Ginger Senior Quotes

maybe that’s what makes senior-citizen weddings so different and so much better than regular weddings. They are a signal from the universe that it’s all going to be okay.

prom was less a prom and more a fancy dance. There were no limos or corsages or tuxedos. The guys who owned suits would be wearing them, but half the students would probably be in a blazer and khakis. And it wasn’t like prom where dates showed up together. The long-term couples did, sure, but most of the dates just met each other there. Armed with the knowledge of what to expect, I met Katie there. Sort of. I showed up, and she showed up, but it became pretty clear that we weren’t really there together. What happened between Katie’s immediate yes and her arrival to turn us so utterly platonic? Did Katie not understand I had asked her as a date? I specifically didn’t say as friends—she had to have known the difference. She was a worldly senior, after all. Then it hit me. Katie was a senior, and she couldn’t go to junior prom unless a junior asked her. And she wanted to go to junior prom with her best friend. It didn’t matter that Amalia thought Katie and I made a cute couple. Katie didn’t agree, and her opinion on the matter was way more influential. I gave my theory one final test. A slow song came on, and I approached Katie from across the room. Because that’s where she was hanging out—completely across the room. “Let’s dance,” I said, with the courage of a man who had nothing to lose. Not “Would you like to dance?” or “I was just thinking, maybe we should dance?” But a confident, assured, “Let’s dance.” That was the kind of thing that a boyfriend would say to a girlfriend if she was his date at the junior prom. So why couldn’t I say it to my date? Katie took my hand and we walked to the dance floor, and we danced. If you could call what we did dancing. We stood as far apart as we could while still technically touching and took small steps from side to side. My hands did their best

be, I may as well have been Beyoncé. You know what? Still a strange sentence to write. I danced and I danced and I danced. And as the crowd started chanting “Go Steve!”, two senior girls I didn’t know jumped in the circle to dance with me. I went from humiliation and regret to dancing with two other people’s dates in the length of one song. As the song finished, everyone cheered, and the two seniors hugged me. Well, not everyone cheered. I saw Scarlet fuming. I caught her eye, smiled, mouthed thank you, and started dancing to the next song. Rejection is an odd thing—it only matters if you give it the power to matter. If you’ve ever called into a radio contest or played the lottery, you know that rejection without consequences exists. Why don’t we get upset when we’re not the ninety-ninth caller? Why don’t we cry when we scratch off a ticket to find it doesn’t have our numbers? Because we’ve already accepted those things as possibilities before we extended ourselves. And relationships are no different. “Most people,” my brother had said years earlier, pointing at the middle of three lines, “live their life here. They don’t go far down, but they don’t go far up either. The further you go toward this top line, the further you will also go toward this bottom line. You decide if that’s worth it. I’ve never been a fan of the middle.” Ever since then, I’d been taking more and more risks. I’d been stepping further toward both the top and bottom lines. And, overall, I’d been happier. I resigned myself to never live my life in the middle again. Unless it was the middle of a circle of people chanting “Go Steve!” At the end of the night, I was exhausted from all the dancing and was about to grab some food and take the long subway ride home. Jacob and his girlfriend invited

asked. “I don’t want to push in on your date.” They laughed; they’d been dating for a while at that point and to them this was just a regular Saturday night, only with more formal attire. “Besides,” Jacob said, “You think Katie is eating alone? I bet she’s with Amalia right now, being consoled about how she missed her chance to dance with you.” I laughed at the nonsensical thought of Katie even caring about us dancing together, and the three of us went to one of those little all-night delis with upstairs seating somewhere in midtown. Jacob teased me about how naïve I was to expect a senior to date me, as his senior girlfriend playfully punched him in the arm. After we ate, we walked around Manhattan for hours, just talking and laughing about how everything had unfolded. It wasn’t until that night that I learned the full lesson from my heart-to-heart with Mason. I didn’t need to work on making more friends, and I certainly didn’t need to work on any more dates. I needed to spend time with

going to ask Katie.” Amalia practically burst through the phone. I was sure that part of Amalia’s excitement was having a friend that might be going to the party with her. But she also went on and on about how she had always thought that Katie and I would make such a cute couple and it was a wonderful idea and she was rooting for me and several other encouraging statements. Amalia also said that I’d better ask Katie soon, since it was going to be hard to keep that a secret. I called Katie right after I hung up. I didn’t have the guts to get rejected in person, but Amalia’s excitement had excited me. Katie and I talked about the latest assignment, a modern satire of a great work. I was planning on writing a version of “The Raven” about high school, an idea that Katie seemed to like. After all, she was writing a high-school version of Macbeth. We were in sync in many ways. And then, I just said it. “Do you want to go to the junior prom with me?” Katie said yes immediately. There was no time to blabber about how I thought it made sense for her to go because Amalia was going or to add in an as friends. Katie had said yes. I didn’t know what to expect from junior prom when I got there. The last school dance I’d been to was the first school dance I was able to go to. I was so excited for that one—Hunter had a few dances each year, and when the first dance came around, I put on my best ugly shirt (I wasn’t fashion forward enough to know that orange shirts are a bad idea for a redhead) and stood there awkwardly while everyone ignored me. From then on, school dances weren’t my thing. I had spent the previous three years at USY dances though, so I wasn’t intimidated by junior prom. I just wanted to know what I was in for. Jacob Corry’s girlfriend was a senior, so she became my Obi-Wan.