“Huh?” asked Chad, screwing up his face.

“Her face broke,” repeated Randy.

Chad let his head drop and tried to make sense of what Randy had just said. And then he turned back to Randy and repeated, “Huh?”

“You heard me. Finally friggin’ get to go out with Yvonne LaFrance and her face breaks.” Yvonne LaFrance lived in Portage and worked at the general store there, and whenever Randy saw her, he’d ask her out, and every time he did, she’d say she was seeing somebody. And she always was, because she was pretty and kind.

But a couple of weeks ago, Randy was ice fishing on Portage Lake and when he stopped by the store for a coffee, he said he still hoped he’d get a chance to take her out someday and she said, “How about someday soon?” And that someday soon turned out to be the Friday night when all the extraordinary things did or didn’t happen.

Chad tried to figure out what Randy had meant when he said that Yvonne LaFrance’s face had broken. “Her face…?” He couldn’t finish the question, because he was aghast.

“Broke, dude, it broke. How many times are you gonna make me say it?!” snapped Randy.

Chad wasn’t trying to make Randy keep saying that Yvonne’s face had broken. He was just trying to understand.

“Told you it was bad,” chuckled Randy sardonically.

And Chad wasn’t denying that it was bad. He was just trying to figure out how Yvonne’s face had broken. He sure hoped Randy hadn’t hit her. Randy had broken a lot of guys’ faces. Because he had punched them. Because they had made him mad.

But Randy would never hit a girl. Chad was sure of it.

“Well … how did her face break?” Chad asked, hoping it wasn’t as serious as it all sounded.

“When we were dancin’.”

The word dancin’ stuck to the air like a fly sticks to flypaper.

Chad and Randy did not dance.

Not even at their proms. Which is probably why their prom dates had dumped them on prom night.

“Dancin’?” Chad smirked.

“Yeah…” Randy said, in a way that let Chad know he wasn’t happy about having gone dancing.

Chad conjured up an image of his best bud dancing and couldn’t help but laugh—hard. But not so hard that he couldn’t ask the all-important question, “Why the heck were you dancin’?!?”

“’Cause that’s what she wanted to do!” snapped Randy. “On our date! So I took her! Down to the Rec Center. They had a bean supper at five and then lessons at five thirty and then you dance all night. And they teach together dancing—how to dance … together. And we learned that thing where you throw the girl up and over your shoulder—”

“Whoa—what?”

“It’s just this fancy move she wanted me to try with her.” It wasn’t just Yvonne who wanted Randy to try it. Lalaine Deshain, the country swing dance instructor from Presque Isle, thought that Yvonne and Randy were really good dancing together. And she was particularly impressed with Randy’s ability, so she showed him how to do a complicated over-the-shoulder flip with Yvonne, because she thought he was strong enough and that they were both skilled enough to execute it. And then she supervised them when they tried it, and Yvonne faced Randy and put her left hand on his right shoulder and jumped up, and Randy guided her body with his right hand, and she glided over his shoulder and over his head and she landed on her feet, facing him. And Lalaine gleefully shrieked, “Yes!” and told them to try it again, but to incorporate the fancy flip into the other moves they had learned. And then she went over to teach some less-skilled newbies some basics like the cuddle and the jitterbug step.