Prom (2 page)

It used to be way worse.

The halls were solid people.

I had to read a book once for English about a girl, and in the first chapter she freaked out walking through the crowded halls at her school, and I said to myself,
Damn, that girl is stupid
, because I liked the halls when they were crowded, all those words and faces and hair, and the way people smelled, and all the freaky clothes, and the groups of friends, and the way people checked each other out, strutting what they had, but at the same time, all of us carrying books and looking for a sharp pencil or bumming a pen, and trying not to get to class early.

It sounded like flipping through cable late at night:

The bell rang. I didn’t have time for my locker. I jogged past the cafeteria, turned left by the HERPES HURTS! poster, and walked into Homeroom/Advanced Drug Awareness with Ms. Jones-Atkinson.

The room was half filled with seniors gossiping about the hook-ups and break-ups of the long weekend. Ms. J-A was reading the
Philadelphia Daily News
and drinking coffee. Behind her on the board she had written:

I should have taken TJ to Burger King. Who was he talking to on the phone? Was he lying about the Jersey cousin? Was it the same cousin who stole cars? Better not be. I had rules, standards. No felonies. Was TJ trying to get me to dump him? Was he dumping me?

Not even seven-thirty in the morning and I was already flipping. They shouldn’t let boyfriends hang out in front of school. Messed you up.

Nat wasn’t in class yet, so I grabbed a seat next to our friend Lauren. She was waving her fingers in the air, talking about this slick guy she met at a club downtown, and how his hips moved, and how the money poured out of his Gucci wallet, and what he thought about her sweet self wrapped in a leather skirt.

I grabbed her right hand and pulled it down. Her nails looked awful. She could say all she wanted about Mr. Bling, but if she was so nervous she peeled off her polish like that, then she didn’t give up anything. Probably lied about her name. For sure she didn’t tell him how old she was.

Lauren pushed her purse across the desk without missing a beat and I dug through it until I found the right red (Vixen). I started the repair job. She was telling us about how she was dancing and he was moving and the music got slow and just as she got to the good stuff, the PA system squeaked and buzzed.

Principal Banks cleared his throat over the speaker and said, “Quiet, please.”

My best friend, Nat, Natalia Shulmensky, slid into the seat in front of me. She waved at Ms. J-A, who rolled her eyes and reached for her attendance book.

“Prom committee meeting,” Nat whispered. She wiggled in her seat. Prom was Nat’s drug of choice.

“Listen up to the announcements,” Ms. J-A said.

I focused on Lauren’s hand, making long, steady strokes of color, not too much, not too little.

“Because of the water main break last week, today is an F day,” Banks announced. “Blah blah blahly, blahing, blahed. Blah. Really blah.”

I touched up Lauren’s pinkie and tilted it in the light, looking for ridges in the polish.

Banks kept blahing. “Seniors—your teachers will distribute a sheet with all graduation requirements. It is your responsibility to review said requirements and comply. All library fines must be paid by the end of next week in order to be eligible for senior activities. Don’t be the student who misses out on the fun because of a two-dollar fine.”

A couple guys in the back of the room swore.

“Prom tickets are still on sale. Thanks to our committee’s hard work, this year’s prom promises to be the biggest extravaganza ever. When you walk into the ballroom of the Hotel Bristol, you’ll be transported to a fantastic world of happy endings and dreams come true. Your ticket entitles you to a three-course buffet dinner, unlimited beverages, cake, prom favors, and, of course, dancing. Let’s make this a night to remember.”

Nat was grinning so hard she almost fell off her seat. “I wrote that. Me, all by myself.”

“Shut up, Nat,” I said.

“Shuttin’ up, Ash.” She threw a pencil at me. “Loser.”

I tossed it back. “Moron.”

Banks cleared his throat. “Prom regulations will be distributed next week. Again, today is an F day, not G. Ignorance is not an excuse. And remember, the tassel is worth the hassle.”

The speaker squealed and died.

Ms. Jones-Atkinson passed out the papers. “Read ’em and weep.”

Carceras High Graduation Requirements

1. You must have accumulated twenty-six credits in order to graduate. Credit is granted only for passing grades. To graduate, you must have a minimum of:

2. All library fines must be paid in order to participate in Senior Activities.
¹

3. All inappropriate clothing fines must be paid in order to parti-cipate in Senior Activities.
¹

4. All damages to school property must be paid for in order to participate in Senior Activities.
¹

5. All detentions must be served (on a timely basis) in order to participate in Senior Activities.
¹

6. Any senior who earns a suspension or other Category Two (2) Disciplinary Action
²
from this day forward will be banned from all Senior Activities.
¹

Ms. J-A started class.

She taught us that drugs are bad.

I did a great job on Lauren’s nails.

After class, Ms. J-A called me up to her desk to yell at me about a quiz she said I missed and an essay she said I didn’t hand in. Then she handed me the note from the office that said I had library fines.

I hadn’t been in the library since I was a freshman. Was it still in the same place?

Nat was waiting for me in the hall. “Okay, this is serious.”

“You’re pregnant,” I said.

“Ha,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of purse to buy for prom.”

“Oh, God.” I started walking.

“No, Ash, really.” She ran to catch up with me. “The purse makes a statement. Metallic says ‘hot and independent.’ Beaded says ‘romantic and tender.’ So who am I? It’s not like I have to worry what Jason thinks, but what about the rest of the world?”

Jason was her so-called date. His dad worked with her dad. Jason and Nat didn’t like each other, but they looked good together, and apparently, that was all that counted. I was not a prom-type person and did not care at all, not even a little bit.

Nat and I stopped. In front of us was a crowd, a wall of shouting people clogging up the hall.

“What’s up?” Nat asked.

“Hang on.” I got up on my tiptoes. “Looks like a fight. Well, it’s going to be a fight in a minute if security doesn’t get here.”

“A good fight or a nasty fight?”

Two white guys were circling around each other, staring, swearing, spitting, daring the other one to throw the first punch.

“A good fight,” I said.

Here’s the way it worked at our school: as long as the people who were fighting were the same color, it was cool. If it turned into a race thing, you wanted to get the hell out of there. People talked about “diversity” and crap, but the truth was, nobody knew how to get along. Not for real.

“It’s just stupid,” I said. “Let’s go.”

We squeezed and shoved our way along the edge of the crowd. Even though I was almost six inches taller than Nat, I followed her. Nat always knew where she was going.

When the fight was behind us, she repeated her question. “Metallic or beaded? Who do I want to be?”

I wanted to tell her that nobody made a purse that said “Natalia Shulmensky.” Nobody could make a purse that weird. Nat and me had lived next to each other since second grade, when her family came here from Russia. I made sure she looked decent—at least some eyeliner, zit concealer, and blush—before she went out in public. She kept me from jumping off the roof when my family went crazy. She helped me babysit my brothers. I helped her babysit her grandmother. She liked penguins, chocolate frosting from a can, sappy poetry, gum, and violin music. I liked TJ. She flirted with dorkdom, but she could be tough, and most people liked her.

Nope, they didn’t make purses that could say all that.

Three security guards and Mr. Gilroy, the evil vice principal of discipline, galloped down the hall. We pressed ourselves against the lockers so they didn’t run us over. Some kids changed direction to follow them, but Nat and me kept walking.

“I think you should get the beaded purse,” I said. “You aren’t exactly romantic, but you sure as hell are not ‘hot and independent,’ no offense, not the way they mean in those magazines. They mean hot like, ‘I’m too good for you, I got my own money, don’t be frontin’ me.’ You’re more like, ‘Be my boyfriend, I’ll make you cookies, come meet my dad,’ know what I mean?”

Nat nodded. “Yeah, but Target is having a sixty percent off sale on their metallics. I’ll ask Miss Crane at our meeting today.”

“Maybe she’ll have a purse you can borrow,” I said as a joke.

She nodded, eyes serious. “That would so cool. Good idea, Ash.”

We pushed our way up the stairs to the English wing.

“I heard you and TJ had a fight this morning,” she said. “I heard you caught him making out with some little slut.”

“That slut he was making out with was me, and no, we didn’t fight. It was nothing.”

“You should dump him.”

“You should buy the beaded purse.”

“Shut up.”

“Shuttin’ up. See ya later.”

Second period, English 12: American Literary Connections, Basic, was a waste. Mr. Fugal yelled at us for not reading this poem by Langston Hughes. It was about a bird.

I liked Fugal at the beginning of the year, but he lost me when he made us read
The Old Man and the Sea
. Birds! Fish! Why couldn’t we read about people?

Since nobody knew the stupid bird poem, Fugal told us to take out our persuasive essay outlines. Persuasive essay? Not even the kids who paid attention had a clue what he was talking about. Fugal exploded.

Then the first miracle happened.

A fire drill.

Fire drill rule #1—find your friends.

Mine were stretched out in the middle of the soccer field. Nat, Jessica, and the other white girls had stripped down to work on their tans. Some of the biracial girls, like Monica, had, too. Lauren liked her color, dark coffee, and couldn’t be bothered to change it.

I put on Nat’s sweatshirt and Monica gave me her jacket to cover my legs. My skin did not tan. My skin burned, peeled, and freckled. God did not intend for Irish kids to play in the sun, according to my mother.

Nat opened up a magazine to an article about feather boas. The air smelled like hot Dumpster, Nat’s spearmint gum, and the pot being smoked in the alley across the street. I closed my eyes and listened to the prom gossip bouncing back and forth between all the prom-maniacs.