In the Mood for a Dance

If someone had told Diana on the morning of her seventeenth birthday that she’d be running late for school yet making stellar fashion choices, outfitted in high-waisted bell-bottoms and a crocheted top, she wouldn’t have doubted it. Though, she’d be especially proud of her pant selection.

And, in fact, she is quite proud as she stands in front of her bedroom mirror. She’d been at the drugstore last week and seen Bianca Jagger in a magazine wearing a similar pair. What a look. So bomb. 

Will she ever be so cool, though, as to ride a beautiful, white horse inside of the most fab club in the city?

Well, not if she continues to live in what is actually a small, Midwestern town. Slim chance much of anything hip will come along and liven up the quiet streets Diana’s known all her life.

Pounding on her door. “Diana! Hurry up!”

She steps over to pull it open. With a sweet smile, she asks her little brother, “Is that any way to talk to the Birthday Princess?”

She pretends that annoyed sigh of his is actually one of adoration and goes back to her reflection, this time with mascara in hand. As she moves to be in front of the mirror, again, she lifts a foot and bumps the door closed. Getting ready is a private matter. No boys allowed, especially not ones named Mikey who should get a better pastime than bothering her to no end.

Only her door is opening again.

This time it isn’t that child from across the hall but the woman who’d labored and birthed her all those years ago.

“Diana, my baby!” Mrs. Frank exclaims, walking in with her hands behind her back. That and her sheer excitement are dead giveaways that she’s hiding something, about to surprise her daughter with a birthday treasure.

The cutest page boy hat is produced, and Diana is delighted at its burnt orange hue. At the corduroy texture. At how it will be the perfect accessory because she’s always had a hat face. Any hat, any time, anywhere. Diana can and will pull it off.

“Mama, it’s perfect!” she exclaims right back. Eagerly, she accepts the gift and immediately sets it atop her head.

Diana gives herself yet another look in the mirror and, with the hat, realizes her look is complete. Forget about darkening her lashes and the pink blush she’d have picked up after that. She needs nothing more.

Standing just behind her, Mrs. Frank beams. “Young and sweet and seventeen, my girl! Happy birthday!”

The day only gets better from there.

Diana isn’t sure how it is that she and Mikey finally make it to school, but they’re stepping from the backseat of a car out onto the sidewalk in front of the high school in no time. As she’s closing the door behind her, she catches a glimpse of their driver and this stray thought flits across her mind: Does that man bear a striking resemblance to Harrison Ford or is it just me?

“Come on, Di,” Mikey grumbles at her, “we’re going to be late.”

Someone, she often thinks, should study her family and figure out how all the fun and spontaneity ended up getting dumped into her DNA and then, when Mikey came along two years later, how none of it was left for him. Because he’s a total square, on his best days.

But, hey, arguing with her brother on her birthday isn’t what she has in mind. She’s going to find her best friends, Donna and Lori, and they’re going to make plans. It’s Friday, after all. That and the fact it’s a day of celebration means they cannot sit at home watching Donny & Marie.

Turns out, the Frank siblings are so late they walk into their school and discover everyone’s in the cafeteria because it’s already lunch time. Perfect timing, in other words.

The two of them are standing in the entrance to the cafeteria when their principal—also looking like Harrison Ford—approaches. He’s so happy to be seeing them. Or, well, as it turns out, her. He smiles at her and offers her his arm. When she takes it, he starts leading her further into the room.

“I’m so glad you could make it today,” he says, as if going to school had ever been an optional activity, “because we have a special birthday lunch just for you.”

Wow, has it ever been this fun to be in this place? Not only has she been able to skip her morning—read: boring—classes, now she’s being brought to a table arranged as if catering to a fancy gathering, crisp linens and domed dining platters and all. Her best friends are already sitting there, and they, too, are happy to see her.

“Your hat!” Donna squeals.

“So cute!” Lori admires.

The Birthday Princess doesn’t mind getting the queen treatment.

Then Donna says, “We’ve been dying for you to show up because you wouldn’t believe it!”

“Believe what?”

“There’s a new place,” Lori answers. “It opens tonight! We’ll go dancing!”

“Where?” Diana’s brow furrows, having heard no news about anything exciting happening or unveiling itself to her hometown. Are they going to be driving to the next big city?

“Here!” Donna says.

It hardly seems real that such a thing can be true, but it’s like once she’s been told about the new place she’s suddenly able to hear other conversations happening around the cafeteria, behind and around her. All her peers are gushing about how cool it is it’s finally opening and right off Main Street and everyone is gonna be there tonight.

“So,” Lori gives her an eager look, “do you wanna go?”

“Of course!”

Friday night plans have been made.

Or are they actually for right then and now?

Diana is pulled up from that fancy table by her friends, who, in the blink of an eye, are no longer in their school clothes. Flowy, satin dresses—one fuschia and the other a vibrant green—adorn them, and she glances down to see that she, too, has one of her own. A bright, cheery yellow.

But!

One of her hands lifts to confirm that her hat is still in place, which it is. Breath of relief. Her mother gave her that. It’s irreplaceable and exactly what she’d first known it would be: a treasure.

Dress? Yes. Hat? Yes. Place to dance? Yes.

What more could a girl wish for?

Diana is beyond happy squished between Donna and Lori as they leave school and walk out into a day that’s quickly settling into dusk. Twilight time, as The Platters sing.

They follow a stream of people who are energized and enthusiastic about this new place. Is it going to be like a proper New York club? Not that Diana really knows what that entails; she can only base things off the photographs she’s seen in magazines. Oh, but she just hopes it’s exactly what she’s been wanting to experience. Let it be the definition of cool. Let it be the most fun she’s had in all her young years.

Bright lights and a crushing crowd let them know they’ve arrived, and everyone is pressing to get inside. The girls manage to break through to the front. Still, they are not allowed in just yet.

The bouncer—Harrison Ford, really?—gives them a hard look and folds his arms over his chest. “You can only get in if you can dance.”

Diana thinks that’s kind of a silly question so says, “Well, of course we can.”

“But can you jive?”

Now, this man really is being silly. She playfully shakes her head at him. “Who can’t?”

Admittance is theirs in the next moment.

Almost too thrilled to believe she could be so lucky as to be celebrating her birthday like this with her best gals beside her, Diana is over the moon. She can’t imagine how the night could get better.

Yet, it does because they find themselves smack dab in the middle of the dance floor, and what better place to be?

Out there, Diana is one thing: a dancing machine. The Birthday Princess is now Queen of the Night, and she pays no one any mind, doing her thing. Shimmying, swaying, shaking her hips, she keeps the beat from the tambourine as the anchoring of her rhythm. She dances around her friends, around Harrison Ford, around everyone else getting their groove on.

Maybe, though, it could be fun to dance with a special someone, so she looks around at who’s actually all there. Yes, Donna and Lori would happily twirl around with her from one song to the next, but then she spots the cute boy from Literature, Robbie.

She doesn’t hesitate one second before going up to him, extending a hand, and saying, “Dance with me!”

It’s the light in his eyes then, not any words he says, that tell her he’d be delighted.

Only the drums have turned aggressive, and it’s no longer easy-going, happy boogying. They’ve gotten it wrong somehow. This isn’t the song they should be playing. But they keep at it with the heavy percussion.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Diana opens her eyes, staring up at her bedroom ceiling.

Pounding on her door. “Diana! Hurry up!”

Hardly awake and not allowed to have any peace, apparently. Not even today of all days, her birthday. She huffs and calls out, “Don’t rush me, Mikey!”

Because she’s not even been given the chance to lay there and soak up the wonder of the loveliest dream. Oh, she wishes that could be how she gets to spend the day, starting with her mom coming in and saying her name.

That’s not how it goes, though, and she’s up and dressed in the next few minutes. Inspired by her dream—and, okay, Bianca Jagger—she digs through her closet for the pair of bell-bottoms she’d recently found while out shopping with her best friends and tugs them on. A t-shirt with her favorite band on it completes the outfit, and she dabs some color onto both her lashes and cheeks. Today’s look is finished. Chic and cool, which are the words she always wants her fashion sense to embody.

She opens her door to head downstairs where she’s sure their dad will have breakfast waiting only to come face-to-face with her little brother, whose hand is lifted in a closed fist like he’s about to knock again.

“Ugh, really, Mikey? We’re not gonna be late to school.”

He, following her as she descends the stairs, grumbles about something incoherent and grouchy, and she tries not to be miffed that he’s not wished her a happy birthday yet. In all likelihood, he probably will only after their dad makes him. So lame.

Mr. Frank does indeed have breakfast for them—and a beaming smile as he brings a stack of pancakes over to his daughter, a lit candle sticking out of the top. “Happy birthday, Diana-girl!”

That gets a grin out of her. It’s a sweet start to her seventeenth year.

The two high schoolers are about to head out the door when Diana is stopped by their father. Mr. Frank is clearly hiding something behind his back, and he produces the hat from her dreams. The hat also from real-life because she’d seen it far back in her parents’ closet once and loved it immediately. Now he’s giving it to her? Truly?

“It used to be your mother’s,” Mr. Frank says as he positions the cap just so upon her head. “I think she’d want you to have it, too.”

He sends off a teary-eyed yet overwhelmingly pleased Birthday Princess with a hug and hopes that she has a good day at school.

There wasn’t time for Diana to catch a glimpse of her reflection before heading out, but she’s sure the hat is just what she needs. She’s sure it makes her look just like her mother. The both of them, hat faces. Not a hat they couldn’t wear.

It’s cute, she feels cute in it, and her best friends, when she sees them at school, agree with that assessment. What solidifies it is Literature class.

Robbie, the adorable boy sitting at the desk one over from hers, says, “I like your hat.”

He likes the hat. Does she ask him if he likes to dance, too?