“The prom,” I said. “It’s not like Lassie just came home.”
She started nervously wiping her hands on her apron. “We’ll run out right now and get your hair done and a dress and…”
“Hey, it’s just Gar, and I’ll wear my black dress.”
Her face fell. I almost felt bad. I hadn’t realized the way the word prom would hit her. Stimulus response. For one microsecond I was a normal daughter, wanting the normal world of dresses and boys and family, not a changeling who wanted to go to film school and raise tattoos.
They really did get my blood tested once. They were that convinced I’d been switched in the nursery.
“So can I go?”
She sighed. “Go. Do what you want. Remember, there are only seventy-two Family Shaming Days before you go away to college.”
“Thanks, Mom. When you make a joke like that, I almost believe we’re related.”
She flinched, started back to the kitchen, then turned.
“You know what I hope?” she said. “I hope you show up at the prom—your future self, I mean—and I hope you tell yourself what a mess you’re going to make of your life. I hope to God you straighten out.”
And then I shuddered. Because I thought of all those old farts at their twenty-fifth reunion, coming back en masse to look at the glory days of the prom—anyone who wasn’t dead or broke or a total reject—and I didn’t want it. I didn’t want to be one of the jerks smiling and waving and holding snapshots of big families and big cars and big houses.
“I wouldn’t do that,” I muttered. “I wouldn’t do anything so—so ordinary.”
On the other hand, if I did feel like I had to revisit my prom, maybe I’d be cool enough to do it dressed entirely in vinyl Partridge Family souvenirs.
No corsage, but he brought me a red carnation that went with my color scheme. We started out at the Chess Club alternate prom party. Eight people, seven computers, a lot of Doritos, and two bottles of Annie Green Springs.
“God, you both look great,” said Net Girl. “I love the tux. You two could be Fred and Ginger.”
“Yeah, the Transylvanian dance team,” said Jean-Luc. “Make it so.” Poor guy had three strikes against him: he was brilliant, he was going bald at seventeen, and he liked to write philosophical essays in Klingon. But there was something in his eyes I wasn’t accustomed to…
Great. I was now the sex goddess of the pathetic loser crowd.
“We’ll be back after the dance,” said Gar. “Assuming we’re not hospitalized or murdered or anything.”
Then we gritted our collective dentition and drove to the school gym. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard you were coming,” said Mrs. Trout, my homeroom teacher. She hated my guts. It was mutual. “I should have known you’d pull something like this.”
“It’s my best dress, ma’am,” I said.
We didn’t dance. I don’t know how, and Gar looked dangerous to my podiatric integrity. So we stood by the wall, occasionally shouted something sarcastic at each other over the din, and were bored to tears.
Until the dumdums started to appear. You can get a lot of mileage watching eighteen-year-olds confront their forty-three-year-old selves. Like they never realized they’d get that old. And the dumdums thinking they still looked buff or cool, not realizing they were just ancient. Embarrassing.
Most of them were holding little signs or pictures of all the detritus they’d accumulated. The pictures of families, mansions, and what we could only assume were expensive cars.
I made a gagging sound. I couldn’t imagine anything worse than knowing where you were going to live, how many kids you’d have. It would be like trying to read an Agatha Christie when you’ve already snuck a look at the last chapter.
Gar kept looking around. I guess he thought he’d show up with his Nobel around his neck. Maybe a physics groupie on each arm. It could happen. Sooner or later he’d have to grow into his face.
The class president stood at the mike and tapped it until everyone quieted down. He’d just seen his own red-nosed future self holding pictures of a car dealership and what was either a second wife or a very inappropriately clad daughter. He was primed.
The pitiful country band quieted down. Fine with me. You ever heard redneck rap?
“Now it’s time to announce the Prom King and Queen…”
And he named us.
“Oh hell,” I said. I didn’t like the sound of this.
We found ourselves being pushed up to the stage. The president and my homeroom teacher pulled us up. “Your future self hasn’t appeared yet, has she?” she sneered. Obviously meaning: because you couldn’t afford it, or you died of a drug overdose in a gutter, or you’re embarrassed by your lack of success.
“Hell no,” I said. “Think I’d want to relive this boring and now humiliating piece of shit night?”
“Detention until the end of school for swearing, dear,” she hissed.
The class president stuck crowns on our heads, ducked back quickly, and then the pies started to fly. But I’d been alerted, and dove behind Miss Trout, pushing her into the line of fire. Detention, hell—now it would be suspension.
Poor Gar wiped banana cream from his glasses—the idiots didn’t know you were supposed to use shaving cream—and staggered to the microphone.
“You are all… infantile,” he said. His voice was cracking, but it got stronger as he went. I stepped forward to put a hand on his shoulder. I felt kind of bad I hadn’t had time to warn him.
“You’re all unoriginal, boring, hopelessly conventional bourgeoisie.”
“Yeah!” a Neanderthal shouted, and the football team whooped. They weren’t sure what it meant, but if the four-eyed technonerd was against it, they were for it.
“And it’s really all just jealousy. Because I’m leaving this hick town and you’ll all stay, just live and die here and no one will ever remember you. But I’m going to be important…”
“America’s Most Wanted Dork!”
“Good one,” I shouted. “Who writes your jokes, Flipper?”
“I’m going to contribute to human knowledge, and you’ll just contribute to… to your own IRAs.”
Gar never thought well on the fly. I should have anticipated the need for a retribution speech.
“And you’ll only be remembered as the assholes who made fun of me, like the ones who laughed at Darwin and suppressed Galileo…”
And that’s when it got weirder, as everyone realized that attendance in the room had doubled. There were future people everywhere, looking around, recording, remembering. And all the dumdums were focused on Gar, except when they were sneering at the other prom-goers.
It was too funny. I couldn’t stop laughing. They’d been trying to make fun of us and now they would be famous as the Village of Short-sightedIdiots. Spending the rest of their lives as the laughingstocks of history, trying to live it down. And in the process, no doubt, becoming even more militantly short-sighted and closeminded.
I loved it. Even as I pitied the next generation in this crappy town.
And yeah, I even caught sight of Grownup Gar the Tenured Professor. He did grow into his face, and there are Nobel Groupies.
I stumbled away out of the crowd. My own cozy footnote in history assured, maybe, as Gar’s vampira prom date. But he didn’t need me now. He was basking in the attention of the future’s intelligentsia, and the air that was thick with I Told You So.
I walked out into the parking lot, breathing in the relatively fresh air, and leaned against the wall. I’d probably have to bum a ride to the Chess Club party, or walk. I had a feeling Gar was about to go home and pound out a theory of time. Excuse me, Time.