by Sarah Dessen
“Scarlett,” she called out, waving one hand over her head. “Over here, honey. Perfect. Perfect!”
After we’d been satisfactorily documented, we finally got out the door and to the limousine, on loan from the hotel where Cameron’s father worked. Cameron, for all his quirkiness, really knew how to make an evening. I couldn’t exactly say the same for my date.
“Where’s the bar?” Noah slurred as soon as we shut the door and drove off. “There’s supposed to be a bar in these things, right?”
Scarlett was just eyeing him, settling her dress around her, and I said, “He’s wasted. Ignore him.”
“I am not,” Noah said indignantly. Already he’d talked more to me, total, than he had in the entire year and a half we’d been broken up. “But there is supposed to be a bar.”
“I’m sure they just took it out,” Cameron said quietly. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Scarlett said to him, squeezing his arm. “We don’t care.”
“I don’t need it anyway,” Noah said loudly, pulling a plastic juice container from his inside pocket. “Got it all taken care of, right here.”
I just looked at him. “Noah,” I said. “Please.”
“Wow,” Scarlett said as he opened the container and guzzled down a bit, dribbling on his shirtfront. “That sure is classy.”
“Works for me,” Noah said snippily. He stuck it back in his pocket, wiping his mouth, and put his arm over my shoulder, which I shrugged off as best I could.
By the time we got to the prom, Noah was completely loaded. The limo dropped us off in the bus parking lot, by the cafeteria, and I just started to walk inside, leaving him to stumble along behind me. He’d downed the last swallow of his stash, dropped the container on the sidewalk, and reached out to grab me; instead, he got my dress, tearing it at the waist. I felt cool air on my back and legs and stopped walking.
“Ooops,” he said as I turned around. He had something white and shiny, formerly part of my dress, in his hands and he was giggling. “Sorry.”
“You jerk,” I snapped, grabbing behind me to bunch the fabric together, covering myself. Now I was at the prom with Noah Vaughn and half-naked. There was no end to my shame.
“Halley, what’s going on?” Scarlett called from the front entrance to the cafeteria. I could see Melissa Ringley, prom chairwoman, sitting at a table watching me. “Hurry up.”
“Go in without me,” I said. “I’ll be right there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
She shrugged, handing Melissa their tickets, and she and Cameron disappeared inside. I could hear music playing, loud, and people kept walking past, on their way in. I backed into the shadow of the science lab to do something about my dress.
“Here,” Noah said, stumbling in behind me, “let me help.”
“You cannot help me,” I told him. “Okay?”
“You don’t have to be a bitch,” he snapped, still reaching around to the back of my dress, his hand brushing my skin. “You know, you’ve changed so much since we went out.”
“Whatever, Noah,” I said. I needed a safety pin, badly. I could not go inside and moon my entire class, not even for Scarlett.
“You used to be nice, and all that,” he went on, “but then you started thinking you were all cool, hanging out with Macon Faulkner and all. Like you were too good for everybody all of a sudden.”
“Noah,” I said. “Shut up.”
“You shut up,” he said back, loudly. Two girls in white dresses and heels looked over at us, trying to make us out in the dark.
I ignored him, reaching around the back of my dress again, when suddenly he was right up against me, his breath in my face when I turned around. I didn’t remember him ever being so tall. He slid his arm around my waist, reaching back to the gaping fabric, and stuck his hand down my dress, brushing over my underwear. I just stared at him, dumbstruck, and watched his face get closer and closer, eyes closed, tongue starting to stick out—
“Get off me,” I said loudly, pushing him away. He stumbled, tripped over a tree stump and landed on the sidewalk just as another group of people started to pass by. I leaned against the wall, not caring anymore about my dress, or this night, and tried to hide myself.
“Whoa,” a guy in the group said as he stepped over Noah, who was still prone, blinking. “You okay, buddy?”
“She’s just—she’s such a ...” Noah sputtered as he got to his feet, unsteadily, and started to weave back around the side of the building, muttering to himself. The guy and his date just watched him go, then laughed a little nervously and headed across the courtyard to Melissa Ringley and the cafeteria. And I was alone.
I thought about going home. I had money and could easily call a cab, or my father, and just give up entirely. But Scarlett would worry, I knew, so I bunched together the back of my dress, holding it that way, and went to tell her myself.
I found her on the dance floor, with Cameron. They couldn’t dance that close but they did what they could, her stomach between them. All around her were these perfect girls, hair swept up and wearing lipstick and high heels, with their dates in dark tuxedos and dress shoes. I saw Ginny Tabor and Brett Hershey, wearing Prom King and Queen crowns, making out by the punch table. And Regina Little, one of the fattest girls in school, in a huge white dress with a hoop, dancing with a guy in a military uniform who looked at least thirty. And lastly, in the corner, I saw Elizabeth Gunderson and Macon, not dancing or smiling or even talking, just standing there staring at the crowd, same as me.
Macon saw me, and right then I felt it for the first time in so long, that rush and craziness, that feeling I’d had at Topper Dam. He looked good and he grinned at me, and I thought that in this desperate moment, alone at the prom, he could take me away.
It was too much, all of a sudden, everything rushing at me. The prom and Michael and my mother and the baby. Macon and Ronnie’s house and that night in the car, with the glass shattering around my head. Elizabeth Gunderson and her sly smile, the cold of the woods as I’d gotten sick on New Year’s Eve, Grandma Halley’s hand, thin and warm, in mine. And finally, Noah coming closer and closer to me, his tongue sticking out, and now Scarlett on the dance floor, right before my eyes, swaying to the music and smiling, smiling, smiling.
I pushed through the crowd, still holding my dress, thinking only of getting out, getting away, something. I pushed past girls in their princess outfits, past clouds of cologne and perfume, past Mrs. Oakley, the vice principal, who was eyeballing everyone on the lookout for drugs and drunks. I didn’t stop until I reached the bathroom door and ran inside, letting it slam behind me.
The first person I saw was Melissa Ringley, standing in front of the mirrors with a lipstick in her hand. She looked at the mirror in front of her, and me beyond it, and turned around, her mouth still in a perfect O.
“Halley, my goodness, what is wrong?” She put the lipstick down and walked toward me, lifting her dress off the ground so it wouldn’t brush the floor. It was black, with a full skirt and a modest neckline. She had a small gold cross hanging from a chain around her neck. “Are you okay?”
I did look crazed, wild even. My hair, so carefully crafted into a perfect French twist by Scarlett, had somehow come un-tucked and was sticking up like a lopsided Mohawk. My face was red and my mascara smeared and that didn’t even include my dress, which was bagging open in the back now that I had let go of it. Two other girls, checking their makeup, brushed past me, glanced at my exposed underwear and clucked their tongues as they pushed the door open, leaving me and Melissa alone.
“I’m fine,” I said quickly, moving to the sink and wetting a paper towel, trying to do something about my face. I pulled my hair down, bobby pins spilling everywhere. “Just a rotten night, that’s all.”
“Well, I heard Noah was drunk,” she said, whispering the last word and taking a furtive look around. “You poor thing. And what happened to your dress? Oh my God, Halley, turn around. Look at
that!”
“I know,” I said, my teeth clenched. I couldn’t believe I was mooning Melissa Ringley. “I just want to get out of here.”
“Well, you can’t go out there like that,” she said, moving around behind me. “Here, hand me some of those bobby pins, I’ll see what I can do.”
So I stood there, with Melissa behind me muttering to herself and stabbing bobby pins into my dress, all the while wondering how the night could get any worse. And then, it did.
Elizabeth Gunderson was wearing a tight black dress and spike heels that I could hear clacking outside before she even opened the door and came into the bathroom itself. When she saw me she narrowed her eyes and looked me up and down before moving to another sink and leaning into the mirror.
“Well, this should at least get you through the rest of the night,” Melissa said cheerfully, coming out from behind me and tossing the extra bobby pins into the trash. “Just don’t try any radical movements or anything.”
“Okay,” I said, staring at my reflection. I could feel Elizabeth watching me. I told myself it was only fitting she was with Macon; they deserved each other. This didn’t really make me feel better. “Thanks, Melissa. Really.”
“Oh, no problem,” she said in her chirpy little can-do voice, fluffing her blond bob with her fingers. “It’s all part of being prom chairwoman, right?” She waggled her fingers at me as she left, the sound of music—something slow and easy—coming in as the door opened and then drifted shut behind her.
Beside me, Elizabeth was putting on eyeliner, leaning in closer to the mirror. She looked tired, worn out, now that I was looking at her more closely. Her eyes were red and her lipstick was too dark, making her mouth look like a gash against her skin.
I took one last look at myself, decided there wasn’t much I could do under the circumstances, and started to leave. I had nothing left to say to Elizabeth Gunderson. But then, just as I was reaching for the door, I heard her voice.
“Halley.”
I turned around. “What?”
She pulled away from the mirror, brushing her hair over her shoulders. “So.” She wasn’t looking at me, instead down at the purse in her hands. “Are you having a good night?”
I smiled, in spite of myself. “No,” I said. “Are you?”
She took a deep breath, then ran a finger over her lips, smoothing out her lipstick. “No. I’m not.”
I nodded, not sure what else to say, and reached for the door again. “Well,” I said, “I guess I’ll see you later.”
I was halfway out, the music loud enough that I almost didn’t hear her when she said, “You know, he still loves you. He says he doesn’t, but he does. He does.”
I stopped and turned around. “Macon?” I said.
“He won’t admit it,” she said quietly, but her voice was shaky, and I thought of how I’d envied her that night at Ronnie’s, stretched out across the bed examining her toes. I didn’t now. “He says he doesn’t even think about you, but I can tell. Especially tonight. When he saw you out there. I can tell.”
“It’s nothing,” I said to her, realizing how true it was. It was just a feeling, a whooshing in my ears. Not love.
“Do you still love him?” In the bathroom her voice echoed strangely, louder and then softer all around us.
“No,” I said quietly. And I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, my wild hair, my ripped dress. You could even see the scar over my eye where the makeup had brushed off. But I was okay. I was. “I don’t,” I said.
And Elizabeth Gunderson turned from the sink, her hair swinging over her shoulder just it had before she tumbled off a million pyramids at a million high-school football games. She opened her mouth to say something more but I didn’t hear it, never got a chance, because just then the door slammed open and Ginny Tabor burst in with a blast of pink satin, her voice preceding her.
˝Halley!˝ She stopped, fluttering one hand over her chest while she caught her breath. “You’ve—you’ve got to get out here.”
“Why?” I said.
“Scarlett,” she gasped, still breathing hard. She held up a finger, holding me there, while she gulped for air. “Scarlett’s having the baby.”
“What?” I spun around to look at her. “Are you serious?”
“I swear, she and Cameron were getting their picture taken and Brett and I were next in line and right when the flash went off, she just got this look on her face and then boom it was happening—”
“Move, ” I said, pushing past her out into the cafeteria, around the dance floor and the people drinking punch, past the band and to the edge of a crowd gathered around the tiny wooden drawbridge where everyone had been posing for pictures. There was a buzz in the air and a photographer with a huge camera wringing his hands and finally, with her face bright red and way too many people pressed around her, Scarlett. When she saw me, she burst into tears.
“You’re fine, you’re fine,” I said, sliding around to her other side, by Cameron who was looking kind of ashen. Someone was shouting about an ambulance and the music had stopped and I couldn’t even remember the breathing patterns we’d learned in Lamaze class.
Scarlett grabbed me by the neckline and jerked me toward her; she was surprisingly strong. “I don’t want an ambulance,” she said. “Just get me the hell out of here. I am not having this baby at the prom.”
“Okay, okay,” I said, looking to Cameron for support but he was leaning against the edge of the drawbridge, fanning himself with one hand. He looked worse than Scarlett. “Let’s go, then. Come on.”
I helped her to her feet, her arm around my shoulder, and started to push through the crowd. Mrs. Oakley was on one side of me, saying she’d already called someone, to stay put, and somewhere in an explosion of pink was Ginny Tabor, yelling about boiling water, but all I could think of was Scarlett’s hand squeezing my shoulder so damn hard I could hardly even see straight. But somehow, we were making headway.
“Where’s Cameron?” Scarlett said between gasps as we burst out the door into the courtyard. “What happened to him?”
“He’s back there somewhere,” I told her, dragging her along beside me, her grip still tight on my skin. “He looked a little nauseous or something.”
“This is no time for that!” she screamed, right in my ear.
“We’re fine, we’re fine,” I said, and now that we were getting closer to the parking lot it suddenly occurred to me that we had no mode of transportation, since the limo wasn’t due back until midnight. By now we’d lost most of the crowd, all of them hanging back by the cafeteria door with Mrs. Oakley shouting about how we should wait for the ambulance, it would be here any second.
“I don’t want an ambulance,” Scarlett said again. “I swear, if they put me in one I will fight them tooth and nail.”
“We don’t have a car,” I told her. “We took the limo, remember?”
“I don’t care,” she said, clutching at my shoulder even harder. “Do something!”
“I will get us a ride,” I said, looking around the parking lot for any poor sucker who just happened to be driving off at that moment. “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I have it under control.”
But this was nothing Seventeen magazine had ever covered. We were on our own.
Just then I heard a car screech around the corner, and I leaned out and waved my arm frantically, as much as I could while still supporting Scarlett. “Hello!” I called. “Please, God, please stop.”
“Oh, no,” Scarlett said quietly. “My water just broke. Oh, man, what a mess. This dress is a goner.”
“Please stop!!” I screamed at the car as it came closer, already slowing down, and of course as it slid to a stop beside us, engine rumbling, I knew who it was.
“Hey there,” Macon said, smiling from the driver’s seat as he hit the button to unlock the door. He was in a different car this time, a Lexus, Elizabeth next to him. “Need a ride?”
“Of course we need a ride!” Scarlett screamed at him. �
��Are you stupid?”
“That would be nice, thank you,” I said smoothly as Elizabeth reached behind her to open the back door and we piled in, Scarlett all sticky and me scattering bobby pins everywhere because these were definitely radical movements. We were pulling away when Cameron ran up and we had to stop to let him in, too; he was huffing and puffing and still looked kind of pale.
“What happened to you?” I asked as Scarlett bore down on my bad hand, squeezing so hard my fingers were folding in on each other.
“I passed out,” he said quietly.
“What did he say?” Scarlett bellowed from my other side.
“He didn’t say anything,” I said. “He’s fine. Now, let’s work on our breathing. Deep breaths, in and out—”
“I don’t want to breathe,” she said in a low voice. “I want drugs and I want them now.”
From the rearview, I could see Macon grinning back at us, and I had a sudden flash of the last time we’d been together in a car, speeding toward town. But I couldn’t think about that now.
“Breathe,” I said to Scarlett. “Come on now.”
“I’m scared,” she said. “Oh, God, Halley, it hurts.”
I gripped her hand harder, tighter, ignoring my own pain. “Think about what we learned in class, okay? Peaceful thoughts. Uh, oceans and fields of flowers, and country lakes.”
“Shut up!” she said. “God, listen to yourself.”
“Okay, fine,” I said, “don’t think about that. Think about good things, like that trip we took to the beach in sixth grade, remember? When you got stung by the jellyfish?”
“That was good?” Her brow was wet, sweaty, and her hand in mine was hot. I tried not to look scared, but it was hard.
“Sure it was,” I said, and Macon was still watching me as we sped down Main Street but I ignored him, going on, “and remember baking cookies in your kitchen all those summers, and dancing to the radio, and last summer with Michael, and going to the lake, and...”