Dancing in the Dark
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About this ebook
1963.
An old high school in a dying neighborhood. It's ruled by two wolf-packs: the Dragons and the Monarchs. Masked at night, by day there is no sign or symbol to mark their allegiance. But still the students know who to fear—the instincts of terrified prey scenting prowling predator.
Two friends, fifteen, too old for boys, too young for men, no pair of lean Marine machines, just ordinary size and shape, one tall, one shorter, not by much. By alphabetic chance, their names are paired when Noah's two-by-two is called. They never talk about the danger if the packs find out they're paired in more than class. They make themselves content with just the little that they have, though wishing, aching deep inside for something more.
And once, just once, they had a day. Or only hours, not even that. They didn't dance in light or dark, but in a dimness made of boarded windows, and random holes where nails had been, that draped thin strands of sunlight across them both.
But now...they're faced with dancing in the dark when wolf-packs meet.
Warning: This is a gay teen version of Romeo and Juliet, and a variation on a West Side Story theme. There is no HEA.
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Dancing in the Dark - Eric Alan Westfall
Copyright 1961-2018. Eric Alan Westfall.
All Rights Reserved.
A Hearty Round of Cyber-Applause To:
To Enny Kraft for her usual superb work. She figured out all the right images to go with the ones in my head.
Cover design by: Enny Kraft (http://ennykraft.weebly.com/)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
A HEARTY ROUND OF CYBER-APPLAUSE TO:
DANCING IN THE DARK
AUTHOR BIO
MORE BOOKS BY ERIC ALAN WESTFALL
1963
Both
I looked at him before that day.
Both
And he at me.
One
How could we not?
Two
Our classes were the same. I’d moved here from...it doesn’t matter where. But once enrolled, I found our names were side by side in seating charts,
One
or him before and me behind.
Both
And so we’d seen—how could we not?—but never really looked.
One
I didn’t dare.
Two
I couldn’t take the chance.
Both
The chance he’d see...and recognize...what no one knew but me.
One
And so we saw, but never looked...until that day.
Both
I looked at him...down there...that day.
Both
Or maybe it was he who looked at me.
One
A sideways look, a look we knew was seen, sent back, though heads weren’t turned.
Two
It could have stopped right then, with just that look, a fast look back, no more than that, a normal thing, a thing guys do, we’re only boys, it’s no big deal.
One
But then we paused, an eye-blink time, and having paused to make a choice, the pause itself became the choice to step beyond the look, look back. We didn’t think, not he, not I, with rational and conscious thought, nor yet with thought controlled down there, but in that pause was something more, a lightning thought, a certainty born more of intuition than a logic chain.
Two
I moved my hips or he moved his, a move no faster than that eye-blink time, away from porcelain sides that hid us both, away from blended scents of urine, water, chemicals. Another pause, another blink, beginning our beginning in our stops and goes, no words, afraid, but neither stopped the stops and starts.
One
Our hands in mirrored motion moved, his right my left, to rise and rest on cool white, a finger touching cold and sweating gleaming silver.
Two
Then my left his right moved down. We might have meant a different touch—I think we did—but in our awkward nervousness
Both
my hand just touched...his hand.
One
And in that touch was tender heat