Prom (17 page)

Mrs. Meadows reached forward and patted my arm. “Have fun at your dance, dear.”

Ma pushed in the clutch. “You better hurry or you’ll be late.”

“Right.”

“And put on that sweater.”

“Whatever, Ma.”

The rest of Thursday was just like Wednesday, only busier. But at least I was beginning to win the Battle of the Pink Notebook. Now when I crossed off one of the to-do things, another one didn’t pop up.

People in the halls were saying “yo” and “hey” to me. A couple white girls had sunburns from tanning salons. The cafeteria sold out of lettuce and bottled water to all the ladies trying to drop twenty pounds in two days. Monica said we sold more than 150 tickets—enough to pay the DJ and buy soda and real food, instead of making us beg our moms to cook.

Having to miss so many classes to get all the prom stuff done was a definite plus in my book, but things were so under control, I actually made it to gym on Thursday.

Gym was cool because Boyd couldn’t make us do anything. The custodians were laying down the floor covering, helped by a bunch of the guys from the class. I convinced Boyd to let the rest of us hang the streamers. I wanted the lights to go up, too, but I was afraid if we hung them too soon, they’d get stolen. Miss Felony Crane showed us you can’t be too careful with teachers, especially the ones still in grad school.

I had my hands full of purple streamers and tape when Boyd yelled at me that I had been called down to the principal’s office.

When I walked into Banks’s office, the first thing, the only thing I saw, was my best friend, out of the house for the first time since her accident.

“Nat!”

She was sitting her wheelchair, the cast sticking straight out, covered with the old afghan from her house. Her eyes were uncrossed and she looked sad, but you had to figure that made sense.

“Whassup? You here for the rest of the day? Can I push her around?” I asked.

“Have a seat,” Banks said from his chair. His computer was turned off this time.

“You hurting?” I asked Nat. “Should you be here? I was coming over after school to fill you in. We are rocking the house. Almost everything is done. That reminds me, Mr. B. The DJ signed your ‘no drugs, no booze’ agreement. Lauren will drop it off later.”

“Please,” Banks said. “Sit down, Ashley.”

That’s when my Spidey-sense tingled. Something was wrong in Promland. “Is this about the condoms again? I was going to talk to you about that.”

“Please read this.” Banks handed me a piece of paper.

It was a list of students who were banned from Senior Activities because they cut class, blew off detention, didn’t pay fines, and whatnot. The list of names filled the page.

An air conditioner kicked in and a breeze blew across the room.

I looked at Nat. “Was this in the notebook? Did we forget to take care of something?”

“That’s not it,” she said.

The only sounds were the phone ringing out on the secretary’s desk and the clock ticking on the wall behind me. I shivered.

“You’re on the list, Ash,” Nat said. “They won’t let you go.”

“What?”

Banks straightened the pens on his desk. “I’m afraid your own actions have banned you from the prom, Ashley.”

The words didn’t make sense. Nothing was making sense. I couldn’t find my name on the list until Nat rolled over and pointed it out to me. I was squeezed in between Makesh Hall and Ian Hansen. Still, it didn’t sink in.

“I’m not going?”

“We can’t make an exception,” Banks said.

“I tried to tell him,” Nat said. “We wouldn’t be having this prom if it weren’t for you.”

“But I cut class to make the prom happen. I had to.”

“Even if we eliminated the cuts this week, you have dozens of detentions to make up. Mr. Gilroy assured me that the two of you had several discussions about this. You have to take responsibility for your actions.”

“Gilroy won’t budge,” Nat said. “He said you were too high-profile now to cut you a break.”

I looked at the list again. I knew Ian. We had been in Biology together. He broke out in hives a lot. I shivered again and put on my mother’s sweater, which I had been dragging around all day along with the pink notebook.

“District policy, you understand.”

But it bugged me that I didn’t know this guy, this Makesh Hall. Was he new? How could there be somebody who got in as much stupid trouble as I did, and I didn’t know his name? How many other Makeshes were there?

“You have killer library fines, and you have a record number of detentions, Ash. What were you thinking?”

The sweater was a little prickly, but it smelled like Ma: laundry soap, bleach, and peach body lotion.

“If we make one exception, we have to make others. Rules are rules.”

I was out the door before I realized I was moving.

Nat tried to follow me, but she couldn’t turn her wheelchair fast enough. “Where are you going? Ash? Ashley?”

I walked out of the building. I walked to the bus stop on the corner. I got on the first bus that showed up. Didn’t check to see where it was going. I just got on. Sat down. Rode to Olney Terminal, where I got off.

I crossed the lot to another bus. Handed the driver my transfer. Couldn’t sit down because the bus was crowded with tired people. Every time a seat opened up, an old lady would get on, or some ancient guy with a cane and no teeth, and of course, they got the open seat.

We drove south, way south, past Temple, past the churches on Broad, past the clinics, the wig shops, check-cashing places, past BK and KFC and Mickey D’s. More tired people got on the bus, got off the bus, walked on the sidewalks home to dinner and maybe a drink. We passed City Hall and hurried through the nice part of the city with glass-fronted hotels and restaurants with candles and the ugly new concert hall.

I buttoned the sweater and stared at the ads above the bell cord: domestic violence hotline, a play I never heard of, a poster in a language I couldn’t read. Across from me, a white lady with over-permed hair and a nurse’s uniform was reading a book to her daughter. Next to them, a college-looking Hispanic guy dozed, his head tilted backwards, earphones plugged in good and tight.

I must have fallen asleep, too. Next thing I knew, the driver hissed air out of his brakes and shouted “Airport! Last stop!”

I rubbed my eyes. No nurse. No college guy.

“Let’s go, sweetheart!” The driver stared at me in his rearview mirror and pointed to the open door.

“I don’t want to get off here.”

“You don’t got a choice. I’m back to the garage as soon as you walk down them steps.”

“But this isn’t my stop.”

“And I’m supposed to care? Next bus back into town will be here in forty-five minutes.”

“My mother’s a bus driver!”

“And my mother’s the Queen of England. Have a nice night.”

I had never been on an airplane. Always wanted to. My family couldn’t afford to leave the state. We sure as hell couldn’t afford to leave the ground. And airports were for other people, rich people, people going places, you know?

I walked in.

It was not what I thought it’d be. It was just as crowded as school, except instead of backpacks, people dragged huge suitcases on wheels. The security guards were in shape and intense. I thought for sure the security cameras had zeroed in on me as the only person who didn’t belong there, the only fake. But nobody tackled me.

I followed the crowd up an escalator to the long line in front of the metal detectors. Again—just like school. When I finally got to the front, a tired Asian lady in a dumpy blue polyester suit and crappy shoes asked for my ticket. I told her I just wanted to see the planes and no, I didn’t have a ticket. She stared at me in exactly the same way as the sales ladies at Bloomingdale’s who know that you don’t have any money so you might as well leave before you accidentally shoplift a fifty-dollar bracelet.

She kicked me out of the line.

I bought a soda and a packet of cashews and stared at the departure and arrival monitors. I hadn’t heard of half of those places: Burlington, Grand Rapids, Ottawa, White Plains. The people standing around me knew. They were so busy with their rolling suitcases and their IDs and their tickets to God-knows-where, they couldn’t even see me.

No, wait. Cancel that. They could see me. They were staring at me.

“Is that your phone?” asked a lady with overplucked eyebrows.

“My phone? I don’t have a phone,” I said.

“You sure?”

“My phone. Wait. I do have a phone.”

The lady backed away from me and I opened my purse. The phone was buried under gum wrappers and tissues. The screen flashed
TJ Barnes. TJ Barnes. TJ Barnes.

I answered.

Guess who.

TJ was all meet-me-at-the-apartment—I-scored-some-dope.

I was all my-life-sucks-we-can’t-go-to-prom.

He was all that-is-so-awesome-I-looked-like-a-dork-in-the- tux-I’ll-come-get-you-let’s-get-high.

I was all not-in-a-party-mood-can’t-you-tell-I’m-pissed-why-are-you-buying-dope-we-need-furniture.

He got all why-you-bitchin’-me-out-are-you-on-the-rag.

I don’t know what came over me. Maybe the airport X-ray machines gave off brain tumor waves or something. I dropped the phone in a trash can and headed for the escalator that would take me back down to ground level.

The sun was setting by the time I finally got home. The boys were watching a war on TV with the sound turned off. Mutt was curled up in the corner, his nose under his tail.

“You’re in trouble,” Billy said.

“Where you been?” Shawn asked.

“Ma’s crying,” Steven said.

“Why?”

There was hammering in the basement and Dad’s voice. “Goddamnit!”

“She’s upset,” Shawn said.

“About the prom,” Steven added.

Two heavy feet hit the floor above us. “Is that Ashley?” Ma called.

Before I could bribe them to keep their mouths shut and run out to catch the next bus to anywhere, Billy yelled, “She’s baaaa-aack!”

The hammering stopped.

“Get out while you can,” Shawn whispered.

Dad came up from the basement and Ma came down from her bedroom. They met in the dining room. Billy unmuted the TV and the sounds of the battle exploded in the room.

“Oh, baby!” Ma blubbered.

“Your mother’s been worried sick,” Dad said.

Ma rolled across the room like a Humvee and threw her arms around me, smearing her tears and her mascara all over my face. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so, sorry.”

I patted her back. “It’s not that big a deal.”

“What are you, nuts?” Dad asked.

“I was so worried you weren’t coming home,” Ma said. She wiped her nose on my T-shirt and laid her head on my shoulder. “I called everybody we know.”

“Here.” Dad handed Ma the Kleenex box. She took a handful and sank into the recliner. Steven dove out of the chair just in time.

“Ma, settle down, it’s not that big a deal. I don’t care about the prom. It doesn’t matter.”

She waved the Kleenex at me and sobbed. “You’re lying to protect my feelings!”

“Stop making your mother cry. And turn that thing down, Shawnie.”

Shawn didn’t move.

“I’m trying to make her feel better,” I said.

“Stop yelling, George.”

“I ain’t yelling!”

Ma blew her nose like an elephant. “You were going to look so beautiful, Ash. For once in your life, you were going to be a real princess in pink. And I ruined it for you.”

“You’re going off the deep end here, Ma. You should lay down.”

Dad grabbed the remote from Shawn and muted the war. “Mary Alice, look. We’ll find another dress. I don’t know why you women get so obsessed about dresses, for Christ’s sake. It’s not like you totaled the car, is it? I know some guys down at The Haystack, they’ll lend me the money. Just stop crying, Mary, please. You’re killing me with those tears.”

Ma gulped and sniffed. Dad walked over to the recliner and brushed her hair off her face. She leaned her head against his hip. We had half a second of quiet.

“Hold on,” I said. “What happened to my dress?”

Ma wailed, fought her way out of the recliner and waddled into the kitchen.

“Whadja do that for?” Dad asked.

“What?”

Ma came back to the living room, her tears falling on the prom dress in her hands. On what used to be my prom dress. She shoved it at me.

“I ruin everything,” she cried.

“I got to hang drywall,” Dad said. “Call me when it’s over.”

I shook out the dress. The pink was faded and blotchy and stained with thick purple and black streaks.

“I don’t know what happened,” Ma said. “It got into one of the baskets I took to the laundromat.”

“Along with some crayons,” said Shawn.

I rubbed my fingernail on a black streak. “Crayon?”

Ma sniffed. “There must have been bleach in the machine, too, I honestly don’t know, maybe I’m losing my marbles.”

Steven handed her a Kleenex and she blew her nose again. She gave the wet tissue back to him. He tossed it behind the couch.

I folded the dress up. “Chill, Ma. It doesn’t matter.”

“I ruin the most important night of your life and it doesn’t matter? You’re just trying to make me feel better.”

I picked the crayon wax under my fingernail. “Um, Ma? I can’t go to the prom.”

“I know! I ruined it!”

Steven handed her the box of Kleenex and opened his book.

“No, listen. Stop wailing and listen to me. I can’t go. The principal won’t let me. I have too many detentions.”