I shrug again. “Takes a while to work. And there’s a lot of talking to Dr Luther that goes along with it. Feeling okay, though.”
“That’s good,” he says.
“Do you like yourself, Jared?”
He looks at me, surprised. I know he guesses exactly why I’m asking. “Sometimes,” he says.
“Sometimes not.”
“Sometimes not,” I repeat. “Those things going on. Those things you can’t talk about.”
Jared turns to me. “We haven’t danced enough.”
“…Together?”
“All of us together.” He cocks his head to our friends, dancing in the crowd, smiling, working up a sweat, laughing, dancing like fools. The hall is packed now, probably for the same reason as the restaurant: people know something’s going on and just want to be together.
I have a flash of terror that this would be a great opportunity to blow a whole lot of people up again. If there are any gas mains running below the school, that is–
“What is it?” Jared asks.
“What if we’re in danger here?” I say, feeling my chest contract, feeling suddenly desperate, like I need to find a loop, quickly, one that will save us all from being blown up.
“Do you see any indie kids?” Jared asks. I look around. He’s right. There’s not one.
Which makes me sort of sad, really.
“We’ll be fine,” he says, dragging me out onto the dance floor.
“Maybe we should check outside,” I say, but my words are lost in the volume of the music and the crush of people suddenly around us. We join Henna, Mel, Steve and Nathan. And we dance.
It’s nice, too.
“We’re going to take off,” Mel says, about an hour later. We’re all standing in the rest area, where the school have put out a bunch of couches just slightly too brightly lit to encourage heavy kissing.
“We’ll meet you at the cabin.”
“Now you’re sure we’re not going to be ritualistically murdered?” Call Me Steve says, actually looking a bit nervous. “Prom night. Group of diverse teens. Remote cabin…”
Mel blinks. “Are you being serious?”
“I’m a doctor. We see stuff. There’ve been strange things going down.”
We all just stare at him.
“What?”
“That’s not the story that’s happening,” Mel says to him. “We’re not the kind of people that story happens to.”
“What? I don’t…”
She kisses him. “I love that you’re worried,” she says, “but you’re worried about the wrong things.”
“I…” is all he says because she’s already dragging him away. She waves goodbye. Call Me Steve is driving her to our place. They’re going to change, then she’ll get the clothes we all packed and bring his car and hers out to the cabin, so we’ve got an extra there after the Hummer drops the rest of us off.
Jared and his dad left Jared’s car out there today, too. It’s a whole plan.
“You guys ready to go?” I ask Henna and Jared.
“I think I’m done,” Henna says. “My arm is starting to hurt from all my phenomenal choreography.” She looks to the dance floor. “Nathan’s still out there, though.”
And he is, just kind of dancing on his own with a cup of punch. (Seriously, a cup of punch; it’s embarrassing.) I guess he’s making one of those memories to take with him.
“Okay,” Jared says, “one more dance for me and then we’ll go. I’ll find you guys.”
He presses back out onto the dance floor. Henna and I find a couch. We’re surrounded by people taking pictures of each other with their phones and then sending those pictures to a person ten feet away and then everyone commenting on them. This makes perfect sense to me.