Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom (21 page)

At what used to be the front door, Ginger Berks from my freshman year Intro to Bio is there, all dressed up and holding a tray of champagne flutes; each glass holds a different-colored liquid to make a rainbow.

“7UP and food coloring,” she whispers, and I take a blue glass while walking inside, my eyes wider than ever.

Where the neon letters previously spelled LOWEST PRICES the sign now reads TESSA MASTERSON’S BIG GAY PROM. There are rainbow rubber bracelets with BGP on them. There are lights and cameras and action absolutely everywhere. Most of all, there’s me and Lucas.

I turn to him and his eyes are full of the question he asked me, the question that started everything. “You made this happen,” I say. And he did. If he hadn’t asked me to Prom in the first place, maybe I’d have been one of those people who didn’t admit her feelings until college. Or never. Maybe I’d have married a guy just because that’s what you do. Or maybe I’d have been fine. Who knows?

“I’d do anything for you,” he says, and I know he means it.

“Yes,” I tell him, and when he waits I add, “Yes, I will go to Prom with you. And I am so glad you asked.”

Lucas gives me his done-good smile and we both check our tuxes. There are tons of people, dancing, swaying, some from school, some are faces I don’t know or haven’t seen before but probably because they are from out of town. Or perhaps because I stopped looking for the smiles. The crowd seems to wave at us. Then Lucas gives a signal and a former keg—Discount LiquorMart’s centerpiece—spouts like a rainbow fountain, and disco balls descend from the ceiling. Glitter actually twinkles down and the Indianapolis Gay Mens’ Chorus starts singing.

“Lucas Fogelman, you complete and total asshole,” I shout.

“What?” Lucas asks, still holding my hand, and looking worried now.

“You outdid my grand gesture. Now what am I supposed to do?”

Lucas offers his outstretched hand. “Dance?”

And, just like the old us, just like the new us and the future us, we head out on the floor for the first dance, together.

It’s funny. When I imagined this—dancing with Tessa at Prom—it wasn’t like this at all. First of all, in my imagination, she was wearing something that at least suggested that she has breasts. But also, when I imagined my hand on her hip, it wasn’t just that I imagined something more satiny than a tuxedo under my hand, but I thought the touch would be electric, that it would be the moment when our friendship turned to love.

Dumb ass. It
was
love all along.

Just not, you know,
that
kind of love. This is like dancing with your sister. Or what I imagine dancing with your sister is like. Which is most unlike how Tessa’s actual brother is currently dancing with his date. It’s really more of a public makeout session than a dance, and it’s kind of embarrassing to watch. So I turn away.

And I look at Tessa. I don’t know this song that’s playing. It sounds kind of old, and it’s not really the kind of thing I would have chosen if I were the DJ, but I have to admit “You Make Me Feel Brand New” is a pretty good choice. Especially right now, when I’m looking at Tessa, and the singer says “precious friennnnnnd …”

Tessa’s got this big smile on her face and tears are rolling down her cheeks, and I feel like I’m going to cry too, but probably for different reasons. Because this song is all about someone who never stopped believing in you, and I did stop believing in her. I failed my best friend, and I have to live with that for the rest of my life.

Or maybe not. Maybe I actually can feel brand new.

“T, I’m so sorry—” I start.

“Lucas. Shut up. I forgave you. Which means you don’t have to apologize anymore. You’re my best friend. If none of this had ever happened, I wouldn’t have all this”—she gestures around at Tessa Masterson’s Big Gay Prom—“and I wouldn’t … oh hell. I can’t”—she’s getting all choked up now—“this all just means more to me than you can ever know. To be able to really be who I am and have all this too. It’s more than I dared to hope for. I started to think being
me
meant giving everything else up.” She’s really overcome, and she rests her head on my shoulder and just cries for a minute.

We sway to the music, and it’s seriously the happiest I’ve ever been. Maybe I’ll get to close out game seven of the World Series, and maybe I won’t, but even though
nobody’s ever going to show highlights of this party on ESPN or even on YouTube, I think maybe this is the best thing I’ll ever do.

The song ends, and it kind of breaks the spell. Tessa and I separate and head off the dance floor. And there’s Kate Sweeney with a box of tissues that she hands to Tessa, who’s still sniffling. “I kinda thought you might need these,” she says.

I have to admit, though, that the tissues are not the first things about Kate that I notice. I mean, I’ve always thought she was pretty, in that girl-next-door way that is pretty irresistible, but she does not look like anybody who lives next door to anybody in Indiana right now. Her long auburn hair is all wavy, and her dress looks like something somebody would wear to the Oscars in the 1940s. Basically she looks like she just stepped out of some classic-movie poster. She’s absolutely breathtaking.

And I mean this literally. Like, I can’t speak because I can’t breathe.

“Y-y-you,” I stammer, and Kate flashes me a white-hot smile from between ruby-red lips.

“I thought I would glam it up a little bit,” she says.

“I think you succeeded,” Tessa says as she tucks a tissue into her pants pocket. “You look like Katharine Hepburn in
The Philadelphia Story
.”

“Great movie,” Kate says. “But I was aiming for Rita Hayworth.”

“Hey,” I say, stepping between Tessa and Kate. “Don’t even think about it. Tessa’s
my
Prom date.”

“Hmm … ,” Kate says. “Ms. Masterson, can I borrow your date for a dance?”

“Wow, Kate, I mean, wow. But I can’t really ditch Tessa at her own Prom.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m gonna have a hard time finding somebody to dance with,” Tessa says. She gestures at the scene. The dance floor is already full, and people are still streaming in through the front door. There’s some up-tempo dance-pop number playing, and the floor is jumping with joyful dancing like I’ve never seen. Tessa is not the only girl in a tux, but there are also girls in Prom dresses and combat boots, girls in regular Prom dresses, guys in dresses, guys in tuxes, and a fair number of people who are either male or female, but it’s not clear from what they’re wearing or who they’re dancing with.

And, at the wall, there are about forty girls giving Tessa that I’m-trying-to-get-up-the-courage-to-ask-you-to-dance look. She smiles. “You kids have fun,” she says, but then turns to Kate. “But I get him back for the last dance. And since this is my Big Gay Prom, I am not letting this night go by without a dance with the glamorous movie star,” she says.

“Deal,” Kate says, and Tessa evaporates into the crowd.

Which leaves me alone with Kate Sweeney. “Um, so, will you dance with me?” I say.

“I seriously thought you’d never ask,” she says, smiling again.

Just then the up-tempo song ends, and the DJ slows it down. And now I’m slow dancing with a movie star, and my hand on her hip feels like something more intimate than you should be allowed to do in public.

“Thank you,” I whisper in her ear. “This is perfect. It’s better than perfect.” I look around at the other couples on the floor. I wonder how many of these people, like Danny Masterson, probably could have gone to any Prom, and how many, like this skinny kid next to me with his arms around the neck of a big chubby guy, thought they’d never get to do anything like this—that Prom was something for other kids.

“Where did all these people come from?” I ask.

“I put it out on pretty much every Facebook group I could think of,” Kate says. “I think pretty much every gay and lesbian kid in Indiana got the message. Twenty bucks a head, so we can cover the rent. And now you’re going to shut up about the logistics of this Prom and let me enjoy slow dancing with a hot guy.”

I look around to see which hot guy she’s referring to, and she punches me, and I pull her close, and I think, so this is what magic feels like. I don’t really plan this, but I can’t help it. If I don’t kiss her right now, I’m going to go completely insane. So I do. But not quickly this time. And once I start, it’s not that easy to stop.

I really hate kids who make out on the dance floor. Or
I used to, anyway, before I became one. The song ends, and suddenly Tessa comes over and breaks us up. “Don’t make me call the chaperone,” Tessa says.

Kate smiles at me. “To be continued,” she says.

She and Tessa go off and shake it to some Miss Kaboom song, and then Tessa grabs me for a dance. It’s another high-energy song, and I know Tessa is my best friend because she doesn’t mock me for being a really terrible dancer.

And the party goes on and on. I pretty much never stop dancing. With Tessa, with Kate, with some random guy in a pink dress who is probably the best dancer in the room and who slips his number into my palm when the dance is over.

About two hours later, my jacket, like most of the tuxedo jackets, is in a heap on the floor somewhere, and I’m sweaty and exhausted and happy. Since this was a retail space, it has air-conditioning, but this system was never meant to counteract summer heat and hundreds of dancing teenagers.

“I need a break,” I say to Kate, after another slow dance, and, arm around her waist, I lead her off the dance floor. Over at the door, a big muscular guy in a suit with sunglasses on—inside, after dark—is talking to the kid selling tickets. He scans the floor and points at Kate, who says to me, “Wow. I think … Well, let me just go talk to that guy.”

She leaves me standing there while she talks to the
gigantic dude who, with my luck, is probably her jealous ex. Suddenly Tessa is standing there.

“Hey!” I say. “Having fun?”

“Seriously the best night of my life,” she says, smiling. Then she follows my gaze to the door, where there are now three huge guys in suits and sunglasses. “Um. What’s that? Are they shutting us down?”

“Those are definitely not Brookfield cops,” I say. “I honestly have no idea what’s happening.”

Tessa looks worried. I feel worried. As innocent as this event is, I’m sure there are people full of hate who might have a violent objection to it happening. I didn’t even give a thought to security.

Kate comes walking back with a huge smile on her face. “Awesome,” she says. “It was a long shot, and I totally did it for a gag, but it’s really happening!”

“Kate, what the hell are you talking about?”

“You’ll see,” she says.

Several more big dudes enter and stand at the front of the room by the DJ and stare, blank-faced, at the crowd.

The music keeps playing, but the crowd thins out as it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that there’s more musical equipment being set up at the front of the room. Two more colossal stacks of speakers appear next to the DJ’s speakers. A bass player, a guitar player, a drummer, and two keyboard players appear, looking a little cramped in the back of a former Foot Locker.

I’m standing in a crowd with Kate, Tessa, Danny,
Anabel, and what seems like every girl Tessa’s danced with all night. It’s a big crowd. “Seriously,” I say to Kate, “you have to tell me what’s going on.”

Kate has this gigantic grin plastered on her face. “You’ll see. Really soon.”

And sure enough, at that point the drummer unleashes a big drumroll that causes even the few diehards on the dance floor to stop and look. At the back of the room, there’s some commotion, and four more colossal, muscular guys come in. Only these guys are not wearing suits and sunglasses. They’re wearing black Speedos and what seems to be a thin coating of oil. And they’re carrying something between them. A big litter with what looks like a giant, closed-up flower in the middle.

“No way,” I say, looking at Kate. “No way. This is not happening.”

“She lives in Chicago. I sent an Evite through her Facebook page. I didn’t think she’d actually show up!” Kate says.

The crowd is buzzing like none of them can believe it either.

The oiled musclemen stop in front of the band and set their burden down.

And just like at the Grammys, one petal of the flower peels down and Top-40 dance diva Miss Kaboom steps out. Her long blond hair shoots up from her head, bride-of-Frankenstein style, she’s got a slash of red makeup across her eyes, and she’s wearing thigh-high boots with
a black bikini bottom, but instead of whatever scraps of fabric might usually be on her top half, she’s wearing, I swear to God, a TEAM TESSA T-shirt.

Hundreds of cell phones appear in the screaming crowd, snapping pictures and taking videos. Maybe they really will be showing highlights from this for years. She strides to the microphone and grabs it like it owes her money.

“Somebody told me there was a Big Gay Prom here tonight!” she shouts, and the entire crowd, the big, sweaty room full of gay kids, straight kids, bi kids, trans kids, unsure kids, band geeks, theater fags, drag queens and kings, kids who, for whatever reason, feel like they don’t fit in anywhere—in other words, teenagers—roars.

“Where’s Tessa?” Miss Kaboom shouts, and Tessa, blushing so hard she’s purple, walks up to the band.

“Can I have this dance?” Miss Kaboom asks, and Tessa nods.

“Cool! All right, gay Indiana, bi Indiana, trans Indiana, straight Indiana! Are you ready to party?”

And the crowd roars again.

“This isn’t one of my songs, but I thought it was appropriate. Happy Prom night!” The guitarist starts playing this chunka-chunka-chunka riff, the rest of the band kicks in, and Miss Kaboom is singing about wanting the world to know and letting it show, and she and Tessa are dancing, and so is everybody else. Including my mom. Well, we’re the only people who live on this block, and with this
noise, there was no way she was going to sleep. At a normal Prom, I’d be horrified to see my mom on the dance floor. But here, it kind of feels okay. She looks over at me and points at Miss Kaboom with a can-you-believe-this? expression on her face. I give her a big thumbs-up, and she melts into the crowd.

When the song finishes, Tessa comes over and gives me a big hug. “This is just the best thing ever,” she says. “I never want this night to end!”

Neither do I. Tomorrow everybody here has to go back to real life, which isn’t always as welcoming and fun as an abandoned Foot Locker with a Big Gay Prom in it. Some will go back to families, communities, or high schools that don’t accept them for who they are. Some will go back to people who want them to know for sure who they are before they’re ready to make that call. Some will go back into hiding.

But I hope that even more of them will be like Tessa and get to wake up tomorrow feeling like it’s okay to be themselves. I guess for the first time since I asked Tessa to Prom, I feel kind of hopeful. At the Go Straight to Prom, the DJ will be playing Miss Kaboom’s “Shake It,” which, by the way, Miss Kaboom is playing live right in front of us while several hundred people shake it like they think they might never get to shake it again.