Team Spirit

37. Sam Finds His Good Hat

The second I step into the auditorium, it is very clear that I stick out. My boots click loud and clear against the floor, hard leather versus hardwood. I clutch my bouquet of flowers tighter, the one thing other people seem to also have. 

I wipe my palms against my jeans, my good jeans and hand over my ticket to the mom-type woman at a folding table outside the double doors. 

She looks me over. I swear she knows I don't know a damn thing about dance. It's pretty damn obvious I belong better at a rodeo. 

"Enjoy the performances," she says, handing me back a torn half a ticket. 

The seats angle the same as movie theatre seats do, stairs leading down toward the stage. Rows of them are already filled, taken up by people's families, little kids wriggling around until their parents tell them to knock it off. Groups of people my age sit together in clumps. Girls have buns in their hair and eyelashes so long and sparkly I can see them from six rows away. There are boys, too. More boys than I guessed there would be. 

They must be Leo's kind of people and I have to swallow back the panic that wants to rise up in the back of my throat. I am not like them, but Leo has those people here. There are so many, and it finally clicks that Leo never, ever needed me to be like that. That was never the hole I filled. 

I never wanted Leo to be anything but what he is. It doesn't make sense to think that Leo wanted me to be anything but what I am. Just the guy at camp whispering to horses early in the morning, turning pink as the sunrise every time Leo spoke a damn word to me. 

I sit at the end of a row three seats back from the front of the stage. It's just a small comfort, setting myself up to escape without trying to get past people. I take my hat off to rest it on my knee, playing with the edges of it. 

When I make myself stop swiping my palms against my legs, I bounce my knee instead, clacking my boots against the floor like chattering teeth. Right up until the girl in front of me, her hair pulled tight into a bun, glares at me over her shoulder. 

The lights in the audience go dim and a spot light from above lands squarely on a man in a suit. 

"So glad all of you could join us today to watch our outstanding talent in the sixteen-to-eighteen age range of the contemporary category," the man says. He goes on, thanking sponsors and all that before he gets off the stage. 

The whole place goes dark for a second. Music cues up, white light splashing across the black stage on the beat. 

They're so good, all of them. Dancers grace the stage in thin costumes, moving to all kinds of songs. One girl performs to a Game of Thrones theme remix. Another does her routine to Frank Sinatra. They move like ink dropped into water, swirling liquid and beautiful across the stage. 

Between dancers, a booming voice announces their names and dance companies. It's not so different from the drawl from the announcers book calling out cowboys and the broncos drawn before the event, but there's less dirt and no spurs. Just as many bruises, probably. 

The silence between songs keeps jarring me back to reality, back into the anxiety of waiting on one boy. My heart keeps jumping in those intermissions, waiting for the announcer to call his name. 

"Leo Zalinka. Drumheller Dance Club," booms out of the speakers and my heart leaps into my throat. 

I've only ever seen Leo dance to upbeat songs, in the black room of his high school where he almost did me in. Or just messing around at camp to get the kids laughing. 

That's not what pipes in, though. The guitar comes in before Leo is lit up, slow and heavy. It weighs on me and there he is in a black button-down and shorts so form fitting I can make out his lean muscles working under the fabric, even from the third row.