Paper Covers Rock by Jenny Hubbard

decide to make a circle around the hardwood floor so maybe Miss Dovecott will take note of my swinging-single self.
    In the middle of a crowd of dancers, a couple is kissing, seeing how long they can get away with it. The loud music precludes any sort of talking I might want to do with a St. Brigid girl, the well-groomed Ivory-soap type. When I bend down for a sip at the water fountain, someone taps me on the shoulder. It’s one of the Ivory girls, a small, gawky one. A couple of her friends are pointing at me and shaking theirhips in time to the song, “Get Down Tonight,” by KC & the Sunshine Band. “Would you like to dance?” she squeaks.
    As horny as I am, I draw the line at girls who look twelve, have braces, and sound like Minnie Mouse. I tell Minnie I’m not feeling well. She nods. As I hurry away in the opposite direction, I slip, my ankle twisting in the penny loafers I am not used to, and even though the music is loud, I hear the girls’ mocking laughter, amplified for my benefit to show that they have gotten over being rejected by Goofy. I climb into a dark row of bleachers and watch Minnie and friends disappear into the crowd in the middle of the dance floor, where boys and girls become indistinguishable, faces bobbing up and down like part of a giant machine. I am playing it cool, but I sure as hell don’t feel it.
    In a way, it isn’t that cool to go to mixers because it means you don’t have a girlfriend back home. It is fine if you’re a new boy, but after that, not nearly as cool, although you redeem yourself ever so slightly if you hook up with a fox or if your girlfriend attends the boarding school and you hang out with her all night in the bushes. Joe Bonnin has a younger sister at St. Brigid, and I wonder if I should go look for her. But what do I do if I find her? She’s not that foxy. I check my watch—8:36—and scan the room. When I see who is coming my way, I pull out
The Old Man and the Sea
, book in one hand, sore ankle in the other. I am massaging it absent-mindedly when Miss Dovecott sits down.
    “Too much dancing already?” she says.
    I laugh and tell her I tripped.
    “Do you think you sprained it?”
    “No, no,” I say, “it’s not that bad. Just twisted it. I’m kind of clumsy.”
    She is smiling at me. “Have you started
In Our Time
yet?”
    I lift up my paperback. “I couldn’t find it in the library, so I tried this one.”
    “You can borrow my copy, then.”
    “That would be great,” I say, and she smiles. “Hey, why aren’t you dancing?”
    “That’s really not my job here tonight, is it?”
    “I don’t know. Aren’t chaperones allowed a little fun every now and then?”
    “To tell you the truth, I’m not a very good dancer.”
    “Join the club.”
    “What club is that?”
    I pause, then shrug. “I don’t know, whatever you call the People Who Can’t Dance Club.”
    “I think we can come up with a better name than that.”
    “Okay. You go first.”
    Miss Dovecott laughs. “You’re the creative one around here.”
    “But you’re smarter than I am. You went to Princeton.” And my mind flashes to her sweatshirt tucked away in my room. “By the way, thank you for lending me your sweatshirt. I’ll return it to you after I wash it.”
    “That’ll be fine,” she says.
    And then, I go for it. “I liked wearing it,” I say.
    She looks down at her feet and changes the subject. “Well, back to chaperoning.”
    “Is it as boring as it looks?”
    “Never boring,” she says. “Too many people to watch and talk to. Just a few minutes ago, the chaperone from St. Mark’s was telling me about a suicide at their school your freshman year.”
    “Yeah, we had an assembly about it.”
    “This teacher’s theory is that the boy took all those pills because he was struggling with his sexuality.” She pauses. “He might have been gay.”
    “Huh,” I say, “they didn’t tell us that part. But you know how it is at boarding schools.”
    “No, I