Prom (22 page)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Many, many, many thanks to the members of my personal Prom Court who stood behind the creation of this book—

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.

Christian Larrabee, for letting me write during that awesome blizzard.

Scot Larrabee, my husband, for absolutely everything.

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.

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
.