Good Girls Part 21

"I can't wait to see people's faces," Pam says.

"No one is going to believe it," says Cindy. She's beaming like she never has before. She has a brand-new haircut: a bob, short and sleek. She got the idea from a book that Ash slipped her , The Blue Castle, by L. M.

Montgomery. She says it's the most romantic thing she ever read in her life.

240 Joelle inspects each one of us: dresses, gloves, hair, makeup. "We're the hottest brides anyone has ever seen."

"I can't believe I'm wearing a dress with little flowers all over it," Ash says.

"And with a daisy in your hair," I say. When I say the word "daisy," I remember Luke's tiny cotton-ball dog. I figure that we'll be seeing him tonight, probably with some gorgeous girl clinging to him.

Serves me right.

Twenty minutes later, we're at the hotel. One by one, we get out of the car . We link arms and walk into the party together. As we enter the ballroom, people gape, laugh, point, grin, frown-it's exactly the reaction we wanted. I hear someone say, "I don't get it," and I elbow Ash. She and Pam snicker.

Chilly, that slimeball, grins when we pa.s.s him and his (very young) date. "Didn't think any of you ladies could wear white," he says, smirking his Chilly smirk.

Before I can think of some way to kill him without getting thrown out of the prom, Pam grins and says, "Well, well, well! If it isn't Chilly the Clown and his sidekick, Jailbait!"

We parade around the entire place, to be sure every- one gets a look at us. Then we march to find a table. We sit with two very confused couples, but we don't bother with them. We're having too much fun already.

241 "When does the music start?" Joelle demands. "This bride wants to shake her thang."

Pam stands up and walks around to the other side of the table. "Everyone squash together. I want to get a pic- ture of you guys."

"Haven't we had enough pictures?" I say.

"Not here," Pam says. "Now shut up and squash."

We squash and she shoots. One of the girls at our table, who is wearing a dress with peac.o.c.k feathers all over it, stares at Pam as she sits down. "What are you looking at?" Pam snaps.

"Oh!" the girl says. "I was wondering if you were in the school play? Grease?"

"Yeah," says Pam warily. "What about it?"

"I just wanted to tell you that I thought you were really good."

"Thanks," Pam says. She pauses a minute. "I forgot some lines in the first act. And in the second."

"I didn't notice anything like that," says the girl.

"I'm going to Juilliard," Joelle informs the table.

"We know," says Ash.

"They don't know," Joelle says, waving at Peac.o.c.k Girl and company.

Just then, the DJ booms, "MAY I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE!! WELCOME TO THE.

WILLOW PARK HIGH SCHOOL SEEEEENIOR.

PROOOOOM!".

242 A cheer goes up, and Ash sneers.

"I WANT TO CALL ALL YOU LADIES AND GEN-.

TLEMEN OUT TO THE DANCE FLOOR TO SHOW.

ALL YOUR CLa.s.sMATES WHAT YOU'VE GOT!!!".

A drum starts thumping as a bunch of people rush toward the dance floor .

"Heh!" says Ash. "You can already tell who's smashed."

"I think everyone's smashed," I say. "Or maybe they're having a group seizure."

We watched the dancing for a while.

"Don't see Luke anywhere," Ash says.

"No," I say. "Neither do I."

"If this was a movie, he'd come walking in the door without a date," she says. "Looking incredible, of course."

"Or he'd bring a date, but it would be his sister,"

Joelle says. "And she'd be a sad, nerdy girl we'd have to befriend. We'd have to go get her a wedding dress, too."

"Except he doesn't have sisters," I say. "He has a dog named Daisy."

"Maybe he'll bring his dog," Cindy says. "But I guess that would be weird, huh?"

"Or ," says Ash, "he'd bring a date, but she'd be a big horrible b.i.t.c.h and end up making out with one of the football players, getting wasted, and then falling on her face in a conveniently located cake."

243 "Yeah," I say. "But this isn't a movie."

"Oh, Scheisse," says Ash.

"Yeah," I say.

"No, I mean, Oh, Scheisse, there's Jimmy."

I whip my head around and see Jimmy and Cherry on the dance floor-not dancing, but yelling. "The first fight," I say. "The prom has officially begun."

"I hate that guy," Ash says. "I mean, wow. I hate him so much. And I know how to hate people, believe me.

He never even said he was sorry."

"Yeah," says Joelle. "Sorry for being alive."

"And Chilly! Who is that girl?" Ash says. "Who would come to the prom with him? Who'd go anywhere with him? Do you think she's out of the sixth grade yet?"

Ash says, "Do you want me to go break his legs?"

I seriously consider this. The guy humiliated me, almost ruined my life, right? But then, my life doesn't really feel ruined right now. And the biggest mistakes I made all by myself. "Nah," I say. "Not worth the effort.

Besides, I already decked him once."

Ash grins. "And tell me that didn't feel awesome.

Think I should go smack the Dreck out of Jimmy?"

"Now, now," says Joelle. "Save something for later."

"You know," I say, "I thought this was a good idea until I realized that everyone else would be here, too."

"Everyone except for Luke," Ash says.

244 Pam swings her eyes back to me. "Have you talked to him?"

"Not since the fight we had," I say.

"But you said you were sorry." Ash says. "I mean, you did apologize for thinking he was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g the planet."

"He might not have screwed the planet, but he did flirt with the planet. I had reason to be worried."

"Since when are flirting and fornication the same thing?" Pam says.

"Okay," says Ash. "He's a flirt. It's true. And that would p.i.s.s me off. Still, you dumped him pretty hard.

Maybe you could say something to fix things?"

"Like what?"

Ash drops her head all the way back so that she's fac- ing the ceiling. "Please help her, G.o.d," she says, lifting her hands, "because she is so very stupid."

"Forget it," I say. "It's too late. He doesn't want to talk to me."

Cindy looks up at the ceiling. "Who? G.o.d?" she says.

"Ooh!" says Joelle. "Listen! I love this song!"

"This is a song?" says Ash.

"Shut up and dance with me!" Joelle says.

The five of us go to the dance floor and make a lit- tle circle. Joelle starts doing this thing with her hips, something that she learned in belly-dancing lessons.

It mesmerizes every male within sight. Recognizing 245 genius, Pam immediately copies it, getting it down pretty well. The two of them wiggle around in the cen- ter of our circle, and then all around the outside. Cindy is a cyclone, kicking and flailing her arms like she's in a mosh pit. Ash does her praying-mantis-shuffle-bug dance, where she pulls her elbows in tightly toward her body and jerks, keeping her feet in the same place. Of course, I don't know what I look like, but I love to dance, love it when the music is so loud you feel it rather than hear it. Like kissing Luke, it turns my brain off and lets my body take over. We wiggle and kick and shuffle for five, six, seven songs until we're all looking a little bit droopy around the edges. Then it's time for a bathroom break, where we blot and fix and adjust and admire. We hang around the ladies' lounge and make fun of everyone else's really boring, unimagina- tive gowns.

Joelle looks down at her sparkly, beaded, skim-the- body dress. "This was the best idea, Audrey. I mean it."

"And you didn't want to do it," I say.

"Well," she says. "I had all these birthday plans with O/Joe. But that's okay. I figured something out." She smiles wickedly.

"What do you mean?" Ash says.

"Oh, no!" says Cindy. "I'm not the only real virgin here, am I? Please tell me I'm not the only virgin."

"Don't worry," Joelle says. "I'm still a virgin. We just 246 did, uh, other things."

Pam leans in close. "Oh?"

"'O,' is right." Joelle adjusts her spaghetti straps.

"'O' for o.r.g.a.s.m."

"No!" I say.

"Or. Gas. Um," Joelle says, with the emphasis on the "um." "Last night."

"How?" Ash says. "Details. Now."

"You are so touchy, As.h.!.+" says Joelle. "Speaking of touching, . . ."

"So he fingered you?" Pam says.

Joelle frowns. "You make it sound so gross!"

"Did he or didn't he?"

"If we're being technical, yes, but it wasn't like that.

We were messing around and he, you know, was trying to do something down there, G.o.d knows what. I took his finger and said, 'Rub. But not so hard. You're not trying to erase it, you know.'"

"Jesus!" says Ash.

Pam is smiling so wide that her face looks split in two. "How'd it go?"

"Pretty well. I mean, he did keep drifting off to the left for some reason, but after a while it worked!"

"How long's 'a while?'" I ask.

"I don't know. A half hour?"

"A half hour!" Ash yells. "Didn't his hand cramp up?