by Tom Ryan
A movement across the street catches my eye, and I look out the window in time to see Andrea Feingold climbing out of her bedroom window and onto the roof of her garage. Weird.
I watch as she scrambles over the edge and hangs there before dropping to the ground. She lies there for a minute, staring at the sky, then gets up and turns back to glance at her house before running away down the sidewalk. I’ve known Andrea for a long time, and I’ve never seen her act like this. I wonder where the hell she’s going.
I go downstairs and out the sliding glass doors to the back deck.
Dad is home from work, and he and Mom are relaxing at the patio table. My brothers are wrestling in the backyard. “We’ve already eaten,” she says. “We didn’t want to disturb you.” She slides a plate with a couple of burgers and some potato salad across the table at me.
“So, you’re missing prom, eh?” Dad asks as I tuck into my food.
I nod, my mouth full.
“Can’t say I blame you,” he says. “I always hated that kind of thing when I was in school.”
“Do you think I can borrow your truck?” I ask him once I’ve finished eating.
“You sure that’s a good idea?” Mom asks.
“I’m fine,” I say. “I just need to get out of the house for a little while. Get my mind off things.”
She looks like she wants to say something else, but she keeps it to herself.
I expect my dad to tell me to take Mom’s Corolla, like he usually does. Instead, he reaches into his pocket and tosses me his keys.
“Sweet, thanks!” I say.
“Be careful where you show your face,” says Mom. “I’ve convinced Lannie that you’re on death’s door. She probably wouldn’t enjoy seeing you bumming around town.”
Yeah, no shit, I think. Funny thing is, now that I know I’m not going to prom after all, I feel like a million bucks.
CANDACE
I wasn’t even planning on going out, but my father has been watching TV and drinking beer since noon, and my grandmother is busy in the kitchen. I figure if I stick around it will just turn into another episode of My Depressed Dad! and the last thing I want to do on Friday night is sit around Gee-ma’s sad little bungalow helping my forty-five-year-old father regain his self-esteem. Then what would we do on Saturday, right?
I decide to hit the road. I grab my backpack from my room and I’m trying to sneak down the stairs and out through the front porch when Dad yells for me. I consider ignoring him and bolting, but instead I roll my eyes and go into the living room.
My grandmother’s house is like a time capsule—wood paneling, tacky green furniture from the seventies, thick orange carpet, a gigantic TV in a wooden cabinet. There’s even a heavy glass ashtray on the coffee table, even though nobody around here has smoked since before I was born. It’s like time has stood still since Jimmy Carter was president.
The most depressing thing is that it’s always perfectly neat and tidy. Gee-ma vacuums every day, and the place smells like lemon furniture polish. I imagine her getting up every morning and going through the exact same routine. The only thing that’s changed is that now it’s my dad flopped on the couch instead of my grandpa.
It’s only six o’clock, but the drapes, heavy and brown with a swirly beige pattern, are drawn tight against the sun. The TV is blaring, and all the lamps are turned off. It might as well be midnight.
“Hey,” I say, standing in the doorway.
“Where’re you going?” asks Dad, his eyes not even leaving the TV.
“Just out. Might go see a movie or something.”
“You’re not going to get into any trouble, are you?” asks Dad, somehow managing to pull his eyes away from the TV and look at me.
“No.” I’m not in the mood to get into this.
“Well, don’t forget to say goodnight to your grandmother,” he says. “And don’t stay out too late.” As if he cares. As if he isn’t going to lumber into his room at nine and hibernate until almost noon tomorrow.
I walk into the kitchen, where Gee-ma is putting together a pie. She makes the best pie.
“Candace, why don’t you go get my purse?” she says.
“Gee-ma, I don’t need any money. Seriously.”
“Don’t be silly, just get me my purse.”
I walk into the dining room and pick her purse up off the sideboard, trying to ignore the family photos hanging on the wall. My parents’ wedding picture, which Gee-ma refuses to take down although I’m sure it makes my dad want to puke. Pictures of Aunt Joanne and Uncle Gary and their perfect lives: on a ski vacation, at the beach, in a Venetian gondola. School pictures of their three kids, my cousins Frank, Allie and Corey. A timeline of well-adjusted young people, smiling smugly down at me from the wall as if to say, Look at us! Perfectly normal!
Then there are the pictures of me. A fat, jolly baby, giggling on a pillow at a Sears photo studio. A happy little girl in kindergarten. A cheerful eleven-year-old in a miniature cap and gown, standing onstage at my middleschool graduation. A snapshot of me and Vanessa in party dresses, on our way to our first dance. The pictures stop after my ninth-grade portrait. That one’s the worst—no wonder Mom never forced me to have another one taken. I look severely pissed off, and I’m glaring sideways into the distance. I’d given myself a haircut, a poorly done chelsea, and straggly lime-green curls hang down on either side of my face. Even I was happy when that cut grew out. God knows why Gee-ma keeps that photo on the wall. Someday it will probably show up on one of those online slideshows of horrible family portraits and I’ll go viral for, like, ten seconds.
Poor Gee-ma. I’m sure she looks at those pictures of that cute little kid and compares them to the person I am now. The thought depresses me.
I take her purse back to the kitchen and wait while she rummages around, eventually coming up with a crumpled five-dollar bill.
“Why don’t you take this to Bizzby’s and buy yourself a milkshake.”
“Thanks, Gee-ma,” I say, leaning down to kiss her and thinking but not saying that Bizzby’s, the tacky fake-fifties diner, is just about the last place on earth I’m likely to end up. I’ll save the cash for my next trip to the hardware store.
She grabs my arm as I pull away, and I look down into her face; her usually cheerful smile is gone, replaced with something sad.
“Your father is very depressed these days, Candace,” she whispers, although I know he can’t hear us over the canned laughter on the TV. “I don’t know what to say to him.”
I might be kind of a bitch, but come on—as if my heart doesn’t melt for my poor grandmother, stuck in a house with my dad.
“I know, Gee-ma,” I tell her. “He’ll be all right—he’s just going through a rough patch.” This is the same thing my mother used to tell me when he was going through one of his periods of watching TV for hours in the basement at night. I can’t think of what else to say though.
Gee-ma relaxes, and the smile comes back to her face.
“You’re such a sweet girl to come here for the weekend and spend time with us. It’s good for your father.”
I smile, trying not to think about the blaring television and the man in the next room who hasn’t said more than ten words to me since I showed up.
“You know,” she says, “you’re always welcome to visit, anytime you want. You should bring your friend next time. What’s her name, Vanessa?”
I nod. “Yeah. Vanessa.”
“You two used to come stay with me all the time when you were little girls.”
“I don’t really hang out with Vanessa anymore,” I say.
“Well, that’s too bad,” she says. “You two were such good friends.”
“It’s okay, Gee-ma,” I say. I lean in and give her another kiss on the cheek. “You have a good night. Save some of that pie for me.”
“Of course, dear,” she says. “This is for supper tomorrow. I’m going to roast a chicken. You’ll be here, won’t you?”
Her voice is so
desperate that it breaks my heart.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” I tell her.
“If you make any friends, feel free to invite them along,” she says. “The more the merrier.”
I just smile. That might be expecting a bit too much.
I should get one thing straight. I did not want to come here for the weekend. It’s not my fault that my father is depressed and my mom decided to leave him. It’s definitely not my fault that he lost his job and his apartment and ended up living with Gee-ma out in the suburbs.
But even though my dad’s issues are not officially my problem, I figured the least I could do was come spend a few days with him. After the worst year of my life, what’s one more shitty weekend?
Besides, it’s prom night at my school, and I can’t think of a better reason to get the hell out of the city. Maybe if I still had friends, I’d feel differently. Vanessa would have spent weeks dragging me along with her to every secondhand and vintage store in the city, finding us something to wear. I’d have probably complained, but I know she would have made us look pretty awesome. If things with Rick hadn’t ended the way they did, I might have even had a date. Actually, scratch that—there’s no way in hell Rick would ever be caught dead at a high-school dance.
In the porch, I quickly unzip my backpack to be sure I have everything I need. Then I close it up, toss it over my shoulder and head out the door, stopping to glance up and down the street. Gee-ma’s house is on one of those streets that reminds you of a hall of mirrors, just one brick bungalow after another. Jesus, the suburbs are depressing.
I think about what Gee-ma said about making friends. Having to spend a weekend here might not be so horrible if I actually knew someone, but meeting people is the last thing on my agenda. If I’ve learned one thing over the past year, it’s that people are better off on their own. Especially when you’ve got a hobby like mine.
On the sidewalk, I stop and consider which direction to go. It doesn’t really matter. I’m on a mission into uncharted territory. It’s just a matter of walking until I find what I’m looking for.
I decide to turn left, but after only a few steps I hear laughter, and a gaggle of high-school kids turns the corner a couple of blocks away. Judging from the way they’re dressed—blazers and ties, colorful dresses—it’s prom night here too. I quickly cross the street and hustle in the opposite direction from the Teenage Zombies From Suburban Hell.
It’s going to be a long and painful weekend, I can tell you that much.
ROEMI
Worst. Prom. Ever.
Okay, so you are not going to believe any of this. I had a date. To the prom. A prom date. And this boy is hot to trot, fire and brimstone, one sexy little Abercrombie & Fitch-style love interest deluxe.
John. Hot John. I met him online, and he’s totally sweet and really cool, and he obviously has good taste in men. We hit it off immediately. I was all sup and he was all nahmuch, you? and before you know it, we’re texting, like, all the time! And not dirty stuff (okay, not just dirty stuff—ahem), but mostly just shit like whatcha doin? and just watchin the Kardashians and eatin’ cereal. Shit like that. Cute, right?
All right, so there might have been a couple of minor roadblocks on destiny highway. For one thing, he lives in the city, about a twenty-minute drive away. He’s also hard-core closeted, but that’s cool, because I was closeted for a while too. Like till I was twelve. The thing with John, though, was that he was going to use my prom as his testing ground for coming out. He was worried for a while that if he came to the Granite Ridge prom, he’d end up seeing someone he knew or someone who knew someone or whatever. Closet stress, perfectly natural.
Anyway, it took a few weeks, but I totally managed to calm him down and convince him not to be paranoid. At least, I thought I’d convinced him not to be paranoid.
So the plan was, I’d get dressed up like America’s Next Top Male Model, and John would take the bus out from the city and come to my house to pick me up, and we’d go to the pre-prom party at Terry Polish’s house and do lots of mingling, and maybe sneak a couple of drinks, and then we’d go to the prom, and there’d be lots of pictures, and he’d meet all my friends, and then there’d be a bunch of fast dancing, and then I’d slip the DJ ten bucks and a jump drive with “Don’t Stop Believing” on it, and John and I would end up stealing the show as the lights dimmed and the crowd parted, and then we’d totally fall in love in the middle of the dance floor, melting into each other’s arms as the disco ball threw crystal spheres of light down on us.
Best prom daydream ever, right? Totally! We’d be making history!
That’s probably worth explaining. See, John and I were going to be the first gay couple to ever own the dance floor at a Granite Ridge High School prom. And yeah, the operative word here is were.
So I’m all tuxed up and looking totally fierce, and I’ve got everything prepared. The lighting is arranged perfectly, my dad is ready with the camera, and I’ve been training my mother for a week to press Play on my iPod at the exact moment the doorbell rings. I have a really upbeat dance track queued up. At 5:25, we all take our places. I grab the boutonniere I bought this afternoon and perch nonchalantly on the stool that I’ve placed by the front door. Mom and Dad hang out close by in the living room.
At 5:30, I plaster a million-dollar smile on my face. By 5:40 the smile is a little droopy but still totally ready to snap back to action. By 5:45 I’ve dropped the smile, but my facial muscles are ready to kick in at any moment. By 5:50 my mouth is starting to twitch in an uncomfortable “we don’t know what we’re supposed to do, Roemi” kind of way. Also, my backup has decided to abandon me. My dad has gone into the kitchen to make a sandwich, and my mom is on the couch reading a book.
At six o’clock it’s official. He’s half an hour late, and he hasn’t responded to any of my texts. He’s not coming. I hop down from the stool and toss the boutonniere onto the entryway table before running upstairs to my room. I slam the door behind me, sit at my desk and open Facebook. Sure enough, there’s a DM from John: I’m so sorry.
I’m so sorry?! The bastard doesn’t even have the decency to text me face to face? Instead I get a three-word Dear John from John on Facebook? Pa. Thetic.
I throw myself on the bed, but I’m too furious to cry real tears, so I resort to stage weeping. I’m loud enough that my parents come upstairs. They stand in the doorway, looking sad.
“Roemi, cheer up,” says my dad. “Why don’t you come downstairs and we’ll have a quick bowl of ice cream, and then I’ll drive you to the prom.” My dad’s solution to everything is ice cream; he rarely had it growing up in India, even though it was the hottest place on earth, or so they’ve been telling me since I was a kid.
“Listen,” I say, sitting up and releasing the death grip on my oldest stuffed animal, Britney Bear, “I’m not going to prom. Prom is ruined. I bragged to everyone about how I was going to make the most spectacular entrance ever. I can’t just show up solo and hop out of the backseat of your Land Cruiser like some kind of loser. Can you guys just leave me alone for a little while? I want to lie here and feel sorry for myself.”
My mom comes over and kisses me on the head. “I’m sorry, Roemi. Next year, I’m sure you will have the best of all the dates.”
“Let me know if you meet him,” I say.
“When you feel better, come down and have some ice cream!” calls my dad as they head down the stairs.
I go back to my desk and stare for a while at my computer screen. I feel like I should respond to his message, but even though I usually have no problem being scathing, I’m just too depressed to come up with anything. The thing is, I really like John—or as much of him as I know from the Internet and my cell phone—and I thought he liked me. I put my computer to sleep.
Even though I’m not going to prom, I’m not ready to take the tux off just yet. I get up and stand in front of the mirror. I look awesome. It seems a shame for such a glam-tastic outfit to stay locked up in my room all
night. Maybe I don’t want to sit around feeling sorry for myself. I quietly walk downstairs. I can hear my parents laughing at a stupid sitcom in the family room. I grab my shades from the kitchen counter and head out the back door.
ANDREA
When I’m out of sight of the house, I text Bethanne.
Bolted—mom driving me crazy
She hits me back right away.
No way! Come 2 Terry’s!
Terry Polish’s parents let him invite our whole class to his house for a pre-prom party. He lives close to the school, and everyone is planning on meeting there, hanging out for a couple of hours and then walking to the dance together.
I’m not so sure that’s where I want to end up. The whole plan for tonight is to make an impression on Justin, and wearing shorts and a Lake Snelgrove: Come Meet Snelly the Sasquatch! T-shirt to the prom party is probably the wrong way to do it. On the other hand, the idea of straight up disobeying my mother gives me kind of a rush.
I’ll look like an idiot.
U won’t—come on!
I consider my options. Really, what else am I going to do? Catch a movie by myself?
Ok.
When I arrive at Terry’s house, the backyard is full of people, and everyone looks like they’re on the red carpet at the Oscars. Unfortunately, I look like I’m on my way to summer camp. Bethanne spots me right away and makes a beeline across the yard.
“Oh my god,” she squeals. “You made it! I honestly can’t believe your mom is such a bitch!”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. “You look great, by the way.”
“Thanks!” she says. She leans in and drops her voice to a whisper. “So did Lannie and Paul break up or something?”
“I have no idea. Why?”
“She showed up with Ryan and Darrah, but no Paul,” she says. “I thought you might know since you and he are friends or whatever.”
“We’re neighbors,” I tell her for the millionth time. “I haven’t hung out with him for years.”
