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    Dancing in the Dark
    Dancing in the Dark
    Dancing in the Dark
    Ebook45 pages18 minutes

    Dancing in the Dark

    By Eric Alan Westfall

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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.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEric Alan Westfall
    Release dateSep 12, 2018
    ISBN9781386957966
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      Book preview

      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

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