Prom Queen
By Allison Izui
My senior prom is set in the old, dirty forest preserve where I learned to skip stones as a child. The sunset is softer here, contrasting with the itchiness of my skin-tight, scarlet dress that drips with glitter and rhinestones.
Unfortunately, the woods are populated with the local tourists. They gape at the sludge, as if mud were a new breed of scandal. This place became popular around the time we found out that quarantine was the new normal. There is a rumor that some people want to clean up this bridge and make it into an honest forest preserve. The local wine moms are all in agreement that the graffiti makes it look far too dangerous; their precious babies could fall off the bridge because of the jagged, unpreserved railings.
It's like they’ve never even taken a walk through the trails. I mean, really, after you find your first headless goat sacrifice, the idea of paint and ugly railings being scary is laughable at best. That being said, the cults won’t be out tonight. The moon is waning, and the heads don’t start rolling until a full moon or better.
So, we burrow ourselves into the woods, dress up real pretty, and call it a party. The slit in my dress allows little mobility, but it’s better than the alternatives my friends are wearing. Angie’s dress clings to her like it’s afraid she’ll leave without it. Delilah and Sam are in ballgowns, like the modern-day princesses they are. Somehow, we all end up here: where the Demon Bridge earned its reputation for us to disregard. Underneath it, a thin stream of water (likely an offshoot of Lake Michigan) pushes and pulls in a lazy current that surges into sewage water.
After four years of hating our high school, prom takes place about a block past the soon-to-be gentrified Demon Bridge. It’s five in the evening, we’ve shed our masks to share a bottle of Bacardi and a blunt. If we’re lucky, we’ll be crossed before we find more concerned WASP’s who look at us like we’re lost causes and they’re some kind of Angelina Jolie.
It’s easy to trick ourselves into thinking we’re different. Like, there’s a wilderness in our eyes, past the gaudy dresses and the thick makeup. Maybe there’s an honesty to our messiness that the passing families find uncomfortable, in need of grooming. In that way, I suppose the Demon Bridge isn’t so different from us.
As another family walks by, this one bolder than the last, the mother makes her presence known.
“You know, there are children who visit here,” she says, thinly threaded eyebrows arched in irritation. Her mask is decorated with hand-stitched flowers and her eyes are doing an interesting impression of maternal disappointment that I can’t help but find amusing.
She isn’t anything like my mom. My mom doesn’t care where I am, as long as I come home sated and leave again the next day.
I grin, letting the residual smoke escape through my teeth. “Then leave.”
Angie and Sam giggle, although I seem to have caught Sam mid-sip because hers is closer to a gargle. Delilah doesn’t say anything—she doesn’t need to. Her eyes look like sunflowers and her glare looks like hell. In her forest green ball gown, there’s an unintentional sense of elegance that accompanies her squatting on a log and chugging down the Bacardi.
“I have a right to be here, you do not have the right to be partaking in illegal activity,” argues the mother. If I watch closely enough, I think I can see her hairline receding. It’s hard to tell with the inconsistent lighting that comes between the leaves overhead. Taking another drag from the blunt and holding back coughs, I wonder if she knows about the frog that’s sitting next to her foot.
“Lady,” drawls Angie, whose curly brown hair has been wrestled into a bun that’s likely giving her a headache. “Either leave or we start using big girl words that’ll break your kid’s eardrums.”
The kid, at the mention of her youth, turns her stare from her mother to us. Her father grips her hand tightly, as if he’s afraid she’ll start running any second. A bug lands on my shoulder and I swat at it before I fully recognize the flinch that the kid offers in response.
The mother’s eyes turn to slits, likely preparing a scathing insult in response, but before she can continue chastising us, Sam falls into the familiar role of damage control. She raises a manicured hand, her class ring glinting in the evening light. “We were supposed to graduate this year.”
The woman pauses. Apparently, Sam’s struck a nerve.
I roll my eyes. They’ve stripped this place of any genuine humanity after the first attempt at cleaning up graffiti. This conversation means less and less as more time goes on.
The family leaves. There are no more words spoken, just us four unnecessarily glaring down the family of three who interrupted our pitiful attempt at prom. The little girl keeps turning back, causing her mask to slip a few times before her father wraps a firm arm around her shoulders.
An hour later, the mother returns with four water bottles and a large Gatorade. She smooths out her cardigan and barely refrains from adjusting her ponytail as she tells us, “I’m sorry this year has been so challenging. I can’t imagine … I—”
We must make quite a picture, a couple of kids in borrowed formal wear skeptically eyeing some middle-aged woman who’s struggling for words. Maybe this is the wilderness that all of those families seemed to despise so much. A pack of glitter-infused, angsty teenagers sizing up the lone Samaritan who dared to trespass into their territory.
“Stay safe,” she says, finally, breaking past the tense atmosphere before she leaves us be.
We watch her leave, following her harried figure until the trees swallow her whole. After confirming that the bottles hadn’t been tampered with, we pass them around and try to enjoy the thinness of the moon as it casts a weathered tiara for us to share.