Chaos Theory

chapter three

"Dance with me."

    Darcie is grinning from ear to ear in front of the record player where she's put the Beatles' Yellow Submarine album on. She's already in a bright red tank top and gingham pants in preparation for the party tonight, and rather than helping Del figure out how to look presentable she's asking him to dance.

"No."

She pouts. "Come on, you have to practice."

Del stares down his t-shirts hanging in his closet with disdain. He's always held what he wore close to his heart, but thinking about Cody seeing him outside of school in anything is rubbing him the wrong way.

Darcie starts swaying towards him. She grabs his hand and twirls around him. He doesn't let her have the satisfaction of watching his lips lift. "I doubt they're going to be playing All You Need Is Love at a high school party."

"Yeah, because you're an old man," Darcie scrunches her nose up as she lowers her voice to imitate him, "Kids these days and their garbage."

Del turns his head away from her so that he can grin. "I just like the older stuff."

"So weird." Darcie jabs, as if she's not been by his side while he buys records and danced with him and Indie more times than he could count.

"Are you going to help me or did you just come here to offend me?"

She hip checks him. "Wear dark green."

"Thank you," Del grabs the only blank green shirt he has. One down, two to go. He bites the inside of his cheek. Now for pants.

Oh God what is he going to do for pants?

"Oh wow, okay," Darcie appears in front of him. She grabs him by the shoulders and steers him to the foot of his bed. "Please sit down, you're giving me anxiety. What is wrong with you? It's like you've never dressed before."

"There's going to be people there."

She turns from where she's rifling around his jean drawer to raise her eyebrows at him. "Twelve years of school ring a bell? One hundred eighty days of dressing yourself and going to school in front of people? Every year for twelve years?"

Del crosses his arms, looks a point above her head. "This is different."

"Is it different because it's a party or is it different because tonight might actually be the first real conversation you've had with Cody Salceda since puberty?"

Darcie takes his silence as an answer. She rolls her eyes and clutches the pair of jeans she's been feeling up before she comes to sit next to him. The perfume she's wearing washes over him and he immediately feels his body loosen the slightest bit. She has the same power as his mom does when she comes home from a nursing shift smelling of antiseptic and looking exhausted but like she's holding every bit of happiness inside of her eyes.

For a lot of people the smell of hospitals brings memories of waiting rooms and death. For Del it brings him his mother and everything he wishes he could be.

Darcie doesn't smell like antiseptic but she holds the same comfort.

She throws an arm around his shoulder. "Why do you have such little faith in yourself?"

And that really is the question of the year, huh?

"I wish I could be like you." Del studies the line of his hands against the tattered grey of his sweats.

"What do you mean?"

"Not afraid."

Darcie goes quiet beside him, but her arm squeezes just a bit tighter. There's a ball of nerves in Del's stomach that keeps on growing and growing and he wishes he knew how to make it stop, tell it hey it's just a party you're not dying but he's being transported back to sixth grade, standing in front of a white board with a picture of his mom projected onto the surface and stuttering his way through I want to be a nurse when I grow up with Jake Mills leering at him from the front row and laughter, so much laughter, and he can't do this, he can't do this--