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Sissy Room
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He heard it before he reached the doors. Not mayhem — Rosebridge girls didn't do mayhem, or at least didn't call it that — but something close. The specific high-pitched sustained buzz of two hundred people who have a lot to say and a free Monday morning to say it in and six days of accumulated feelings about something that happened on a stage last Thursday night that none of them have fully processed yet. He pushed through the doors and the noise hit him like warmth. The hall was alive. Girls everywhere — clusters on the floor, draped over seats, leaning across rows to reach people three aisles away. Someone had pulled two chairs together and was sitting sideways across both like furniture was optional. Six weeks of social geometry visible in who sat where, but the edges blurrier than usual. More porous. People moving between conversations with the loose electric energy of a place still buzzing from something it hadn't fully processed yet. He'd taken maybe four steps inside when Katie spotted him. "DYLAN." It carried across approximately half the assembly hall. Several heads turned. Katie was standing on her seat — actually standing on her seat — pointing at him with the dramatic certainty of someone who has been waiting for this moment since Friday morning. "THE MAN. THE MYTH. THE ENSEMBLE SITUATION." The girls nearest to her laughed. Dylan's face went warm immediately, the specific heat of being announced to a room, but before he could do anything Katie had launched herself off the seat and was crossing toward him with the momentum of a small natural disaster. She grabbed both his hands. "You," she said, with great feeling. "You absolutely devastated us. I want you to know that. I was not prepared. Nobody was prepared. Mrs. Dubois looked like she was trying not to cry and I have never seen that woman's face do anything except judge and I just—" She pressed his hands to her heart. "Thank you. Personally. For what you gave us." "I tripped," Dylan said. "You RECOVERED," Katie said. "Which is completely different and actually more impressive. Anyone can not-trip. You tripped AND KEPT GOING and somehow that was the part that got me." She released his hands, stepped back, pointed at him once more for emphasis, and was gone — back into the crowd with the momentum she'd arrived with, already mid-sentence with someone else before Dylan had fully processed the encounter. He laughed — surprised, unguarded, the kind that came before he could organize it into something more composed. It had been happening more lately, that kind of laugh. The kind that didn't ask permission. Tessa appeared at his elbow a moment later, materializing the way Tessa did — quietly, efficiently, like she'd been there the whole time. "She's been like that since Friday," she said, watching Katie's retreating energy with the practiced calm of someone who had spent considerable time in that orbit. "We clocked her crying twice during the finale. Once in the hall and once where she thought nobody could see her." "That tracks," Dylan said. "My mother," Tessa said, in a pitch-perfect impression of Katie that suggested years of practice, "who once described the Grand Canyon as 'nice' — called it brave." "Did her mother actually—" "Yes," Tessa said. "She texted us all about it Friday night. Your skirt also got a mention." Dylan shook his head. Tessa smiled — the smile of someone who knows exactly where she stands and finds the knowledge comfortable — and drifted back toward her row. Maya caught his eye as he moved deeper into the hall — gave him one of her precise, unhurried nods, the kind that meant something coming from someone who didn't waste them. "You were really in it Thursday," she said. Just that. Then turned back to her conversation like she'd filed a report. He was almost at his row when he heard it. "Hey." He turned. A girl he recognized by face but not really by name — dark hair, second summer, one of the girls who orbited the social geography of Rosebridge without being in any of his specific clusters. They'd been in the same etiquette class for six weeks and he could picture exactly where she sat — three rows back, left side, always slightly apart from the main conversation in the way of someone who is listening harder than she's letting on. She was looking at him with an expression that was doing something careful and honest. "I don't think we've actually talked," she said. "I don't think so either," he said. "I watched you Thursday." Simply. Not making a production of it. "During the ensemble piece." He nodded. "I had this thing happen," she said, "where I forgot you were the boy. You know? Like — for a few minutes I just forgot that was even the thing, and you were just—" She paused, searching for it. "Someone who was really in it. And it made me think about something I've been carrying around all summer and I'm still thinking about it now." She stopped. Like that was it. Like that was the whole thing she had to say. "Thank you," Dylan said. And meant it in the real way. Not the reflex way. She nodded once and moved off. He stood there for a moment in the buzzing hall. Not the boy. Not the exception. Not the experiment. Just someone who was really in it. Both true. All of it. He was still standing there when he nearly walked into Stevie. She was leaning against the end of a row with her arms crossed and the expression of someone who has arrived at a conclusion after thorough analysis and is prepared to share it whether the recipient is ready or not. She looked at him for a moment. "You know what you did," she said. Not a question. Just Stevie, delivering a finding. "I danced," he said carefully. "You made three girls in my immediate vicinity cry who had previously stated they were not going to cry. Julie said — and I quote — 'I'm fine, it's just — I don't know what this is.' For the record, I know what it was." "What was it?" "You," Stevie said. As if this were obvious. As if he should have already filed this information. "Doing a hard thing badly and then doing it anyway. People lose their minds over that. I don't know why it surprises anyone." She uncrossed her arms. Straightened up. Looked like she was done. "Also," she said, already moving away, "for what it's worth — I wasn't going to cry." "Did you?" She didn't answer. Just kept walking with the unhurried pace of someone who had said what she came to say. Which was, Dylan had learned, Stevie for yes. He was smiling when he finally reached his row. Across the hall — he'd been watching it in pieces as he navigated the crowd — two things were happening that had nothing to do with him. The first was Libby. It started before he'd even come fully through the doors. He'd seen it from across the room: a girl stopping Libby mid-stride, both hands going out to catch her arm, face doing something that he recognized from Thursday night as the expression the audience made during O Fortuna. That particular combination of stunned and grateful and not-quite-recovered. Libby had stood very still. Not uncomfortable. Not performing discomfort the way she sometimes performed not caring. Just — still. Receiving it. Her arms crossed over her chest the way they always were, her chin doing that thing where it lifted slightly, and her face doing the thing it almost never did in public. It was quiet. What happened on her face. Barely visible if you weren't paying attention. But Dylan had spent six weeks in the room next to Libby Hemsworth and he was paying attention and what he saw was this: She let it land. The compliment. The recognition. Whatever the girl was saying about what the guitar did to the room on Thursday night. Libby let it land without deflecting it or armoring against it or immediately changing the subject. She just stood there and received it and her face did the quiet thing. By the time Dylan was three rows away from his seat she was in conversation with two more people about the music — actually in conversation, not managing it from a safe distance. Animated in a way that was entirely different from her usual dry remove. Her hands were moving. She was leaning in slightly. The specific energy of someone talking about the thing that actually matters to them without remembering to pretend it doesn't. He caught her eye once, briefly, across the row. She gave him the look that said: say nothing. He gave her the look back that said: obviously. They had developed an entire language of looks. This was one of the more useful ones. The second thing was Dana. He almost missed it — he was two rows away from his seat and focused on getting there — but movement caught his eye. A girl had stopped Dana somewhere near the back wall. Not the kind of stop that was casual. The kind where the person doing the stopping had been working up to it. Dylan couldn't hear what she was saying. But he could see Dana's face. She was listening. Actually listening — not the performance of listening Dana sometimes deployed in social situations, the warm attentive nodding that was really just waiting for her turn. This was different. Still. The girl was saying something about Thursday night, he could tell from the way Dana's expression shifted — something about the closing speech, probably, or the crying she hadn't hidden, or the moment at the end when she'd said take a bow so quietly that somehow everyone in the room had heard it. Dana said something back. The girl laughed — the kind of laugh that had relief in it. And then Dana did the thing. She sparkled. Smiled wide and warm and said something else that made the girl laugh again and touched her arm briefly and the whole exchange wrapped itself up in about fifteen seconds of pure Dana — generous and funny and completely in control of the room even when the room was just two people by a back wall. But Dylan had been watching and he'd caught the half-second before the sparkle. The moment the words landed. A flicker. Nothing like Libby's stillness — Dana didn't have that in her — but something real before the performance caught up with it. It mattered. The closing speech. Being seen in it. She just wasn't going to make a thing of it. He filed that away next to everything else he knew about Dana Collins that she hadn't told him directly and probably never would. -
Judging by the title of this story I have this feeling that Jake's fun is just getting started. -
By jeremy12312 · Posted
Didn’t you just ask this question not too long ago? -
By Crinklz Kat · Posted
No time for losers, 'cause we are the champions of the world. -
By Diaperguy335 · Posted
Welcome! It’s a friendly group —I’m sure you’ll be over the nerves in no time 🙂
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