“She really said I have to go?”
“Yes.”
“Or what?”
“She didn’t say.”
We both think about this.
“What do you think I should do?” I ask.
“You could go in a suit,” he says.
“No, I mean should I go to prom?”
“Do you want to go?”
I sigh at him.
He shrugs. “Don’t go, then.”
I nod and picture Mom coming home tomorrow morning and tickling my chin until I wake up and tell her about prom. It’s not that she’s deluded, or in denial, or that she doesn’t know exactly what school’s like for me, she’s just … terminally hopeful. She thinks that your own joy can be separate from the people around you, that things like graduation and prom are happy memories to be, even if you have no one to share them with. She’s big on me participating in my own adolescence, so at least I’ll have something to reflect on in the future.
I sigh. “Do we have any suits?”
He shrugs. “The one from school court.”
“I thought we burned that.”
“Oh yeah,” he says. “Maybe Mom has a dress.”
“All she has are pantsuits and scrubs,” I say, looking longingly to where my cat is now curled and purring around my book. “Could I just wear my nightgown? It’s like a dress.”
“Let’s see what Mom has.”
Mom has seven smart pantsuits and four sets of slightly mismatched scrubs. I decide not to wear either after we discover that I can actually fit my whole body inside a leg of her pants and disappear entirely by holding the waist up to my neck and ducking down. When I stand up straight again, Philip says, “It’s like you’re being born.”
Mom does have one dress. It’s her office party/school court dress. It’s royal blue and has a giant belt, but at least it’s silk. I hold it up in front of me in the mirror.
“Try it on,” Philip says.
I go into the bathroom and put it on.
“It’s a prom night miracle!” I yell to Philip from where I’m standing in front of the mirror.
Philip opens the bathroom door, looks at me, and laughs.
“Or not,” I say, spinning so he can see how the dress expands to almost eat me alive.
“It’s big,” he says.
“Mom’s big,” I remind him.
“Don’t tell me things I know already!” Philip yells. I yell it with him, to keep him company and let him know I know.
Like I said, Mom’s a big lady, so even when I use the last hole on the belt, it hangs off me.
“I’ll get the staple gun,” Philip says, moving toward the door.
“Mom might get mad,” I say. “But it was a good idea. I’ll wear it like this.” I stand with my arms akimbo, one hip thrust to the side.
“Sassy,” Philip says.
“How long do I have to stay?”
“She said two hours. And say good-bye to the principal before you leave, because she’s calling him Monday to make sure you were there.”
I think of something and gasp. I gleefully yell, “Hey!” which gets Philip’s attention. Then I yell, “I can’t go to prom. I don’t have a ticket.”
Philip looks at me.
“She bought me a ticket, didn’t she?”
He pulls a thick triangle of folded paper out of his pocket and hands it to me.
“God, she’s such a stinker.” I sigh. “Will you give me a ride?”
“You have to ride in the back.”
“Why?”
“I melted your part of the front seat.”
We say good-bye to Robert, who’s drinking orange juice at the kitchen table, on our way out. He’s the boarder who’s lived with us for years. He has greasy glasses and a whole other family in Idaho that he doesn’t see.
The passenger seat in my brother’s truck is melted down to a lump. Strangely, or maybe not if you know my brother, everything else in the truck is perfectly fine.
I sit in the back, on top of a bale of hay he has tied down.
“It’s prickly,” I say.
We end up beside a parade of limos on the two-lane into town, winding our way toward school. Some of the back windows are down in the limos, and I can see glimpses of oiled knees and suspicious-looking soda cans being passed around. There’s also lots of shrieking. They don’t see me, since Philip’s truck has a wicked lift on it, and all they’d see if they looked out the window are the hand-painted blue flames that burn their way down each side. As we get nearer to the turn onto Schoolhouse Road, the shrieks get louder and Philip slows down so he’s the last one in the train pulling onto the narrow road leading to school.
We don’t follow the limos up the driveway to the school. Instead, Philip pulls over by the sign reading prom tonight! I climb out of the back and lean into the cab. We both look through the windshield at the school. I’m already working on forgetting its angles. Philip, though …
“Ten o’clock, okay?” I say to him.
He nods, still staring at the school.
“Don’t wait here, though,” I say.
“Why?” he says, before yelling, “It’s five hundred feet!” He points to the wooden marker Mom and I put into the ground to show him how close he could come to school.
“Because,” I say, “they’ll come ask you what you’re doing here, and we don’t have bail money right now.”
“I’m not doing anything wrong.”
“You know that doesn’t matter.”
“Did everybody laugh at me when it happened?” he asks.
“No,” I say, even though a lot of people did. I mean, it’s funny, right? The slow kid bringing a potato gun to school for science fair and getting expelled because it’s technically a firearm.
“Yeah, they did,” he says.
“Some of them did,” I say. “But not all of them.”
“Who didn’t?” he asks, finally turning from the school to look at me.
“Your friends didn’t,” I tell him, and he nods.
“And you didn’t?”
“Not once. What time are you picking me up?”
“Ten o’clock.”
“Okay.”
I walk up the driveway. At the entrance to the school, couples are lined up, waiting to go in and have their pictures taken and then have a big entrance into the gym. In line there’s lots of squeals and hugs and comparisons of suits and dresses and passing of badly hidden flasks. Every time the door opens you can hear music from the gym, giving people a twenty-second window to show off their moves, then the doors close and they look stupid dancing to the crickets.
I get in line behind Drew Barker, who’s a senior, and his too-much-younger girlfriend. She’s holding on to the crook of his elbow and trying to make nice with the senior girls who hate her.
My appearance sparks mild interest.
Behind me are two people I don’t know. She is in pink, and he has a bow tie to match.
It turns out Drew and his jailbait date are friends with the pink people. They’ve all started talking to each other, first sort of over my head, then around either side of me. Now they’ve sort of surrounded me and are talking around me like I’m a campfire until it’s jailbait ’n’ date’s turn to walk through the doors. The Pinks try to follow.
“I’m next,” I say, stepping in front of them and nodding at the gym teacher, who is on door duty.
“Whatever,” Mr. Pink says, trying to lead his date past me.
“I said, I’m next.” I step in front of them again. He decides to take this as funny. He laughs. It’s an ugly laugh.
“What does it matter?” Ms. Pink asks, her voice more grating than I’d imagined. “Why do you need to get inside, anyway?”
All I say is, “I’m next,” as the gym teac
her opens the door and I walk through.
Ms. Pink calls me a bitch. The door closes behind me before I can bark at her.
I know why the Pinks assumed I’d let them go first. It’s because of embarrassment. They’re embarrassed by me, and they assume I’m embarrassed of me, too. And if I’m embarrassed, then I won’t ever want to make any sort of attention-grabbing scene, like telling the teacher when one of them takes my seat, or refusing to slink out of class because the teacher’s run out of birthday cupcakes. No. I will stand there in front of the teacher’s desk till she goes and gets me a HoHo out of the vending machine in the teachers’ lounge.
They have the photography area set up in the front hall of the school. I wait till jailbait’s done and then sit on the stool in front of the blue-sky-with-puffy-cloud backdrop.
The photographer looks at me for a second, then looks expectantly at the door.
“Just me,” I say.
“And you want your picture taken.”
“No,” I say. “I thought this was the bathroom. Was I not supposed to pee on the stool?”
The photographer blinks at me. I really don’t want to have another fight with him. I know he remembers me from school picture day earlier this year, when he tried to get away with taking just one picture of me before yelling, “Next!” He’d given everyone else at least three shots each. That day I had stayed seated on the stool while we yelled at each other, until the principal came over and made the photographer snap two more pictures after whispering something involving the word litigious in his ear.
Now the photographer is saying, “Okay, then.” And looking through the viewfinder. His finger rests on the button, and I flash him a live long and prosper as the camera clicks.
“What did you just do?” he asks, but I’m already off the stool, standing in front of his little table with my hand out for him to print out the picture and give it to me. He prints it out and hands it to me.
“And a frame,” I say. He gives me a frame.
Inside the gym the terrible dancing is already well under way. I strut my way toward the center of the dance floor.
On the way there, I see Norah. We were friends when we were little, then her mom opened her front door for a Bible-thumper that rang the bell, and Norah got all new church friends and stopped drinking soda. Then last year her mom left the church and now Norah and I talk in the halls and ride the bus home together. She says she and her mom miss their church friends sometimes. I like Norah because when I think of her I think, She’s of the world, like me. The other kids here, they think the world is full of people like them. But it’s not. It’s filled with people like Norah, and like me. I’ve seen them at emergency rooms and car impound lots, and peace marches and the DMV. I know that I’m not as alone as people here want me to think. I’ve got a whole world out there waiting for me, and they’ve just got each other.
Norah’s dancing with the quiet kid from art class who’s always making moony eyes at her. Norah’s dress is a prom night miracle. I recognize it right off. It was her mom’s, and Norah and I used to dress up in it when we were little kids. It fits her perfectly. Norah sees me as moony art boy is dipping her, and she jumps up to hug me.
“You’re here!” she yells.
“Wow, Norah,” I say. “You look really pretty.”
She spins around and giggles, then fingers the silk of my dress.
“It’s so soft!” she says, smiling at me. She glances at Mr. Moony and whispers, “He came over and talked to my mom and convinced her to let me go.”
“That’s great,” I say to her, and then I say it to him, “That’s great.” He blushes.
“Want to stay and dance with us?” she asks.
“No. I’m going to go dance in the middle.”
“Okay.” I love Norah because she doesn’t warn me not to go.
There is a knot of bodies in the middle of the floor. They have their arms slung around each other’s shoulders because the DJ is playing “their song,” the one that was always on the radio the summer they all went down to a beach house where they had fights and lost their virginities. I’ve heard the stories. They are all crying and vowing undying love for each other, even though I think it’s a little early in the night for that. The song ends, and the hugs turn to screams when the DJ starts playing the next song, which is a sweet cut off a new album that’s on permanent repeat on the stereo at my house.
There’s scattered laughter as I walk across the floor. They think it’s funny that I can walk to the rhythm. They’ll think what’s next is funny, too, I’m sure, because what they don’t know is that I can dance.
I can shake it, drop it, and pop it. My Robot is unbeatable and I can Mashed Potato, too. I don’t do the Worm because that’s for amateurs. My mom and Philip and I and sometimes Robert dance all the time. My mom can flip all of us over her back when we swing dance, and I’m sure Philip could flip me but he’s not allowed to because he lets go too soon or too late, and if I get a concussion they might jail him. All our living room furniture is on special sliding discs that we ordered from the TV, so we can spread out and have ourselves a dance-off. Mom usually wins these — because of her poundage she can make dance moves look like an army invading. She’s the living room champion. But I can lay it out here, in front of these amateurs, and I do.
I dance the bejeezus out of the song, and the next one, and the next one after that. Some people laugh and try to dance with me, some against me, a few try to nudge me off the dance floor, but I dance on. I go to school here, like everyone else, and if Mom says I’m going to have a prom, well then, I’m having myself a prom. I’m drinking the free punch.
Philip’s waiting for me in his truck at the bottom of the school driveway when I get there. We smile at each other through the windshield.
“Let’s set up the summer porch tonight,” he says as I walk by his window. “I already put out the beds.”
I climb into the back of the truck. He’s put a blanket on top of the bale of hay, which I appreciate. He takes the long way home, through the fields and over the ridge. The wind blows my hair, sending it shooting out in front of my face. Through the tangle I can see the blue-black sky, and the stars.
My brother likes to drive. I am going to leave this place one day.
Better Be Good to Me
by Daniel Ehrenhaft
Intro/Count-off
So there are some things you should know.
My name is Zack. I was once seventeen. Now I am balding and pudgy, but I’m okay with it. My wife is okay with it, too. Or so she says. She can say anything, though, because she’s still beautiful. (Jerk.) To cut to the chase: We are the parents of a seventeen-year-old; let’s call her “Harper” — screw it, that’s her real name — who is about to go to her prom. With a boy named Randy. Yes, Randy. None of this may seem like a big deal, except that Harper’s mother and I lost our virginity to each other the night of our prom. (Or the boarding school equivalent; more on that later.) By luck or fate, we ended up at the same college. Once there, we dated in earnest. Senior year, we conceived Harper. We married soon after. We were both twenty-one.
No, I don’t have any regrets. No big ones, anyway. Personally, I get a kick out of being a decade younger than any other parent in Harper’s class. All the dads are fatter and balder than I am, including Randy’s — a boost for my self-esteem. But whenever my wife and I admit to new acquaintances that, sure, we can trace our roots as a couple back to the prom (or the boarding school equivalent), we inevitably get the: “Oh my God, it’s so romantic you were high school sweethearts!” And we both chuckle to ourselves, because even though we were and are in love, the truth is a little stranger than that.
So now, Harper, I turn my attention to you. Your mother and I are thrilled you had no interest in attending boarding school. We love having you home. We also think that Randy is a nice kid: polite, quiet … he c
ould lose the lip pierce, but whatever. The point is, consider this a cautionary tale. Just because Randy is your prom date, you don’t have to sleep with him. (Besides, Randy’s best friend may be more your type. Kidding. Jesus. Awful joke. Pretend I didn’t say that… . ) NO SEX AT ALL!!! NO DRINKING OR DRUGS!!! YOUR MOTHER AND I WANT YOU HOME AT 1 A.M. AT THE LATEST!!!
Oh, and one more thing. Seeing as this story takes place in May 1986, you may not get many of the references. For your convenience, I’ve included a glossary at the end.
I: Prisoner of Your Love
“Mom, does liking this song make me gay?”
My roommate stares at himself in our closet mirror as he asks me this question. He stares in the mirror a lot. But tonight he has an excuse: He has just donned a tuxedo, and he is adjusting a paisley bow tie. (A real one, not a clip-on like mine.) Seventeen, and he’s an expert at tying bow ties. His other skills include skeet shooting while high, pilfering from his trust fund, and hitting on Miss Wyatt, our 19th-century comp lit teacher, who sometimes flirts back.
The song at issue is Tina Turner’s “Better Be Good to Me.”
It blares from his stereo, a kick-ass piece of equipment — a Bang and Olufsen. Unfortunately, the right speaker is positioned at the head of my bed, where I am sprawled in my boxers and T-shirt. These days, you can’t turn on 105.9 FM (“Connecticut’s Classic Rock, from AC/DC to ZZ Top!”) without hearing some horrendous two-year-old Tina Turner track. I expect this sort of crap from MTV. MTV broadcasts a steady barrage of synthesized cheese, performed by androgynous clowns. The Thompson Twins? I can’t identify the gender of a single member. Not that it matters, but still … how can any self-respecting classic rock DJ segue from Bad Company to semi-new Tina Turner and not feel shame? This is wrong.
“Yes, D,” I finally mumble. “Liking this song makes you gay. Very, very gay.”
He smirks, not taking his eyes off himself. “But Tina Turner is tight with The Who. Remember Tommy? She was The Acid Queen.”
“Speaking of which, how are you feeling? Anything melting yet?”
“Nothing is melting. Not even that pimple on your nose.”