Page 37 of Shifting Gears

“We learned it in gym class. Didn’t you?”

Eleanor had actually learned how to waltz in private school, but she keeps her mouth shut and watches the crowd instead.

It still astounds Eleanor sometimes how attracted she is to Dani. It’s a wild thing, something deep and alive in her chest that wakes up and howls at the moon when Dani laughs in thatendearing way, where her eyes squint up and she sounds so utterly delighted that she can’t hold it in.

Dani is doing it now, throwing her head back as she stamps and claps along to the beat, singing the words to the fast-paced song Eleanor has only heard once or twice before. She looks equal parts ridiculous and adorable.

The song finally ends. Eleanor is distracted enough in her soft, inconvenient feelings that when Dani waves her over again, looking so eager and hopeful, Eleanor slides off the tailgate.

“I can’t dance,” Eleanor says weakly as Dani takes her hand.

“I promise it’ll be fun!” Dani calls over the music. “If it isn’t, I’ll…I’ll jump in the river naked.” She grabs both of Eleanor’s hands and starts pulling them back and forth in a basic motion.

“I don’t know the steps,” Eleanor shouts. The music is even louder this close to the speakers; the dance sequence is simple this time at least, and the crowd is even bigger and easier to get lost in. Eleanor copies a step or two but gets lost when everyone does an unexpected twirl.

“Just shuffle your feet!”

Ignoring the choreography, Dani links their arms together and starts to skip in a circle. Eleanor follows, switching arms after a few beats and skipping in the opposite direction in time with everyone else. As silly as it feels, as silly as Eleanor is sure it looks, Dani is right.

It is pretty fun.

After the first chorus, Eleanor has figured out some of the steps. It’s a lot of rhythmic stomping and shuffling that she can’t quite follow, but the rest is just a lot of linking arms and spinning, and she’s laughing at Dani’s antics when everyone goes completely off-book.

When the music shifts into an exuberant banjo solo, half of the pairs around them stop, hug their partner around the waist, and start to spin. And that’s all the warning Eleanor has beforeDani is in her space. Dani gets a quick “hold on!” in, but soon Eleanor is being lifted with Dani’s strong arms braced firmly around her middle.

Eleanor squeals, holding on for dear life as they start to spin dizzyingly in a static circle.

Dani is warm and solid against her, hands firm on her middle, and her face is somewhere in the vicinity of Eleanor’s chest. She can feel Dani’s breath, getting quicker with exertion and laughter. Eleanor is being held as if she weighs nothing and then pressed hard against Dani’s solid frame, and if it weren’t for the spinning, Eleanor is sure the entire party would be able to read her thoughts on her face.

It’s soon blotted out by dizziness, followed swiftly by laughter as Dani finally loses her balance and stumbles, bracing herself so that her body blocks Eleanor’s fall and hitting the grass with awhumph.

“Are you okay?” Eleanor gasps breathlessly, rolling off Dani while the ground lurches under her like a funhouse.

Dani is lying comfortably on her back, her hair spread out over the grass like a halo, and she’scackling. The laugh takes over her whole body, and soon enough Eleanor is laughing, too, flopping onto the grass and letting the dusky sky spin in dizzying circles above them.

Most other people seem to be in the same state as the song continues, either on the ground or seriously bent over, and when Dani punches her fist up and lets out a loudwhoop,some of the crowd responds.

“Do you do that every time?” Eleanor asks once they’ve calmed down and are sitting up and holding their sore sides. “The spinning?”

“Every time,” Dani says happily. It seems like the end of the song signals a drinking and smoking break of some kind, and the dance floor clears out. Dani hauls herself up, staggering onlyonce, and dusts the grass from her now-stained jeans. “Ah, man. These are new—Mila’s gonna kill me.”

Once the sky is dark enough, the fireworks come out. Dani leads Eleanor to end of the rickety boat launch, recently vacated by the group of kids now distracted by the handing out of sparklers. The noise of the party gives way a little to the quiet lapping of the water.

Eleanor can almost see her house all the way down past the river’s wide mouth. The lights on her back deck are glowing in the distance, but for maybe the first time in her life, she’s happiernotbeing at home.

As they sit down at the dock’s edge, a single loon cries out in the distance. Low and mournful. Dani smiles softly, raising her hands to her mouth in a cupped position and blowing into the strange hand instrument she’s made. The sound comes out as an almost-perfect loon call. The loon cries back, and they maintain a back-and-forth until Dani drops her hands, bracing them against the dock.

“My brother taught me how to do that,” Dani says, kicking at the water’s surface with the toe of her boot.

It’s the first piece of information Dani has offered willingly about him since he was first mentioned. Eleanor keeps her voice low. “Garreth, right? Did he spend a lot of time here with you?”

Dani shakes her head, staring down at the ripples caused by her foot. “He moved back to the city for school not long after my parents passed. He never really felt comfortable here.”

“You mentioned that you don’t talk much.”

“Yeah. I always sort of hoped that I could stay with him when I moved south,” Dani says. There’s a forced air to her nonchalance that makes Eleanor think Dani isn’t quite as indifferent as she wants to come across. “But he was busy, you know? Building his career and everything. He had a tiny place. Didn’t work out.”

There’s a thread of sadness in Dani’s story that Eleanor has never heard before. Unsure of what to say, she puts a hand over Dani’s, squeezing gently before pulling away, and Dani smiles. It’s a tiny nugget of Dani’s life, but every crumb Eleanor can pick up is appreciated.

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