It’s a Hummer limousine. A yellow Hummer limousine.
“It’s horrible,” Henna says admiringly. “So horrible it’s kind of wonderful.”
“I told you.”
Mel leans out its open door. “At the very least,” she says, “you feel safe in it.”
And we do. This is probably how tanks feel. We pick up Jared next (Mr Shurin, horrified: “How much gas mileage does this thing get?”) then, because everyone else wants it, Nathan. (“You can’t smoke in here,” I say before he even sits down.)
Call Me Steve declined a limo pick-up (“Already feel weird going to a prom seven years after I graduated,” he told Mel. “And so you should,” Mel told him back, “but you’re coming anyway.”) He’s at the school, waiting for us, opening the door so Mel can get out first. He pins on her corsage – as the only couple officially on a date tonight, he’s the only one who thought of buying one – and says,
“This vehicle is a crime.”
“Against nature?” Mel asks.
“Against judgement,” he says. “Against taste. Against good sense. Against the planet…”
They walk off towards our high school gym arm in arm, still smiling, still talking about the wonderfully horrible Hummer limo that’s already gathering a small crowd of other arriving couples.
Jared, huge in a tuxedo slightly too small, says, “Don’t we all look amazing?”
“Yes,” Henna says. “Yes, we do.”
The theme of our prom is “Forever Young”.
I know.
We can’t afford to have it in a hotel in the big city, which is what most schools do, so we’re stuck with it at our own gym. Usually you have a formal dinner beforehand with your dates, but as Grillers is the nicest restaurant in our little town, we decided to just skip that. Mr Shurin says he’s stocked up a bunch of food at the lake, so as long as that hasn’t been eaten by otters or marmots or bears, we’ll be fine.
“Dance,” Henna commands, taking me by the elbow again.
“Me first?” I say, following her out to the dance floor. It’s a slow dance, so I put my hands on her hips and she rests the non-cast hand on my shoulder.
“I’ll dance with Nathan,” she says. “I’ll dance with whoever I like.”
“But what about the desire in your stomach? That you can’t help whenever you see him?”
“If you’d have ever shut up about him, maybe you and I would have got together by now.”
“In the spirit of exploration?”
She leans in, puts her head on my chest. I feel her sigh. “I wonder if realizing you’re not sure about stuff is what makes you a grown-up?”
“Lots of adults seem really sure about things.”
“Maybe they’re not grown-up either.”
“Tell that to my mother.”
“Tell that to mine.”
We dance. It’s nice.
“Just think,” Jared says, handing me a cup of punch. Yep, punch. In a cup. “This could be our last party without alcohol ever.”
“We’re not twenty-one for three more years,” I say. I look around to Henna, now fast-dancing with Nathan in a group with Mel and Call Me Steve. “And none of us are exactly big drinkers.”
“More a metaphor for making our own choices,” Jared says. “And why don’t any of us drink?”
Then he glances at me, thinking of my father and the rehab story. “Oh. Sorry.”
I shrug and drink my punch.
“How’s the medication going?” he asks me, lowering his voice.