Norah Piehl is a freelance writer, editor, and book reviewer. Her essays and reviews have been published in Skirt! Magazine, on National Public Radio, in Brain, Child Magazine, and in print anthologies. Norah's short fiction has appeared in Shaking Like a Mountain and is forthcoming in Literary Mama.

Even One Glance (June 20, 2010. Issue 18.)

“There’s a dead cow in the middle of the road!” Tess turned backwards on the seat to keep it in view, transforming a single glimpse to story as fast as the bus could speed away. And Tom knew she was describing its lolling tongue, its spilling innards, the city workers’ valiant efforts to heave it into the bucket loader. And he was vaguely aware that a girl in the row behind him was retching from the smell, or from Tess’s description, or both.

But all he could see was Tess, kneeling on the rainbow-upholstered bus seat like a little kid on her first field trip, the way her skinny butt bounced against her green sneakers as she laughed, how her crazy hair spiraled free of its confines no matter how many bobby pins she stuck in there. She grabbed Heidi’s shoulder and shook it, gestured madly to indicate the enormity of the cow or the problem or the story itself, buried her face in her hands and rose up again, laughing. She was her own best audience. Or Tom was.

She’d taken that silly banner with their state’s name on it, stolen it from the stage in the hotel ballroom sometime between the Caesar salad and the chicken cordon bleu. Now, banquet done, awards granted, grudges given and taken freely, she had pulled it out again, wrapped it across her chest like a pageant sash, vamping for Heidi’s camera, flashing her best beauty queen smile while flipping the bird. And Tom pretended to read his video game magazine, and he marveled at the sheer number of car dealerships on this endless Boise highway, and he wondered why every chartered bus everywhere smelled just like his grandpa’s basement bathroom. But really, all he could think of was her.

And then they were there, at the big party the tournament organizers had talked up all week. In an old prison, of all places. A frontier jail, just ruins now, tucked beside some minor butte. Someone had thought it was a good idea to drape the sandy stone walls with tiny lights, hang speakers from the crumbling guard towers, call it Idaho’s newest nightspot and hope people would want to dance the electric slide in the prison’s exercise yard, jumbled with old bricks and tenacious weeds.

And he guessed it had worked, as he climbed down the bus steps, made his way to the punch bowl, saw the other kids chasing each other through the cell blocks, pretending to lock their friends in solitary confinement, staging mock firing squads, scoping out dark corners for what they hoped would come later. Good students all, they eyed each other, casually clutching their glasses of punch and soda. They practiced that awkward but oh-so-cool top-down claw-grip on their cups, a maneuver that most of them wouldn’t really master until they had a half-dozen college keg parties under their belts.

Tom lost track of Tess and her friends in the dusky confusion, grabbed a glass of flat punch, meandered over to the empty dance yard, where the DJ made stupid jokes into a too-loud microphone and spun tunes from before any of these kids were born. Tone-Loc was totally their parents’ music, for Pete’s sake. On the other side of the dance floor Tom saw his friend Andy over at the make-your-own taco station. Andy held up a tortilla overflowing with cheese and guacamole, gave Tom a thumbs-up, gestured him over. Tom pretended not to see.

The DJ started up some Journey slow-jam bullshit, and didn’t he know that a slow dance this early in the evening was like drowning kittens before they’d had time to open their eyes and live a little? So Tom roamed his way down into a dusty passage lined with cells that couldn’t hold anyone in, not anymore. But then the DJ was back on the mic, saying, Look up, look up. The stars are out.

And Tom noticed only then that this desert dungeon had no roofs, that the whole dilapidated place was open to the night sky, that he could look up and see what no inmate had probably ever seen from this exact angle. And he saw her, then, across the passageway, swinging on a wrought-iron gate, head flung back, gazing.

“We don’t have this many stars in Chicago, you know.” He wasn’t sure if she spoke to him or to herself, if she even knew he was there. You never knew with her, but in most ways it didn’t really matter. Tess always had an audience.

“Sure we do,” he said, sipping his warm punch, spilling a little on the thirsty dirt-floored hallway. “Just can’t see them because of all the city lights.”

He was pretty sure she’d rolled her eyes, but it was hard to tell in the wavering light of stars and Christmas bulbs. “Don’t give me some third-grade astronomical argument to prove how smart you are, Tom. Just admit that for our purposes, being seen and just being are one and the same.” She pushed herself back and forth on the swinging gate with one toe of her green sneaker, kicking up a little poof of dust on each arc of her journey.

“Like that cow,” Tom said, crossing the hallway toward her, not knowing just then quite what he meant, just wanting to transform this petulant Tess back into that exuberant storyteller from the bus.

She dragged her toe, coming to a stop inches from where he stood, her face pale and serious. “Exactly like the cow.”

And he looked to the sky and thought of cattle, keeling over anonymously every second of every day in ranchers’ fields and feedlots and city streets, and he knew he wouldn’t forget that one particular cow, not now or ever. And he could tell, even though he was counting stars, that Tess was looking at him, maybe for the first time really, even though they’d spent that whole year drilling together with the Quiz Bowl team after school. And he stopped looking up and started looking at, and she was on one side of the barred gate, and he was on the other, and perched on the sturdy crossbar at the gate’s base, she was still so tiny but his same height for once. And he leaned in and there she was, her lips warm against his in the desert evening, the bars cool against his cheeks, her mouth tasting like red punch, like his own.

“You’re really good at telling stories,” he said as they pulled apart. And she laughed then, and freed herself from the ancient cell, and paused to kiss him on the cheek before skipping down the corridor to take her place at the center of the dance floor. And Tom put his hand to his lips, as if to capture her warmth, but really all he wanted to hold on to was her gaze.