“Come on,” Toby said impatiently. “Two minutes!”
We all crowded into the central courtyard, where tons of high-school and college students were milling around, trying to look nonchalant. Everyone had their phones out, waiting for it to hit five o’clock exactly. A group of hipster-looking guys nodded at us, informing Toby that his bow tie was “quality.”
“See?” Toby said, grinning. “Bow ties are cool.”
We staked out a place near the fountain that Toby judged would be right in the middle of everything. The Grove was packed, which was unsurprising for five o’clock on a Friday. Families with strollers and tourists with fancy cameras wandered along the pedestrian paths, going about their business of shopping and sightseeing. For another agonizing minute, we waited in the palpable collective anticipation of hundreds of strangers trying to pretend they weren’t up to anything out of the ordinary, until Toby whispered, “Now.”
On an invisible cue, everyone put on their headphones and hit play. Teenagers began pouring out of shop fronts, running toward the central courtyard, joining the dance party.
It was fantastic, strangers smiling at one another, break dancing or rocking out or swaying to some mysterious beat that only they could hear. I turned up the volume on my headphones, dancing awkwardly to the Clash.
Cassidy was wearing a pair of expensive DJ headphones, gold-plated and glinting in the sunlight. She pressed them tightly around her ears, closing her eyes and dancing like no one was watching. The hem of her turquoise dress rose dangerously high, and the old pocket-watch necklace she wore bounced up and down over her chest, and she was so beautiful that I could hardly stand it.
Toby was dancing ironically, doing “the sprinkler” and “the shopping cart,” having the time of his life as he cracked himself up. And Austin was performing some complicated hand contortions to what I guessed was techno.
All around us, strangers paired up and danced together, laughing. I was overwhelmed by the number of people recording video of the event, unable to be present in the moment. There was an older guy in a banana costume doing pelvic thrusts, desperate for attention. I wondered what he did for a living, if it was some respectable bank job or something totally demeaning.
But the flash mob wasn’t about the banana-suit guy, or the people standing awkwardly with video cameras, or the gawking crowds that had come out of the stores to see what was happening. It was about being able to dance like Cassidy did, as though no one was watching, as though the moment was infinite enough without needing to document its existence. And so I closed my eyes and tried.
When I opened them, Cassidy was standing there, her headphones around her neck. She motioned for me to do the same, and when I did, the quiet of what was happening shocked me. I’d been so sure that my private soundtrack was a part of everything that I hadn’t realized what we looked like, hundreds of strangers dancing in absolute silence.
We’d danced for maybe half an hour, until it became more of a spectacle than a flash mob. No one wanted to head back quite yet, so we drove over to Santa Monica and had dinner at some old-fashioned burger place. We walked around the promenade afterward, making up hilarious and tragic life stories for the guy who’d worn the banana costume. Los Angeles seemed to change into a different city at night, a more vibrant and mysterious one. I was quiet, because we’d done a lot of walking, and I wasn’t sure how much more I could handle. It was getting pretty bad when Cassidy squeezed my hand and said, “Hey, let’s go sit on a bench and people-watch.”
“Sounds good,” I said, relieved.
Toby and Austin ducked into a bookstore to track down some graphic novel the other store hadn’t carried, and Cassidy and I sat down to wait for them. I thought I’d done a pretty good job of pretending I was okay, but something must have given me away, because Cassidy sighed and shot me a stern look.
“You could have said something,” she scolded.
“I’m fine,” I lied.
“No, you want everyone to think you’re fine. There’s a difference.”
I shrugged and didn’t say anything. Cassidy shivered, and I pulled her closer against me.
“Do you think they’re together?” she mumbled, her cheek pressing warmly on my neck.
“Who?”
“Toby and Austin.”
I was fairly stunned by the question, because things like that just didn’t occur to me.
“Why would you think that?”
“I don’t know.” Cassidy shrugged. “Just an impression I had. But I could be wrong. Austin doesn’t quite seem the type.”
“And Toby does?” I didn’t realize it was a rhetorical question until I’d asked it.
It was strange, thinking that Toby might be g*y. It made an odd kind of sense, but it didn’t bother me, or anything like that. He was still Toby, our fearless captain.
It wasn’t long before Toby and Austin came out of the bookshop.
“We should head back,” I said, in case they were up for walking another mile or two.
Cassidy kept giving me these glances out of the corner of her eye as we walked back to the Fail Whale, as though she thought I should say something, but no way in hell was I going to ask Toby to bring the car around.
“Backseat!” Austin called, scrambling for it. He stretched out, folding his arms across his chest. “Don’t wake me.”
Toby rolled his eyes. “I’m not driving back with all of you jerks sleeping. Faulkner, get up front.”
I’d already reclaimed my seat from the drive up, and a nap sounded awesome, like maybe I could sleep through the ache in my knee.