Yeah, Charles did it. In front of everybody, girls squealing, guys rolling their eyes, Junie shaking like the first leaf that falls in October, Charles suddenly looking ten years old, he got down on one knee in the middle of the dance floor, and pulled out a ring with an itty-bitty diamond chip in it.
“Will you marry me?” he asked, his voice cracking.
I think Junie said “Yes.” It was hard to tell because she was crying so hard. Camera flashes exploded all over the gym, and a wave of girls with stupid ideas about rings with itty-bitty diamonds in them crashed onto the dance floor. I wanted to raise my hand and say “Excuse me, don’t you think you’re a little young, you still watch Cartoon Network,” but then Gilroy popped up again, so I ducked out into the back hall.
151.
“There you are, missy.” It wasn’t Gilroy, thank God. It was the head custodian. “You got a problem.”
“I took care of the soda that we ordered,” I said. “And I locked up the loading gate like you said.”
“I thought we had a deal,” he growled.
“We did,” I said. “We do. Are you talking about the money? Nat will pay you at the end of the night.”
“You break the deal and we walk off the job. We walk off the job and old Gilroy will shut down this dance.”
“It’s not a dance, it’s a prom. What are you talking about?”
I couldn’t believe it. There I was, having the best night of my life, and a guy with a push broom was shaking me down.
In the twinkling lights he looked like a tired, disappointed owl. “Follow me.”
We walked out the back door of the gym towards the locker room hall. I kept close to him with my head down. The custodian went into the girls’ locker room with me right behind. He took me past the lockers, past the coaches’ office, to the bathroom door.
He opened it.
The smell hit me like a slap in the face.
Oh, no. Not tonight. Not in this beautiful dress, please God, I’m begging.
The custodian leaned towards me, his eyes bigger than ever. “Our deal was no vomit clean-up. A deal’s a deal.”
He turned and walked out, sweeping as he went. I took a deep breath and stepped inside.
The smell and the sound were unmistakable.
Persia Faulkner was on her knees worshipping the porcelain god. In the stalls on either side of her were two of her wannabe friends. All three of them were puking their guts and their Chivas Regal out.
And I had a camera in my hand.
How could I resist?
I shot the entire roll of film, group shots and close-ups. Then I had my own deal for Persia and her girls.
“Clean up this mess and I’ll give these pictures and negatives to you on Monday. Screw up and I share them with the whole school.”
I was good.
152.
I went straight to the dance floor and joined in. We were all shaking it, spinning, sexing, slinking, shouting out, raising the roof and bringing down the house. There was love on the dance floor: Monica and Mark; Leeann and Big Mike; Quong and Danny; Dalinda and Ian; Junie and Charles; and Lauren, Aisha, Nat, and me.
The whole committee danced around Nat’s wheelchair, and then the songs came faster and faster, and the heat turned up, and we were moving, moving to a beat never heard before in the halls of Carceras High School, arms waving, hips popping, hearts locked into the same rhythm, the same beat, until we danced so hard I thought for sure we were going to float all the way to heaven.
153.
Everything was perfect right up to the minute the cops arrested me.
154.
By the time I stood in front of the night court judge, it was almost morning.
The officers had been real nice to me, because I wasn’t drunk or high or a bitch. The tall one who found me a jacket when I got cold said he felt bad about the whole thing, but somebody from the school had pressured the chief of police so they didn’t have a choice. He told me he had been named the king of his prom, out in Denver, but that his date left with his best friend, so the night had been a bummer. He hoped I had a better time.
I said I did.
Natalia’s dad called around, and I wound up being defended by another Russian. We have a lot of them where we live.
Ma showed up, too. She waved at the judge when he walked in. Turns out they went to high school together, and the judge’s sister had been on the softball team with Ma and Aunt Linny. The judge couldn’t stand Gilroy’s Social Studies class, either.
He dismissed the charges and told me my dress was very pretty.
155.
Mr. Shulmensky drove us home just as the sun came up over New Jersey. We got to the top of a hill and had to stop at a Wawa so Ma could use the bathroom. No way was she gonna make it home, she said. Mr. Shulmensky said no problem, he wanted to get a newspaper and a cup of coffee anyway.
I got out and leaned against the car. There were a few clouds in the sky. Maybe they had been partying all night, too. Out in the west, towards Pittsburgh, the moon was setting, pulling a couple stars down with it. I liked how it was all happening at once, the moon and stars pinking up in the sunrise, the whole world spinning around like it was supposed to.
156.
Once upon a time there was a girl who got a life.
157.
Me.
How It All Turned Out
158.
Getting back to regular school after the prom was what you call extremely, horribly, ass-kicking hard, but I did it. Everybody did. We showed up to our classes, all us normal kids who for a couple hours had been masters of our universe. We woke up when the alarm rang, put on clean clothes and brushed our teeth, and walked through the Carceras metal detectors for all those last days in May and June. We studied for finals, most of us, and dragged our butts to class and took the tests. We passed.
I passed.
Nat got an awesome financial aid package from Temple, and a bunch of scholarships. She only has to take out a little loan, so when she gets her college degree, she won’t be killed with payments for forty years. She decided to stay home and take the city bus down Broad Street to Temple. That’s one of the coolest things about living so close to Philly. The bus will take you anywhere.
As we got ready for graduation, the flowers in Nat’s grandmother’s garden bloomed like nobody’s business. That old lady definitely had weird juju stuff in her fingers, crazy Russian magic or something. The roses were as red as fresh blood and as fat as a fist. I didn’t know the names of the other flowers, but Ma did. She’d sit in a lawn chair next to the fence with her feet propped up on a tricycle or laundry basket and watch those flowers grow, fifty shades of pink and yellow and purple. Her belly kept growing, too. We had a pool going on the size of the baby. If I won, Ma was going to be in the Guinness record book, for sure.
The weekend that Nat and Mr. S. moved Grandma into the nursing home, Ma cut all the flowers. I helped her arrange them in vases and plastic buckets, then we drove to the nursing home and filled Grandma’s room with color. Then I drove Ma to the hospital at twice the legal speed limit.
My little sister, Adrian, was born in the entrance to the emergency room.
159.
It was Adrian who helped me figure everything out.
Ma was on the stretcher talking about birth control to the banged-up thugs who had just watched her give birth. The doctor checked out Adrian, wrapped her up, and handed her to me. I only had her for a second; you know how hospital people are. But it was the longest second of my life. Hers, too, I’m sure.
She looked like a prize fighter; kind of bloody, a bit confused, eyes swollen and blinking. I cleaned off her face with a corner of the blanket. She reminded me of me: a little on the scrawny side, red hair, pale skin, and blue eyes.
Those eyes opened wider. She looked right at me.
Wow.
I decided to move out of my parents’ house.
Talk about a sucker punch. It hit me like a left hook
out of nowhere that moving down to the basement would totally suck, and moving into a rat hole with someone like TJ would suck even more, and I had to find another way out of there, but I didn’t want to go too far, because this little girl needed me to show her the ropes and all.
When they took Adrian out of my arms, she cried.
That was cool.
160.
So we got through all the hospital stuff, and Ma and Ade came home. We had a combo graduation and new baby party and saved a ton of money on food and drinks. Ade was a hit at the party. She peed up a storm and wailed loud enough to be heard over the music, which was good.
I sprung my big idea on Nat and her dad the first time I took Adrian to visit Grandma Shulmensky. They were cool with it. So was my dad. Ma took a little extra convincing, but Aunt Linny pointed out that I’d be close, and Aunt Sharon said it meant I could babysit for Adrian when Barry Manilow came to town, and Aunt Joan told Ma to shut up and let me have a life.
TJ, well he tried. He sent me cards, he sent me beer. He came around to my graduation party with roses, but it was over, dead and gone. Don’t know why I stayed with him so long. What a waste. I heard that he moved some chick from Cherry Hill into the slimeball apartment, and I’m just counting the days before she turns up pregnant or he gets his first felony conviction or both. I never did find out the name of his sister’s baby.
It’s a little weird now, paying rent to Mr. Shulmensky and living down the hall from Nattie, who always leaves a mess in the bathroom. I don’t care if that cast is still on her leg, how hard is it to hang up your towel? And to be honest, I’m nervous about this whole community college thing, though Nat keeps telling me it’ll be way better than high school, ’cause I’m in charge of me, and if I don’t like it, I can always quit, which no way I’m gonna do, because I’m paying for all of it, and you’d better believe I’m gonna get my money’s worth.
I’m taking Liberal Arts classes for now. It doesn’t mean, like, drawing or painting kind of art, or being a liberal like in politics, which is what I thought the first time I heard it. It means I want to learn a few things before I decide what I want to be. It’s too bad they don’t give degrees in prom management. Accounting sounds kind of interesting, because at least when numbers don’t add up right, you can figure out where you went wrong. I even thought about maybe becoming a teacher’s aide, or even a teacher some day. I know a few things about normal kids.
Hell, I could write a book about them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many, many, many thanks to the members of my personal Prom Court who stood behind the creation of this book—
Prom Queens
Stephanie and Meredith Anderson, for letting me take over the couch and for keeping me supplied with popcorn.
Jessica Larrabee, for being so patient with me.
Sharyn November and Regina Hayes, for constant cheerleading and support.
The women of the Bucks County Children’s Writers Group, for riding the roller coaster with me.
Amy Berkower and the staff at Writers House, for taking care of business.
Sarah Henry, for saving my sanity.
Prom Kings
Christian Larrabee, for letting me write during that awesome blizzard.
Scot Larrabee, my husband, for absolutely everything.
Special Mention
A loud, rowdy shout-out to all the “normal” kids who talked to me the last couple of years and told me nobody ever writes about them. Hope you like it.
The Music
This book was written to the tunes of Beethoven, Bruce Springsteen, Coldplay, Eminem, Norah Jones, and Sting. And, of course, the tunes of Y100 in Philadelphia.
LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON is the author of the award-winning novels Speak, Fever 1793, and Catalyst, as well as five picture books. The night of her senior prom, she was shoveling manure on a pig farm in Denmark. She lives with her family in Central New York.
Visit her Web site at www.writerlady.com.
1 Senior Activities include Class Picnic, Carceras Senior Prom, and all graduation-related activities.
2 Please refer to your Carceras High Official Handbook for details of Disciplinary Actions.
Laurie Halse Anderson, Prom
(Series: # )
Thank you for reading books on BookFrom.Net Share this book with friends