Prom (21 page)

“She doesn’t dance,” Nat shouted. Monica pointed to my slippers. “She hurt her foot.”

I stood up, laid my hand on the very solid arm of the mysterious, gorgeous hottie. “Oh, no, I feel great. Let’s go.”

I danced. I really, really danced.

After playing six of my favorite songs in a row, the DJ shifted from dance music to screaming thrash crap. My hottie was snagged by a girl whose dress was cut so low she was showing nipple. I couldn’t compete with that, so I limped off for something to drink. I waited in line, checking over my shoulder for Gilroy, got two cups of punch, and hurried back to our table.

Nat and I leaned our heads together and I gave her the whole story about how I wound up with the dress and how I snuck in. She cracked up when I told her that Grandma was the magic seamstress.

“That totally explains why she kept trying to fatten you up,” Nat laughed. “She kept saying your butt needed to be bigger and that I needed to make you eat ice cream.” She laughed again. “You are the only girl here who needed to gain weight for the prom.”

“I wish she would have told me,” I said. “I would have eaten more muffins.”

The music was slow now and a little sucky, to be honest, but that gave us a chance to sit back and check out the rest of our class.

Most of the girls looked great, but when I looked closely I realized there were some skanks mixed in, dressed like rejects from a Britney Spears video. Everybody had kicked off their high heels. The basketball team was wearing shimmering halter dresses that showed off the muscles in their backs. A couple girls were wearing dresses that looked like they cost a thousand bucks. Others were definitely dressed à la Wal-Mart, but they were smiling just the same and looking every bit as pretty. The goth girls had matching protest flowers, droopy dandelions tucked into black rubber bands around their wrists. Their dresses looked like they were stolen out of a graveyard, but they matched their boots, so it was all good.

The men of Carceras really came through for their dates, got to give them that. Fifty different kinds of tuxedoes, top hats, vests, waistcoats with watch chains, shiny shoes, and sunglasses. Something about a tuxedo, I swear. They all looked respectable, responsible, and hot, with their chins up, their shoulders back, the creases on their pants sharp enough to cut paper. I definitely had to distribute the condoms before midnight.

Nat finished her punch and tapped my shoulder. “Get a load of that one.” She pointed to Persia Faulkner, surrounded by her perfect popular posse, as usual. The rest of Carceras looked good. Persia and her girls looked like honest-to-God rap divas. Their dresses fit better, their jewelry blinged brighter, and their asses jiggled tighter.

“They’ve been drinking Chivas all night,” Nat said. “Only the best for the Queen Bitch.”

“Come on,” I said. “Cut her some slack. She’s not as bad as you think.”

“You’re joking, right?”

“No, I’m serious. She helped make this happen, you know. She’s been nice to me all week. Watch.”

I got up and worked my way through the crowd to Persia. Nat was right. The whole group reeked of alcohol.

“Hey,” I told her. “You look great.”

The Persia Posse looked me over top to bottom and laughed at my slippers. Some people are so ignorant.

“I love your dress,” I tried.

Persia blinked. “You talkin’ to me?”

“I just wanted to see how the ride turned out for you guys and to say thanks for helping. You know, the tickets and everything. . . .”

“Who
are
you?” asked one of the Persia wannabes. The rest of them snickered like little dogs.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” I told her.

Persia leaned forward on her heels. “You’re not talking to me neither. Get out my face.”

The little dogs in their rhinestone chokers and press-on nails howled.

I limped back to the table.

“What’d she say?” Nat asked.

“She loves my dress,” I said. “More punch?”

The next two hours flew by. In between dancing with my girls, my guy friends, my friends who were guys, and a couple potential dates I gave my number to, I helped Nat deal with the behind-the-scenes crap.

Everybody who had a problem came to us. Some needed “official” action. Nat called security about the fight in the courtyard and the rumors of scumbags from a rival high school trying to plant smoke bombs in the boys’ room. The little problems were easier: too much orange soda, not enough diet, a cake that wound up on the floor, complaints about the music, girls whose boobs kept popping out of their strapless dresses. We dealt with it all: a few phone calls and five cases of soda were delivered, the custodians cleaned up the cake in a flash, and the girls with the wandering boobs were told to keep their damn arms down—duh. Oh, and I personally yelled at the clueless ho going down on her date behind the bleachers. I mean
puh-leeze, have some dignity.

The biggest problem was avoiding Gilroy. The girls let everybody know that he was trying to bust me and ruin my night. It wasn’t that I was popular or anything, but everybody hated Gilroy so much they wanted to piss him off. So I had a couple hundred spies watching my back. I got used to having my arm pulled to drag me out of sight, or a big guy stepping in front of me, or a total stranger throwing her arms around me to hide me from the vice principal of pain and torment.

The English teachers were way more awesome than I thought they’d be. First, they looked fine, for old people who don’t earn much money. They cleaned up real good. Second, they were cool about not interfering with most of what happened on the dance floor and in the dark corners of the room. They let us act like normal teenagers, but didn’t let anybody put on a porn show, know what I mean? In fact, it was that really hot teacher who told me about the ho blowing her boyfriend’s mind under the bleachers. He thought it would be better if I broke it up than if he did—not so embarrassing for the girl. I didn’t think anything could embarrass her, but it was sweet of him to think that.

The third cool English teacher thing was, they didn’t narc on me to Gilroy. They didn’t like him any better than we did.

One unplanned teacher showed up; our weird old Math sub. I ran into him when I was taking delivery of the diet soda at the loading dock.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Trying to sneak in,” he said. “I’m not sure how much longer I’ll have a job around here. Gilroy’s a real jerk.”

“Tell me about it.”

“Here, let me give you a hand.” He loaded the soda cases onto the cart for me. “I promised some of your classmates I’d give them my business card. They’re potential clients.”

We pushed the cart towards the gym. “So you’re here to get people thinking about insurance, is that it?”

“Exactly right, Miss Hannigan. You can never be too careful.”

I thought about the cardboard box of you-know-whats hiding under the table. “I have something you could hand out with your card. Trust me, people will remember you. They’ll thank you, too. My generation believes in insurance.”

After I turned over the condoms to the Math sub, I saw Gilroy headed my way. I hurried over to the photography corner to hide. The photographer had set up with his digital camera and big lights, taking pictures of couples for a little cash. I stood behind the background curtain until I got the signal that Gilroy was gone.

The music stopped. “Okay, okay, okay,” the DJ said. “I need everybody to clear the dance floor please, except for, ah,” he checked a piece of paper in front of him, “Charles Fournier and Junie Yoo.”

“Here.” The photographer passed out disposable cameras to me and the other kids standing near him. “I heard this was going to happen. Use these for candid shots. Give them back to me at the end of the night.”

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.

“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.

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.

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.

Everything was perfect right up to the minute the cops arrested me.

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.

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.