You are standing by the wall again. I thought we practiced this in the mirror. All those nights bouncing on the bed, doing the moves, saying we would not be scared when the real one came.
The lights are purple and the floor is sticky and somebody spilled orange soda by the shoe pile. There is a boy near the speakers doing a whole dance by himself and everyone is laughing at him. But look at his face. He does not care. That was going to be us. We swore.
You keep looking at the door like you want to leave. You keep checking your reflection in the dark gym window to make sure your hair is okay. Since when do we care about our hair? We used to run straight into the sprinklers.
There is a slow song now and the whole middle of the floor cleared out except for two kids swaying real careful, one whole arm's length apart, both of them staring at the wall behind the other one's head. I know that fear. It lives in your stomach. It feels like being hungry but scarier.
You could go dance. Nobody would remember tomorrow. That was the thing we figured out, remember, that nobody is really watching you, they are all too busy being scared of their own selves.
The song is almost over. There is still time.
Will you go out there? Just once? Not for you. For me.
I have been waiting a long time to see us dance.