Wallflower
The girl on the margins of the dance had been there every day for a week now, clinging to the edges of the party, half-hidden behind a fan that she had purchased cheaply in a Chinese shop. Whether she imagined that it brought her a kind of mystique, or she merely held it to cover the bored, tear-stained face of the perpetually left-out, the disc jockey didn’t know. She was wearing a red dress that had been in style perhaps thirty years ago, and probably imagined that it was retro. It clung to the awkward curves of her body like an eel-skin clings to the fingers when pried free of the flesh.
He waited until his set was over, and then wandered across to extend an invitation to her. She lowered her fan a little, and he could see the surprise, the excitement of hope that so closely resembled terror. Someone had asked her to dance. Her smile was as awkward as a broken mannequin’s as she took his hand and allowed him to lead her, at last, out onto the floor.
Later, when he lowered her down into the waters of the harbor and watched the red cloth of her dress swirling like a carp through the waves, he would remember that smile. Alarmingly similar in life as in death.
