The Everafter by Amy Huntley Page A

not sure if I’ll be as happy with the me I just created as I was with the old one.

daddy-daughter dance
    age 7
    The music swirls around us. Sandra and I are both wearing the “spinningest” dresses we could find. We twirl around on the dance floor watching them spreading out in a circle around our hips.
    Life couldn’t be better. We’re at the Daddy-Daughter Dance. There are colored lights all over the community-center gym. Our dads are both dressed up the way they usually are when they leave for work. But, right now, our dads belong just to us.
    Daddy is holding both of my hands as we sway back andforth to the music. Every once in a while, he winks at Sandra’s dad and they both spin us around again.
    Sandra and I giggle.
    Next comes the “Hokey Pokey.” I love this song. Daddy is so silly when he does the “turn yourself around” part. I’m laughing so hard, I have a sharp pain in my side. Sandra isn’t laughing hard enough, so her dad tickles her.
    For the next song, we change partners, and Daddy dances with Sandra. I dance with Sandra’s father. Even though I like him, I notice he isn’t as tall as my dad is. And he isn’t as handsome, either.
    Someday, I want to fall in love with a man like my daddy. Someone who makes me smile and giggle, someone who twirls me around, someone who knows how to have fun doing the Hokey Pokey.
    When the end of the evening comes, I don’t want to leave. I want to keep dancing, keep playing with Sandra. Tonight we’re pretending to be sisters, and I don’t want to ever stop.
    But Daddy reminds me it’s time to go, and he helps me put on my coat. I look in the pocket for my ticket. When we got here, I put it in my coat. I know I will always keep it. It’s special. But…
    The ticket isn’t there.
    I look again…still not there.
    I start to cry. Daddy gets down next to me to ask what’swrong. I tell him and tell him that my ticket is gone, but he keeps saying, “What? I can’t understand you.” I try telling him louder, but he still doesn’t understand.
    Sandra finally translates for me. “You lost your ticket?” he asks. When I nod, he pulls me into his arms and lets me sit on his thigh as he tries to dry my tears.
    “We’ll look,” he promises. “Calm down so we can look.”
    Daddy, Sandra, her father, and I all look around the room…under tables, on the dance floor, on the chairs. The DJs are packing up all their musical equipment, and the janitors are starting to turn out the lights. The gym feels so lonely. All the magic is gone. Why couldn’t it stay?
    Daddy tells me we have to go now, even if we haven’t found the ticket.
    I cry harder. Daddy tries to comfort me by telling me that we can make a new ticket when we get home; that it’ll be just as good as the real one, maybe even better. But he doesn’t understand. I don’t want to leave my ticket in this lonely place, all by itself.
    Daddy promises me ice cream on the way home. But that idea doesn’t make me feel any better. Mr. Simpson and Sandra finally leave. We look around the room one more time…no luck.
    Daddy finally pulls me, still crying, from the room.
     
    Back here in Is, I notice that the ticket is drab. It does not sparkle in pink and white the way I remember it. Instead, it just glows with a boring sameness.
    Part of me wants to go back and allow my seven-year-old self to find it.
    But I won’t. No matter how hard she cries.
    When I was alive, I thought I was always losing everything. But I wasn’t. There are so few objects here in Is that can take me back to my life, I can’t part with the ones I do have.
    Lost, this piece of paper is my ticket back to the Daddy-Daughter Dance.
    And it has to stay lost to keep me the person the night of the Daddy-Daughter Dance made me….
    Emily Dickinson referred to life as a “Tragedy of the Flesh.” Losing that ticket was a tragedy to the seven-year-old me, but that tragedy shaped the soul “I have elected.” Letting myself find that