DANCING

• Celinna Huynh, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2018

Under the frosted night, the disco lights illuminate the specks of dust in the Milky Way galaxy, circulating between and colliding across bodies. Fragments of desolate stars – formed between the clasp of God’s very own fingers – powder the cheeks of pubescent nymphs who gingerly sway to songs – too old, too romantic – for them. They don’t know what love is yet. Yet, in the snowfall of the azure burn, they hold onto the boy who asked, /“Will you dance with me?”/

But, here, he stands. Peering at the girl across the labyrinth of shining shoes, black like space, and perk heels, stained with colour like petals in the spring, shuffling and slipping in awkward synchronisation to scratchy vinyls of Etta James. Here, he stands. Peering at the girl across him. She, who is beautiful blue like Alice Liddell, soft pink like a peony; she, who tucks her wispy brown hair bashfully behind her ears, playing with her own feet because there is nothing else she can do when no one has pulled her hand towards the music; when no one has asked her if she could possibly- perhaps- maybe- want to dance with him.

He takes a step forward. Hesitates. His feet are magnetic, fixed to the sheen floor by an intangible field of power which he perceives to be gravity – but, no. It’s not gravity. It’s fear. /His/ fear. Erratic waves pulsate in the gap between his lungs, pumping colours of eerie red which pinch painfully into his cheeks. And, it seems (to him at least) that there is a star in his belly; fiery and passionate, with determination to ask a simple question. So, he takes a step. Because, there is no time, no space in this universe, he realises, for fear. He takes another step. Because he cannot be comforted; even if the laws of probability state that an infinity of universes will be created for every outcome of every decision he ever makes.

A toddler, he wobbles towards her. Fiddling with frosty fingers, he glances down to pluck at his half-ironed shirt, only to look back up and to feel, in an instant, the star in his belly collapsing; swallowing itself into nothing and eating up the galaxy’s cosmic light. It was another boy– blonde, blue, bright – who gaited towards her, ready to pluck at her cotton candy petals.

Suddenly, he felt very far. He felt like he was standing on Earth, finally seeing the vanishing light of a star which had already exploded tens of millions of light years ago. Even now, at an age only minutely older than he was then, he remembers when the boy took her hand and she suddenly became the Sun and he, the Earth, orbiting forever around her. There, they gingerly swayed to songs of Etta James, not knowing what love was. Yet, she held him; the boy who asked her, /“Will you dance with me?”/