Cassie rummaged through her closet knowing it wouldn’t be there. She just knew her little sister used her favorite skirt to play in. And where were her platform sandals? “Christ on a biscuit! Mom?” Cassie wouldn’t have heard her mother’s reply, even if there had been one, because her head was buried in the back of her closet between her winter sweaters and her summer coats. “Ma—“ she started to say again, when a playful slap on her butt brought her suddenly upright to face her mother. Several strands of her honey blonde hair clung to a sweater with static electricity. He cheeks were flushed and beads of sweat were gathering under her nose.
“What’s the crisis?” her mother asked. Cassie tried not to glare at her mother’s smiling face.
“I can’t find my long black floral skirt, the one I wore to Aunt Jenny’s wedding? I have to wear it to the dance tonight. I can’t believe this, I can’t find my sandals!…”
“Your sandals are under the staircase where you dropped them after church and your skirt is hanging in the laundry room where I hung it after you forgot to take it out of the dryer. As for the matching jacket…it’s hanging right behind you.”
“Oh, I don’t want to wear the jacket. I want to wear…this—” She held up a long sleeve white lace belly shirt that she had borrowed from her best friend, Anna. “It’s what all the girls are wearing. Pleeeeeeze?” she begged.
“I…don’t think so, Cassandra. He mother picked up the edge of the little top and let it drop.
“Mom…you can’t do this to me. I’m already a freak. You won’t let me streak my hair. You won’t let me wear eyeliner—“
“Cassie…you are 13!”
“Mama…please. You can’t keep dressing me like an Iowa farm girl…we’re in the city for Christ’s sake?”
“Cassandra!”
“I’m sorry Mom, but you have to understand. Even if you let me wear this top, I’m going to be slammed because everyone will know I don’t have a belly button ring. Anna really wants me to go to this stupid thing and I will be the only girl in the room dressed like I’m going to church!”
“Cassie…”
“Please don’t say ‘if Anna jumped off a cliff, would you?’ I’m a hella good student, I clean my room, I go to church for Christ’s sa—“ Cassie sighed. “I mean…you know what I mean… Can’t I get time off for good behavior? If I promise not to take drugs or get pregnant or shoot anyone…can I wear this stupid top!”
Cassie’s mother had to laugh. She was a good kid and smarter than her age. The lace top would only show an inch or two of her midriff. And she was so pretty. “Okay.”
Cassie rolled her eyes and shook the lace top at the heavens, “There is a God!” She saw in her mother’s expression the critical line that she very nearly crossed. Then she stopped. “I’m going to burn for that one, aren’t I? But have I told you how nice you look in those jeans?”
Cassie flashed a guilty smile and dashed past her mother. The sandals and skirt were exactly where her mother said they were. Anna was meeting her at the dance and she had to hurry.
And hour later, Cassie looked at her polished reflection. Face: a touch powder, cheek color, colored lip-gloss. Hair: straight and boring. Eyes: plain cold blue. White top: looking bigger on her than it did on Anna. Cassie sighed. Anna had bigger breasts than she had. Anna had a naturally thick fringe of black eyelashes that doubled in size with mascara, which her mother allowed her to wear. Anna had bottomless brown eyes and milk white skin…and if Anna wasn’t the nicest person in school, Cassie would have to hate her. Still, she just wanted to go to bed and sleep for a year.
Mr. Hayes greeted the students and took their tickets at the door. Cassie felt out of place immediately. All the girls looked older than she did. Anna was wearing a short red skirt and a little black top, which was so efficiently held in place by her full chest that her thin spaghetti straps kept falling off her shoulders. Mr. Hayes was the good looking art teacher and every girl in the school had a crush on him. They knew he was engaged to be married, but that didn’t stop them from dreaming. Anna pulled her shoulder strap up as the art teacher stamped her hand. Cassie nervously looked around the gym and unconsciously pulled at her long sleeves to tuck the cuffs into the palms of her hands. She was suddenly cold standing next to the attention passing between the teacher and her best friend. She knew the only attention she would get tonight would be Anna’s castoffs. Mr. Hayes asked her to release her sleeve to let him stamp her hand. She smiled weakly, feeling like a consolation prize.
Cameron Hayes couldn’t help noticing the intelligent blue eyes that stared back at him. The girl was slight, with clear skin and soft natural hair. She had an earthy way about her. Not like the pretty girl in the red skirt whose measured walk was schooled to get attention. The fair one moved like tall grass in a soft breeze. As an artist, he never looked at anything or anyone that he did not assess its value as a subject for one of his canvases. His fingers ached for a pencil and a sketchbook.
He watched the girls casually as they fluttered around the room seeking a place to stand. He smiled at how they avoided decorating a chair. As the music began, the doors were closed to intruders. Cameron sauntered over to the refreshment table to keep the precious little monsters from spiking the punch.
The music was loud and all the songs all sounded the same to him. Those few daring couples out on the dance floor seemed to be having a good time. His eyes searched the parameter of the room for the pretty blonde girl and her trying-to-be-sexy-in-the-red-skirt little friend. Then he caught sight of her. She was luminous. She followed her friend on seemingly important business on their way from here to there. They would cluster around a group of girls, huddle, whisper, huddle, look up, then huddle again. The friend flashed a shocked smile as she was lead to the dance floor. The blonde girl smiled as she was left alone.
Cameron watched her casually lift herself up to sit on the edge of the stage. She one was trying to look bored, but the artist’s eye was drawn away from her face to how her ankles crossed to allow the arch of her right foot to extend like a ballerina on point… And how her hands rested oddly…palms up and crossed in her lap. She was tugging at her sleeves again. She wasn’t slouching, or maybe she was…he couldn’t tell as her natural grace made either posture a success.
The music had switched from a fast dance to a slow dance and the lights dimmed a bit. He glared at a suspicious boy with his ninja punch-guarding skills before resuming his observation of the girl. He noticed how strongly her nose and jaw lines were defined in the half-light. The deep shadows on her face defined the beautiful woman she would become as the little girl kept pulling on her sleeves. She sighed and looked at the floor; her hair fell to hide her face. She became restless and went to the bathroom. Throughout the evening he watched her gracefully exit to the bathroom many times. He willed her to visit his punch bowl, but she filled her time moving from one cluster of friends to another as her best friend danced.
While filling the punch bowl and replacing the empty trays with more cookies, the teacher had lost sight of the girl. When he caught sight of her again, she was dancing with a boy that was a head shorter than she was. She looked as if she were trying to make him comfortable by laughing first at how mismatched they were. Her smile was sweet and genuine. The downward curve of her shoulder reminded him of a model he’d hired when he was a student in Paris. He’d turned that model into a painting of a cabaret singer. Then again, looking more closely, this girl’s line was nothing like the French model’s. This pale shoulder was…swanlike, as if it could have been the beginning of a wing…covered in huge white feathers poised to lift the girl gently off the dance floor.
Cameron Hayes hadn’t realized that he was drawing on a napkin, just getting the feel of the lines as they took on a life of their own, letting this line tell the other line what to do. He fell through the window of his creativity and envisioned these lines come together on canvas. A series of paintings. The hours passed. He felt his heart race with the anticipation of painting this luminous child. The girl sat down on a chair near her red dressed friend. No one was talking to her. In her stillness, her half closed eyes were those of a marble saint. Breathtaking.
Mr. Hayes was completely unaware of the damp glint in girl’s eyes as he sketched. Cassandra had promised herself that she would try to have fun, no matter what, but standing next to Anna she was all but invisible. Blinking away the mist that hinted at her disappointment, Cassie smiled and swore that the next time…she would not stay in the shadows.
End