this to you.”
Louise Fuller. The girl they found at the bottom of a ravine. The girl who had been in a car accident when there had been no car. The girl whose name everyone knew. The girl they named a basketball hall after.
She had a name. Louise Fuller. It was more than I had. Mama and Papa don’t even know I’m gone. Teenagers in tuxedos and formal gowns are arriving at the Community Hall and I am not missed. There isn’t even a photo of me on the mantle. After tonight there could be. And a picture in the paper, it would be my yearbook photo and I had botched the cover job on the volcano of a pimple on my chin, but that wasn’t so bad. They might even give my name to the Community Centre. In my mind’s eye I saw the letters glowing red, calling out to me.
“What if I say no. What happens then?”
“We stop.”
“And after?”
The mist was now so thick I could barely see the road. I could not gauge the speed by the trees whipping past the window because I could no longer see them. We were driving blind.
“If you say no then we stop and I will be gone. I cannot tell you about after.”
I pictured Mama and Papa. Their lives had not become what they wanted. They did not imagine the rundown house on the edge of town, its gutter rusting and its walls cracking. When they posed for their King and Queen photo they imagined greatness. Dreams which proved out of reach and were now dead and buried in the past. That is how it had been for them.
But it didn’t have to be for me.
“I can give this to you, I promise.”
Was my lot to be that of Mama? Some rundown house out by the edge of the small town where I had been born. The same argument with the man who shared my bed playing on an endless loop. I didn’t know any better, I didn’t know any different. Whatever might lay ahead was as hard to see as the road through the mist. But it could be something. It could be.
“No,” I said. “I want you to stop.”
“This is a one-time deal.”
I pulled up my hands to my ears and squeezed shut my eyes and screamed. “Stop.”
The sensation of motion left my body. I opened my eyes. I was stood by the side of the road, somewhere far out of town. In the darkness I could not tell where. I trembled, not from the cold, but from my shattered nerves. My legs felt like jelly. I turned and began the walk back.
The outline of headlights appeared, smudged by the mist. I stopped walking and turned to the side hoping to hide my face. Down at the bottom of the ravine stood the white cross erected by Louise Fuller’s family. This is where she had died. It is where I had almost died.
The car slowed. Whoever it was had seen me. There was no keeping this from Mama now. She would know I sneaked out and spent that money on my dress. And what was worse they had found me not at the Prom, but out by the memorial to Louise Fuller. I sighed.
Over the sound of the engine came a familiar voice. It was Mark Horschel.
“Do you need a ride somewhere?”
I hesitated and then bowed my head and got in the car.
He said, “What are you doing out here? Isn’t that where Louise Fuller died?”
“It’s a long story.”
Mark turned down the radio and smiled. He wore a traditional black tuxedo, the shirt crisp and white. The black bowtie was a little askew, but otherwise he looked perfect. I resisted the urge to tell him so.
“I like your dress,” he said.
“Thank you. I like your tux.”
“Were you going to the Prom? I can take you.”
“I thought you were going with Jim’s cousin from the city? Are you going to pick her up?”
“That is also a long story. I decided to go for a drive instead. But I can turn around and take you if you want?”
“No. Why don’t we keep driving this way.”
We drove to the next town. There is a diner out by the main road that is open all night on the weekend. We took a booth in the back. The waitress came over and tilted her head to the side. I took it as a look of admonishment towards Mark for daring to make this the location for dinner before the Prom. This was not the night to go cheap. Mark smiled and paid her no mind.
I didn’t tell him about the strange car ride and he didn’t tell me about whatever had happened to make him leave the Prom. None of it mattered.
After they cleared our plates Mark stood and went to the jukebox in the corner. He punched in a request and came back to the table and held out his hand.
“Rachel Harrow, would you like to dance?”
No one took our photo and there were sideways glances and snickering from men wearing trucker caps and sipping coffee, but I didn’t care.