“Uh, ya think?” I ask, one step away from actually tapping his head to see if there’s anything left in there.
He throws his hands up. “Every time I think I understand teens— You wanna know what, I’m going to take care of it.”
“I expect apologies from the responsible parties,” Mom says.
Principal Armstrong sputters. “We have no way of knowing who exactly is to blame here, but I will be vigilant about making sure that both Hannah and Waylon are not the victim of any further abuse, and their names will be removed from all prom-court-related things.”
Hannah stands and pulls her backpack over her shoulder. “No need. They want a king? They’ll get a king. Count me in. I’m running for prom king, Mr. Principal Man.”
She’s out the door before any of us can even react.
I look to Mom and then Principal Armstrong, who are both as shocked as I am.
“Uh... uh... give me a sec.”
I run after her and find her in the hallway. “What the hell, Hannah? You can’t be serious. What’s your grandma going to say?”
She turns around with an innocent grin. “If I’ve learned anything in the last few years, it’s that you’ve got to be the one who writes your own story. You don’t think I see people making fun of me? I’m the Afro-Dominican girl with buck teeth. That’s all anyone knows me as. I’ve been dating your sister since last summer and I bet that’s pretty much all you even know about me.”
I clear my throat, trying to suppress a little bit of guilt and what that guilt might mean. I haven’t really taken the time to get to know Hannah, because I always felt like Hannah wasn’t interested. “We are so close to graduation,” I finally say. “So close to getting out of this stupid school, and you want to make a thing of this instead of just letting it die?”
She shrugs. “This can go one of two ways. We’re nominated and step out of the race and people always remember that one time the two homos were nominated for prom court. Wasn’t that funny? Or I could actually do this thing and then maybe someday everyone will remember how the gay girl with the crazy teeth took life by the balls and ran for prom king. Wasn’t that wild? Wasn’t she fearless?”
I stand there for a minute, waiting for her to say she’skidding and that she’s going to let all this blow over. But she doesn’t. Instead, her posture only becomes more defiant. She’s got nothing to lose. And for the first time, I think I’m actually seeing Hannah. It’s as though this whole time the Hannah I knew was never Hannah at all. Only a shadow of her.
“Patrick Thomas and all the assholes who followed his lead might get to choose how this story begins, but I get to choose how it ends.” She takes a step closer to me, and something shifts behind her light-brown eyes that makes me think that she’s a little nervous to do this without me. “And for what it’s worth, I think you’d make an incredible queen.”
I watch her walk off down the hallway and her words vibrate through me like a tuning fork.
Back in the office, I find Mom and Hannah’s grandmother talking to Principal Armstrong.
Hannah’s grandmother looks just like Hannah if Hannah were sixty-four years old and wore chino pants and Clarks and got regular perms. She eyes me up and down as I stand in the doorframe. “The nose,” she finally says to Mom. “Both babies have the nose.”
Mom smiles and faintly touches her own nose with the tip of her finger, momentarily distracted by the thought of the three of us sharing a nose. Everyone has always said how much Clem and I look like Dad, and when I was a kid, I always felt bad, like it might hurt her feelings.
Hannah’s grandma winks at Mom. I’ve been invited to Hannah’s house many times, but if I’m going to be thethird wheel, I might as well do it in the safety of my own home. I’ve only seen Hannah’s grandmother a few times from a distance. Up close, I can see the soft lines around her lips and the silver hairs running through her curls.
I throw my hands up. “She’s going through with it.”
I expect Hannah’s grandmother to be as outraged as I am, but instead she faces forward with her hands gathered on her purse in her lap. “It’s decided then.”
Well, there goes any possibility of grandmother interference. I sit down right outside the open office door as all three adults talk about the best way to proceed and how teens can be cruel and how social media has ruined us all—though Hannah’s grandmother seems to have some interesting takes on Facebook. But the rest of the time, I listen to the three of them pretty much say all the things you hear adults talking aboutthis generationsay when they think we’re not listening. Status update: we’re listening.
But I can’t get Hannah’s words out of my head. I’ve spent the last few years of my life just getting by. Trying not to stand out. Most of my friends are adults who are at least double my age, and the one person I bare my soul to is connected to me by blood and therefore required to keep all the ridiculous and painful truth about me to herself. (She’s not done a great job of that lately though, to be honest.)
I can’t help but wonder... what if I just did this? What if I went all in? What’s the worst that could happen? The end of my senior year is miserable? Someone tries to beat me up for wearing a dress? If someone is going to try totorment me for this, they’ve already made up their mind.
And then I envision something epic. Me as queen. Not just any queen.Promqueen. What if I not only did this whole prom thing, but what if I won? I don’t even know if I actually want to do drag, but what a great way to leave high school in the dust and step into the future. The thing that really gets my blood pulsing, though, is the idea that things could be different. Maybe prom queen doesn’t always have to be the same thin, pretty, and popular girl. Maybe the queen doesn’t have to be a girl at all.
Prom is one giant charade anyway—a night where we play make-believe and pretend to be the adults we hope we might one day become. Elegant, refined, and a little bit sexy. That’s not reality, though. Our real adult lives will be about bills and tough decisions and parents getting old and deciding to have families. Not evening gowns and tuxes and crowns. So if prom is one giant fantasy, why can’t I be a part of the illusion?
Twelve
I sit down beside Hannah in the home ec room on Monday after school. “When you manipulated me into actually doing this thing, you didn’t say there would be meetings,” I whisper to her.
“Surprise,” she says. “There are meetings, I guess? I don’t know. I’m not, like, some prom court expert.”
“Well, you were in that pageant.”
