Asking the Devil for Favors Part III

There was no elevator to the ballroom. Luckily, I had been born with the build of an ogre, and had an ogre’s strength. In a fashion that would have been heroic were I not ugly, I carried Breanne up two flights of stairs. She lay like a limp doll across both of my arms. Her head hung backwards, on the loose hinge of her neck, held up just high enough to allow her to breathe. I cradled her softly, making sure that every step I took would be as gentle to her as possible. John, like my idiot squire, trailed behind us, clumsily trying his best to lift the 30 pound chair. Every now and again, he would drop it against a step and make an awful clanking sound.

“Just put it down, John. The last thing I need is for you to break it.”

“Come on dawg, you’s got to know I would’n do nuthin’ likes that.”

“I hope he falls down and dies,” I muttered.

“Me… too,” Breanne wheezed.

Smiling subversively, I muttered, “I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

“What did she say, bro?” inquired my idiot squire.

“Nothing. Just try to hurry up, please.”

When we reached the top, there was nothing to do but wait for John to catch up to us. His scrawny arms placed the 30-pound chair in front of us like it was an anchor he had been dragging across the floor of the ocean. I shook my head in abject disgust, then placed Breanne down as softly as I could.

“Does Rachel know to wait in the car?”

John tried to say something other than ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ so I gently wheeled Breanne around, and handed my prom ticket to the parent volunteer that was collecting them. I left John with whatever else he had to say still stuck in his throat like a plug of rotted leaves. When we were past the ticket taker, I forgot all about him. In the domain of our fellow students, I felt like we were safe. The kindness of fellow humans, however, has its own dangers.

Breanne’s handicap was something I had learned not to see. That may sound ridiculous, even pretentious, but it’s the truth. She was just another person to me, not to be pitied or treated any differently than anyone else. I wouldn’t have asked her to get up and do a set of jumping jacks of course, but that was the extent of the difference. For the entire night, it seemed like we had been surrounded by people who wanted nothing more than to raise up that difference and make it of paramount importance to all else that transpired.

It started with a few slaps on the back that I ignored. It rose to a few people saying “You’re a good man, BC.” Finally, a few girls decided to tell Breanne how pretty she looked, in the most highbrow “look at me doing a good deed” manner possible. Ten or fifteen people… thinking they were doing good, but all the while conveying the message that they thought she was there only as an act of charity, that they thought she was different, that her attendance was something abnormal that needed to be commented upon. The ten or fifteen became twenty or thirty. I lost count.

“Breanne, you know I brought you here because I wanted to, right?” I slowly placed my hand on her shoulder.

“Let’s… just… dance.” I could see moisture in the corners of her eyes.

“Okay pal.” My whisper was weak.

I pushed her into the ballroom. We found a corner where no one was near to disturb us. She put her hands on my shoulders. I wrapped my arms around her waist. For the length of three songs, I held her against my shoulder and let her stand against me. We made no attempt to move to the song. Our stillness was its own kind of dance, and we needed no other.

Eventually, a few other couples started to sway their steps slowly in our direction. They circled us like buzzards, eager for a meal. I firmed my grip around Breanne’s waist. Bringing my mouth so close to her ear I could feel my own breath bouncing back onto my lips, I whispered, “Ignore them.”

A hand tapped my shoulder that was not Breanne’s. I turned around. You stupid girl, I thought. You stupid, stupid girl. Her name is not important to this narration, only that she was crying. Only that she was telling me how sweet she thought we were. Only that in trying to raise herself up, she was pushing someone else down.

When Breanne’s knees started to tremble, I was there to wrap my arms completely around her and support all of her weight. “It’s okay, pal. It’s okay,” I cooed. I felt the dampness of hot tears on the side of my neck where her eyes had sought refuge from the other couples.

“I need… to go… home.” Instead of the breathy pause between each set of words, they came as harshly clipped as though sliced apart by a knife. It was a struggle for her to say them without sobbing.

I would have liked to have argued with her, to have told her the million redeeming qualities that made her superior to all others. Given the chance, I would have liked to express a thousand feelings to her that I would have shared with no one else. It is one of my greatest regrets that I never had the chance.

“Fuck you! She can take her brother to prom if she damn well pleases!”

Rachel!

I am not a man who knows how to cry, but I felt in that moment an anguish that resided deep in my marrow, and swelled outward into every fleshy cavity. It was tearing me in two.

“Breanne… I… I,” I had no words.

“Oh, big man! Talking shit? You want some.” I heard another voice. It was the vice principal’s. How had Rachel managed to pick a fight with him?

“It’s… okay,” Breanne murmured into the furrow of my neck.

“I’m so sorry, pal.” I put her in her wheelchair. She put her face into her hands, and let the tears come.

We left the ballroom to find Rachel trying to play the part of a hero. A girl had been trying to take her brother to prom. She had been unable to find any other date, and he was her stand-in. He was wearing street clothes, and had been informed that he would need a tie before he could gain admittance. Rachel had decided to curse up a storm in defense of the young lady.

As I walked up to my sister, in an attempt to make peace between her and those she was arguing with, I saw Breanne reach into her purse and pull out a cell phone.

I can’t remember what I said to Rachel and the others. Not a single word. It’s a vague gray mist. The whole time I was talking to them, my head kept swiveling back to watch Breanne struggling to dial her mother’s phone number.

I made peace. I calmed the mood. It was what I had been doing ever since I was a child, when I found out that I hated when people yelled. I was good at it. All the while, Breanne cried into the phone, asking her mother to come and get her.

When the dispute was settled, I went back to my friend. I had no words left to say. I could not apologize for the fact that her wheelchair had almost fallen into the marina, that my sister had left her to be humiliated, or that the other couples had treated her like an outsider. I said nothing, finding the only appropriate way to express what I felt was to hold her hand until her mother arrived.

She stopped crying after twenty minutes. Another ten, and she was composed. Her mother arrived. I carried her back down the same two flights of steps I had carried her up less than an hour ago. Her mother tried to comfort her, finding all the words I had been unable to coerce from myself just a few minutes prior.

I put her in her seat. I folded her wheelchair and put it in the trunk of her mother’s car. I felt too awkward to even kiss her on the cheek to say goodbye. She had started to cry again. She was still crying when the door was closed and the car was backing away.

I stood staring at the place where her car had been for ten minutes after she had gone. I might have stayed longer had Rachel not come up beside me and announced her presence by lighting a cigarette. The sudden spark from her lighter broke me out of my daze.

“What the fuck do you suppose was wrong with her?” she asked.

The moon robbed all colors of their contrast. When had it gotten so late? It seemed that only a few hours ago we had been at the restaurant and it had been sunny. In the night, in the endless silver and black wherein all colors were dimmed, I had no rage. I felt confused. I felt hollow. “I don’t know, Rachel. I don’t know.”

“That was some bullshit, huh?”

“What was bullshit?”

“That fucking girl not being able to get in with her brother.”

“I don’t know about that, either.”

“I can’t believe they were just going to let that shit slide. I hate those fucking assholes.”

“How far is home from here? I think I’m going to walk back.”

Without waiting for an answer, I began to walk under the lonely yellow glow of the street lamps. When I got home an hour later, I took off my tuxedo, looked at it for a moment like it was a skin I had shed, and then put it back into the opaque zipper case it had come in. I felt better when I couldn’t see it anymore.

Breanne didn’t come back to school for two weeks. She said she was sick, and I never pressed the issue.