Last Dance by Caroline B. Cooney Page B

happened to fall upon the driver and the passenger.
    At the same time the driver accelerated right into Matt’s path, he leaned over to kiss his girl.
    And the girl was Emily.
    The dark was soft and comfortable. Anne felt safe. If only the whole evening could stay like this: dusk, where you could still see each other, but not clearly. She didn’t want to go back to the strong harsh lights of the terrace, and she didn’t want to take her questionnaire and be forced to walk from person to person, grinning like an idiot and demanding to know who had been born on an ocean liner.
    The whole thing with the purse upset her.
    Con’s mouth had been tense with annoyance, but Anne couldn’t rest until she had that pocketbook back, and she couldn’t help it. She just hated it that life handed out these nothing little predicaments that proceeded to ruin the important things.
    And so when Con’s hand went around her waist, she loved it: she wanted it to happen again. That touch was a whisper of what had once been between them. And what could surely be again! The reality of the last several months faded. The softness of dusk made her romantic again.
    The pressure on her waist increased. She followed the pressure as if this were a dance and Con wanted to move in a different direction across the floor. But she was still on the pool edge, and she said nervously, “Con?”
    His hand gave her a tremendous shove.
    “Con!” Anne screamed. There was nothing to clutch but air. Anne catapulted right into the water.
    There wasn’t much time to think, but if she was going to get soaked, so was Con! Oh, that traitor, that manipulator! Letting her think in the dusk that they loved each other after all! That skunk! He couldn’t even come right out and say he didn’t want to be there with her! The coward! He had to knock her purposely into the pool! What had she done to deserve this? One misplaced purse? Well, she had had a baby! Did he think the last nine months had been exactly a bed of roses for her? How dare he? How—
    Anne’s fingers closed around his jacket.
    She yanked him right along with her. She heard him yelp, like a puppy, and then she hit the water. My hair! she thought, underwater. My dress! My makeup!
    Oh, she would kill him! Here he was in the water right next to her. Well, she would just drown him, since the location was so convenient. “Con,” she sputtered, coming up first, “Con Winters, you’re dead.”
    Lee Hamilton could not believe the girl was pulling him into the water with her. He tried to hang onto something, but there weren’t any handy rails or posts, and he went right over. What a way to celebrate his high school graduation: all these Westerly High kids would laugh at him, and then he’d lose his job, and then his parents would kill him, and….
    Lee took a deep breath full of chlorined water, choked, surfaced, spit water like a whale spouting—and the girl proceeded to try to drown him. Lee rarely opened his eyes underwater because the chlorine gave him eyeburn, but this was obviously not the time to be blind, so he glared at her underwater and tried to shake his fist. Underwater it was slow motion. Her yellow hair swirled around like a mermaid’s. Even underwater with a crazy person trying to drown him, he was struck with how beautiful the girl was.
    They came up together and he bellowed, “You tried to drown me!” and she yelled “I thought you were somebody else!” and Lee screamed, “What’s the matter with you, are you insane?” and the kids who were safe and dry up on the pool edge laughed like hyenas, which he might have expected anybody from Westerly to do, and she said, “Con pushed me in!”
    “I did not,” Con said, “I wasn’t even next to you. You fell in.”
    Oh, the treachery of him! Anne tread water. The boy she had pulled in with her swam away from her. Anne, furious, humiliated, and soaked, swam out to the middle of the pool and kept right on yelling at Con. “You