I Think of You: Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

theirs and I hovered on the outskirts of both. Then one day the St. Valentine Dance was announced.
    I was terror-struck and elated. All these girls would turn up in their designer clothes with their sophisticated boyfriends. They would glide with ease onto the dance floor and do the Shake. Would I be a wallflower? Unwanted? Again the odd one out? I never dreamed of not going. The world of glamour, passion, excitement, and adventure was going to be revealed for an evening. It was going to come within my reach and I would certainly be there to grasp it.
    I got permission to go to the dance, and very special permission to stay out until eleven o’clock. I asked David, the only boy I knew in London, to come with me. My motherbought me my first pair of high-heeled shoes: le talon bébé, the style was called, and the heels were just one and a half inches high.
    February 14 th finally arrived. My hair was shining, my turquoise silk dress with the high Chinese collar was enchanting, and I had nylon stockings and high-heeled shoes. David came to fetch me in a dark suit and had a Pepsi with my mother before we left. He had borrowed his father’s car, so we drove to Putney in style. I played it cool, as though, for me, every night was St.Valentine’s night, but in my head was a starry, starry sky.
    We got to school and made our way to the assembly hall. School was transformed. It was no longer dull and cold and hostile. It was vibrant, throbbing, every door, every corridor leading to the magical place where the dance was to be held.
    It was eight o’clock as we walked into the hall. The lights had been dimmed and the loudspeaker was beating out “Come right back, I just can’t bear it, I got some love and I long to share it,” and nobody was on the dance floor. All the girls were there. They were in party clothes and stood grouped together at one end of the hall. At the other end, huddled in tight, nonchalant groups in dark suits, were the boys from Wandsworth Comprehensive, our sister school.
    The situation slowly sank in. None of the girls had brought a boy with her. After all the brave talk about kissing and sitting on knees, no one had actually brought a boy with her. They were all standing there, tapping their feet and hoping that the boys from Wandsworth would ask them to dance.
    And the boys were nervous, pretending they didn’t know what they were there for and chatting to their mates.
    We joined some girls from my class for a while, but conversation was awkward and we ended up standing alone by the wall. I tried to enjoy the music, but it felt dead and flat. David asked me to dance, but I knew he was being dutiful, and besides I was too shy to be alone with him on the floor.
    Time passed as I hung on, waiting for something to happen while the evening slowly crumbled away and the stars went out one by one. I knew now there was no hidden world, no secret society from which I was barred. There was just—nothing.
    A week later I stood as usual at the bus stop in the cold morning. I waited a few moments for the No. 37 then turned back and walked home. When my mother woke up she found me sitting in my school clothes in the kitchen with a fresh bowl of sugared cornflakes in front of me.
    “Aisha! What’s the matter? Are you ill?” she asked.
    “No,” I said.
    “Well, what’s the matter? Why aren’t you at school?”
    “I’m not going to school anymore.”
    “What?”
    “I’m not going to school anymore.”
    “Have you gone crazy? What’s the matter with you?”
    “I’m studying for my Egyptian prep, aren’t I? I’ll concentrate on that.”
    “But why won’t you go to school?”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “But why?”
    “It’s just not worth it.”
    “But you liked it so much—”
    “I hated it.”
    “What on earth will your father say?”
    “…”
    “He’ll be very angry.”
    “I’m not going to school anymore.”
    She told my father. She carried back protests, even threats: “Daddy is