Great Expectations

"Can't start a fire, can't start a fire without a spark" - Bruce Springsteen

I sat at the dinner table with my parents, silence filling our spacious dining room. Twirling spaghetti around my fork, I stared out the window and wished more than anything that I could be out of this stiff atmosphere and back in my room, listening to classic records and pretending I was someone else.

“Juliet, did you hear me?” I turned to my mother, who was looking down the table expectantly.

“I’m sorry,” I said diminutively.

“I said Seacliff is having their annual Fall Ball on the eighth of November, and I expect you to come with us,” she said. Seacliff was the name of the country club to which my parents, and most parents in the town, belonged. “We also expect you to bring a date and to behave as a well-behaved young lady would.”

“Of course, Mother,” I said, the usual complacent smile on my face.

“I expect you’ll want to bring Hunter,” my dad said, glancing up at me. The smile faltered on my face. Hunter was not at the top of my list of favorite people; he was beginning to get on my nerves. There was something about his constant perfection and willingness to please that irritated me. I wanted to spend as little time with him as possible.

“Probably, Dad,” I said, the smile securely in its place. I laid my fork down on my plate of barely-touched food. “Can I be excused?”

“Of course,” my mother said. She was probably happy that I wasn’t eating; that way, I could easily stay skinny and pretty. She didn’t know I still had that bag of Doritos in my room. I carried my plate to the kitchen, set it on the counter, and walked down the hall to the stairs. As I ran up the stairs, I hoped my parents would leave me alone for the rest of the night.

Sighing, I closed the door behind me and contemplated playing another record. I slid my window open, sitting down in front of it and feeling the cool air wash over my face. My phone buzzed several times as I sat in front of the window, but I ignored it. People always wanted to talk to me, looking for advice or a patient listener or a confidant. I was none of these things – I was trying to live my life, just like everyone else was. I have enough of my own problems and had no need to take on anyone else’s.

I had been sitting in front of my window for a few seconds when I realized music was playing somewhere in the neighborhood. I pushed the window open further and lay my arms across the windowsill, resting my chin on my forearms. Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing In The Dark” filled the street. I looked around for its source, trying to decide which of my neighbors was most likely to listen to Bruce.

“Hey, baby!” I looked down and felt as though I’d just fallen into an iconic eighties teen movie. Dean Montague was standing on my lawn holding a boom box over his head, grinning up at me. This was not at all what I had expected. “I need a love reaction, come on now baby give me just one look,” he sang. “You can’t start a fire worryin’ ‘bout your little world fallin’ apart. This gun’s for hire, even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark.”

I knelt in front of the window and leaned out as far as I dared, and whisper-shouted at him, “What are you doing?!”

“I’m singing to you,” he said loudly, each word sounding like a thunderclap. “What’s it look like I’m doing?”

“Shut up!” I said, as loudly as I could without my parents noticing. “Shut up and go back to whatever eighties movie you crawled out of! And take your Bruce Springsteen with you!”

“Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark,” he continued to sing.

“Shut up, Lloyd Dobler!” I hissed.

He grinned. “Can I come up?”

“No!” I glanced over my shoulder, checking to see my parents had not come to investigate. My doorway was mercifully empty, the hallway devoid of the sound of approaching footsteps.

“If you don’t let me come up, I’m gonna start singing even louder,” he said. “I think I might change the song, too.” He was still speaking loudly, with little regard for anyone who might be listening or watching. “I’ve got ‘Baby One More Time’ on here,” he added brightly.

“Fine,” I said. “But stash the stereo in the bushes and don’t break the trellis.”

“There’s no way that thing’ll hold my weight,” he said. For a split-second, I thought he wanted to come in through the front door. Maybe he would abandon his attempt altogether. Instead he said, “But this tree will.”

Next to our house stood a huge tree. My mother had wanted to cut it down before the house was built, but my dad wanted to keep it. Dean hid his boom box in a cluster of bushes and pulled himself up the tree, ending up a few feet from my window. A second later, he landed quietly on the floor of my room.

“How did you do that?” I asked.

“Well, I climbed the tree,” he started with a smirk, “then I climbed out that limb that’s conveniently about two feet from your window (which I would suggest cutting off if it weren’t so useful), and then I put one foot on the trellis you told me to climb and hopped through the window.”

I shook my head, ignoring the fact that one of my neighbors would have definitely noticed some part of this spectacle. “What do you want?”

“To talk to you,” he said.

“No,” I said. “You want to harass me and have my parents kill me. That’s it. You hate me so much you want my parents to forbid me from leaving my own house until I graduate.” At that second, I heard footsteps walking up the stairs. I knew my mother was coming to talk to me. “Get in the closet,” I hissed, opening the door to my walk-in closet.

“What?” he asked. I shoved him across the room towards the open door.

“Get in there right now,” I said, pushing him in the tiny room and closing the door behind him, diving on my bed and opening my Spanish book as my mother opened my bedroom door.

“Are you talking to anyone?” she asked. “I thought I heard voices coming from your room.”

“Who would I be talking to?” I asked as politely as possible.

“I don’t know,” she said. “That’s what I came up here to find out.”

“I haven’t been talking to anyone, Mother,” I said. “I’ve been doing my Spanish homework.”

“Alright,” she said skeptically. “Just so you know, on Saturday morning we’re going to get you a dress. You can’t wear anything people have already seen you wear, especially if it doesn’t fit anymore.” She looked at me disapprovingly.

“Okay,” I said, pretending to concentrate on my Spanish textbook.

“Don’t stay up too late,” she said, walking towards the door. “It doesn’t improve your looks at all.”

“I won’t,” I said, tensing as she closed my door. I leapt from my bed and leaned against the closet door to prevent Dean from bursting out of it in case my mother came back. After a solid minute of leaning against the door, I silently turned the handle and allowed the door to swing open.

“Why do you need a dress?” Dean asked, sitting on my bed and rifling through my Spanish papers.

“For a ball at this country club my parents belong to,” I said, sitting down on the floor. “Why did you come here?”

“I told you,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you.” He moved from my bed to the floor, sitting in front of me. “Do you ever take risks?”

“What?” I asked, taken aback by this question. “Of course I do, I let you drive me around on your death machine you call a bike.”

“Not that,” he said. “That was nothing. I mean something like running away in the middle of the night.” He grinned broadly. “There’s this awesome town a few miles south of here, I don’t know if you’ve been there or not, but there’s this awesome band that’s playing there –”

His words ignited something in me, causing me to react before I could think of my actions. “Get out,” I said, standing up and pointing to the window. “Get out or I’m screaming and saying you broke into my window and tried to assault me. You’d be stupid to think there wouldn’t be a lawsuit.”

For a second he looked hurt and he stared at me. Slowly he got to his feet, walked across the room, and stood at the window. He turned to face me. “Some day, princess, you’re going to regret not taking risks. You’ll regret being your parents’ little angel and ignoring the life you could have had.” He threw one leg out of the window then the other, grabbed the nearby branch, and climbed to the ground. A few minutes later, I heard tires driving away – not the screech of his motorcycle but the four wheels of a car he must have borrowed.

A long time passed while I stood in the middle of my room, staring out my window. I felt vaguely sick but pushed the feeling away, telling myself that was the way Dean Montague would always make me feel. I wished I had a name for this feeling or, better yet, that it would just go away entirely. But I knew what this feeling was and I couldn’t wish it away; this fire in me was not burning out any time soon.