One of the boys, Paul Mulford, tried to creep out as soon as he realized he was the smallest kid there, coming in at five-feet-nothing. Miss Rohrbacher chased him down and hauled him back, laughing cheerfully. “No-no-no,” said she, “you’re mine now.”

So he was. So they all were. Miss Rohrbacher was the dance-monster, and none could stand in her way. She fired up her boombox and showed them the waltz (Chuck knew it), the cha-cha (Chuck knew it), the ball change (Chuck knew it), then the samba. Chuck didn’t know that one, but when Miss Rohrbacher put on “Tequila,” by the Champs, and showed them the basic moves, he got it at once and fell in love with it.

He was by far the best dancer in the little club, so Miss Rohrbacher mostly put him with the girls who were clumsy. He understood she did it to make them better, and he was a good sport about it, but it was sort of boring.

Near the end of their forty-five minutes, however, the dance-monster would show mercy and pair him with Cat McCoy, who was an eighth-grader and the best dancer of the girls. Chuck didn’t expect romance—Cat was not only gorgeous, she was four inches taller than he was—but he loved to dance with her, and the feeling was mutual. When they got together, they caught the rhythm and let it fill them. They looked into each other’s eyes (she had to look down, which was a bummer, but hey—it was what it was) and laughed for the joy of it.

Before letting the kids go, Miss Rohrbacher paired them up (four of the girls had to dance with each other) and told them to freestyle. As they lost their inhibitions and awkwardness, they all got pretty good at it, although most of them were never going to dance at the Copacabana.

One day—this was in October, only a week or so before the Fall Fling—Miss Rohrbacher put on “Billie Jean.”

“Watch this,” Chuck said, and did a very passable moonwalk. The kids oohed. Miss Rohrbacher’s mouth dropped open.

“Oh my God,” Cat said. “Show me how you did that!”

He did it again. Cat tried, but the illusion of walking backward just wasn’t there.

“Kick off your shoes,” Chuck said. “Do it in your socks. Slide into it.”

Cat did. It was much better, and they all applauded. Miss Rohrbacher had a go, then all of the others were moonwalking like crazy. Even Dylan Masterson, the clumsiest of them, got into it. Twirlers and Spinners let out half an hour later than usual that day.

Chuck and Cat walked out together. “We should do it at the Fling,” she said.

Chuck, who hadn’t been planning on going, stopped and looked at her with his eyebrows raised.

“Not as a date or anything,” Cat hastened on, “I’m going out with Dougie Wentworth—” This Chuck knew. “—but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t show them some cool moves. I want to, don’t you?”

“I don’t know,” Chuck said. “I’m a lot shorter. I think people would laugh.”

“Got you covered,” Cat said. “My brother’s got a pair of Cuban heels, and I think they’d fit you. You’ve got big feet for a little kid.”

“Thanks a bunch,” Chuck said.

She laughed and gave him a sisterly hug.

At the next meeting of Twirlers and Spinners, Cat McCoy brought her brother’s Cubans. Chuck, who had already endured slights to his manhood for being in the dance club, was prepared to hate them, but it was love at first sight. The heels were high, the toes were pointed, and they were as black as midnight in Moscow. They looked a lot like the ones Bo Diddley wore back in the day. So okay, they were a little big, but toilet paper stuffed into those pointy toes took care of that. Best of all… man, they were slick. During freestyle, when Miss Rohrbacher put on “Caribbean Queen,” the gym floor felt like ice.

“You put scratches on that floor, the janitors will beat your butt,” Tammy Underwood said. She was probably right, but there were no scratches. He was too light on his feet to leave any.

8

Chuck went stag to the Fall Fling, which turned out just fine, because all the girls from Twirlers and Spinners wanted to dance with him. Especially Cat, because her boyfriend, Dougie Wentworth, had two left feet and spent most of the evening slouched against the wall with his buddies, all of them sucking up punch and watching the dancers with lordly sneers.

Cat kept asking him when they were going to do their stuff, and Chuck kept putting her off. He said he’d know the right tune when he heard it. It was his bubbie he was thinking of.

Around nine o’clock, half an hour or so before the dance was scheduled to end, the right tune came up. It was Jackie Wilson, singing “Higher and Higher.” Chuck strutted to Cat with his hands out. She kicked off her shoes, and with Chuck in her brother’s Cubans, they were at least close to the same height. They went out on the floor, and when they did a double moonwalk, they cleared it. The kids made a circle around them and began clapping. Miss Rohrbacher, one of the chaperones, was among them, clapping along with the rest and shouting “Go, go, go!”

They did. As Jackie Wilson shouted that happy, gospel-tinged tune, they danced like Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, and Jennifer Beals all rolled up into one. They finished with Cat spinning first one way, then the other, then collapsing backward into Chuck’s arms with her own held out in a dying swan. He went down in a split that miraculously didn’t rip the crotch out of his pants. Two hundred kids cheered when Cat turned her head and put a kiss on the corner of Chuck’s mouth.

“One more time!” some kid shouted, but Chuck and Cat shook their heads. They were young, but smart enough to know when to quit. The best cannot be topped.

9

Six months before he died of a brain tumor (at the unfair age of thirty-nine), and while his mind was still working (mostly), Chuck told his wife the truth about the scar on the back of his hand. It wasn’t a big deal and hadn’t been a big lie, but he’d reached a time in his rapidly diminishing life when it seemed important to clear the books. The only time she’d asked about it (it really was a very small scar), he told her that he had gotten it from a boy named Doug Wentworth, who was pissed about him cavorting with his girlfriend at a middle school dance and pushed him into a chainlink fence outside the gymnasium.

“What actually happened?” Ginny asked, not because it was important to her but because it seemed to be important to him. She didn’t care much about whatever had happened to him in middle school. The doctors said he would probably be dead before Christmas. That was what mattered to her.

When their fabulous dance was over and the DJ put on another, more recent tune, Cat McCoy had run to her girlfriends, who giggled and shrieked and hugged her with a fervency of which only thirteen-year-old girls may be capable. Chuck was sweaty and so hot his cheeks felt on the verge of catching fire. He was also euphoric. All he wanted in that moment was darkness, cool air, and to be by himself.

He walked past Dougie and his friends (who paid absolutely no attention to him) like a boy in a dream, pushed through the door at the back of the gym, and walked out into the paved half-court. The cool fall air doused the fire in his cheeks, but not the euphoria. He looked up, saw a million stars, and understood that for each one of those million, there was another million behind it.