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“Are you ready?” I said. “Let’s go in.”
“No.”
“No? What…what do you mean, ‘no’?”
“No.”
“Okay…but why?”
“No.”
“But we need to go inside. The dance is inside.”
“No.”
I stood there for another twenty minutes, trying to convince her to come inside, but she
kept saying “no.” She wouldn’t get out of the car.
Finally, I said, “Okay, I’ll be right back.”
I ran inside and found Bongani.
“Where have you been?” he said.
“I’m here! But my date’s in the car and she won’t come in.”
“What do you mean she won’t come in?”
“I don’t know what’s going on. Please help me.”
We went back out to the parking lot. I took Bongani over to the car, and the second he
saw her he lost it. “Jesus in Heaven! This is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. You
said she was beautiful, Trevor, but this is insane.” In an instant he completely forgot about
helping me with Babiki. He turned and ran back inside and called to the guys. “Guys! You
gotta come see this! Trevor got a date! And she’s beautiful! Guys! Come out here!”
Twenty guys came running out into the parking lot. They clustered around the car. “Yo,
she’s so hot!” “Dude, this girl came with Trevor?” Guys were gawking at her like she was an
animal at the zoo. They were asking to take pictures with her. They were calling back to more
people inside. “This is insane! Look at Trevor’s date! No, no, no, you gotta come and see!”
I was mortified. I’d spent four years of high school carefully avoiding any kind of
romantic humiliation whatsoever, and now, on the night of the matric dance, the night of all
nights, my humiliation had turned into a circus bigger than the event itself: Trevor the
undatable clown thought he was going to have the most beautiful girl at the dance, but he’s
crashing and burning so let’s all go outside and watch.
Babiki sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead, refusing to budge. I was outside
the car, pacing, stressed out. A friend of mine had a bottle of brandy that he’d smuggled into
the dance. “Here,” he said, “have some of this.” Nothing mattered at that point, so I started
drinking. I’d fucked up. The girl didn’t like me. The night was done.
Most of the guys eventually wandered back inside. I was sitting on the pavement, taking
swigs from the brandy bottle, getting buzzed. At some point Bongani went back over to the
car to try one last time to convince Babiki to come in. After a minute his head popped up over
the car with this confused look.
“Yo, Trevor,” he said, “your date does not speak English.”
“What?”
“Your date. She does not speak any English.”