By Superlush
Part 0 (Prologue)
The doorbell rang at seven o’clock on the night of Ashley MacPherson’s senior prom. While her mother ran to the door with camera in tow, Ashley stood calmly at the top of the stairs. Waiting.
Wiser, more worldly girls—girls with diplomas and cars of their own, who wore designer clothes and held beer bottles casually, as beautiful as movie stars, eyes sparkling—had told Ashley what to expect from her senior prom. In all her years of high school, they vowed, nothing would be as magical. Not home-coming, not the Christmas dance, not senior skip day, not the day she cleaned out the banana peels from the bottom of her locker for the very last time; not even the great moment when the principal handed her her diploma and shook her hand; not even the senior kegger, which, in years past had been known to go on for days on end: crazy awesome, right? Right. But nothing would compare to senior prom, these girls claimed. Something just sort of... happened that night. Something deep down that kicked you up a notch: like getting your driver’s licence, except bigger.
Even so, Ashley hadn’t been able to avoid the suspicion that it was all just another high school ritual, even if it did feature the biggest props and would receive the most fanfare. It was just a dance, just a corsage, just a chance to play dress-up and partake in a little well deserved merriment. No magic. Not really.
That had seemed more realistic. She had even considered skipping the whole expensive event. Seth, her boyfriend, wasn’t that into it: he would have been just as happy, if not happier, just hanging out at the skate-park with her sitting alongside watching him do kickflips and nosegrinds. And that would have been fine with her too, really. Plus, her best friend Melissa was in a temporary state of guylessness, and maybe it seemed like if she couldn’t go, then Ashley shouldn’t go. Solidarity, and all that. Right? In the end, though, the sparkle in the eyes of those prophetic girls had won out and Ashley had started to talk about how it was kind of her obligation, as a graduating senior, to attend prom. Seth had just shrugged and said that if she was going, he was going. And Melissa was fine with it: she wasn’t going to slit her wrists just because Ashley went and she didn’t. Magic or no—Ashley had decided—it would be romantic. You couldn’t get dressed up without it being romantic.
She glanced down at the long black velvet dress she was wearing, sleek and sophisticated, it had a deep slit up the thigh in a style that was both sexy and very practical for dancing (the latter being how she had gotten her Mom to sign off on it: “Look Mom,” she had said, while the saleswoman at the boutique nodded in solemn agreement, “I can’t help that it’s a little revealing.” “A little?” her mother had scoffed. “But,” Ashley had continued, “do you seriously think that I’ll be able to dance in that other one? It’s so tight around the hips that I’ll totally fall flat on my ass in like, two seconds. Is that what you want? You want me to fall on my ass in front of everyone?” It had worked remarkably well).
Her brunette hair was bobbed short at the ears in the cutest cut ever known. Her mother, with some trepidation, had lent Ashley her diamond earrings and pendant, her make-up had been artfully and painstakingly applied, and she was wearing her all-time favorite perfume. Things were perfect.
“You ready, honey?” asked her mother. She was standing at the door, camera ready.
Ashley nodded.
Her mother opened the door. And there stood Seth, looking impossibly older and grave in a form-fitting black tux, his hair slicked back. He kind of looked like a penguin, but... at the same time so stately that Ashley thought he would bow, like in a movie. But he didn’t bow. He gazed up the stairs at Ashley for a long moment. Then he blinked, as if startled back to reality.
“You look... so beautiful,” he said in a voice full of sheer amazement.
“Oh sweetie,” Ashley’s mother gushed, dabbing at her eyes before quickly taking a picture.
Seth blinked again, this time from the camera flash. “Oh... um... Hi, Mrs. M.,” he said.
“You look really beautiful, too,” Ashley managed to say, nervousness showing in her voice. “Handsome, I mean. Handsome.” She descended the stairs, trying to do so in as regal a fashion as she could: slow steps, hand gliding along the railing. Each step was iffy in her high heels, though. Careful! If you slip and tumble down the stairs it will so ruin everything. It was the first time she had gone down stairs in the dress and she was a little shocked at how bare her right leg was: each time she extended it it was like being half naked or something. She ignored her mother’s arched eyebrow and just hoped Seth liked it.
He looked like he did.
“I didn’t actually think you would rent the tux,” she said, giving Seth a small smile as she reached the base of the stairs. “You were so dead-set against it.”
“Kinda had to, didn’t I?” Seth shrugged. “It’s prom.”
While her mother snapped a million or so pictures Seth pinned on Ashley’s corsage, trying very hard not touch anything off-limits; which, because of the location, was difficult. Ashley beamed through the whole thing. She felt so happy that she wanted to jump and squeal with joy.
It’s just a ritual, she told herself. Just a ritual. Don’t get so wound up. But it was harder and harder to believe that now.
Out the living room window, Ashley could see a black stretch limo filled with her friends waiting at the end of the driveway.
Seth took her arm.
He said it again: “You look so beautiful,” in an I-can’t-believe-my-eyes kind of voice that made her cheeks flush.
“One more picture! You two are adorable.” Her mom pressed them together, then held up a hand. “Oh! Wait. Here, hold this, honey.”
Reaching around the corner, her mother grabbed something and then handed it to Ashley. Ashley gaped at it. It was her stuffed pony from when she was little girl, Sparkles (though every last sparkle had been worn off years ago).
What had once been fuzzy, pink and soft was now smooth and faded to a dim cream color. She had loved this stuff animal. Carried it everywhere. Slept with it, up until middle school. And she had never been able to throw it away or donate it: it just stayed safe and secure in her trunk of toys and games. Now that it was being forced into her hands on the night of prom, she found it oddly repulsive: like a tumor that had been cut from her and put in a jar.
“Oh my gawd! Mom! What?” she cried scornfully, pushing it away, “Please no. I’m not a little girl anymore.”
Seth chuckled. “Cute pony, babe.”
Ashley’s face reddened with embarrassment.
“I know you’re not a little girl anymore, honey, that’s the whole idea,” her mom said sweetly. “It’s symbolic. You’re all grown up now.”
Ashley smiled gamely, keeping one arm firmly around Seth she took Sparkles with her free hand. Mom’s right. Symbolism is important. “Fine,” she grumbled. “Take your picture quick, Mom.” She squeezed Sparkles softly, unable to resist. “I haven’t even, like, seen this in years,” she muttered apologetically to Seth, who just smiled.
The camera flashed.
“There! See, honey? Painless.”
Ashley handed Sparkles back to her mom. “Yeah right. Painless.” She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Seth, let’s go.”
“Wait.” Her mom gave her a slightly sour look. “Did your father call? He said it would. He didn’t forget did he?”
Ashley sighed. “No, Mom, he didn’t forget. He called, like, an hour ago. You were in the basement looking for mircoSD cards for the camera.” Reminded, she beamed at Seth. “My dad said he’s going to get me a MacBook Pro. Not one of those little ones this time. The big one.”
“Oh yeah?” Seth said. “Wow. Those are expensive. Wish my old man had that kind of money.”
“Yeah,” Ashley nodded, “it’s going to be so cool.” Even though she knew better, she loved it when her Dad bought her things: he only did it to make up for the fact that he was so far away and because her Mom hated it when he did. But still.
“K!” she chirped brightly, “let’s go!”
As they were turning to leave, she saw the letter.
* * *
So what if the crepe paper in the Hyatt ballroom kept falling on the dancers? So what if all the balloons and streamers looked more like a little kid’s birthday party than a magical evening on the threshold of real-life itself? So what if the DJ kept kept getting requests to play Sir Mix-a-lot’s “Baby Got Back” whenever the chaperons snuck outside for a cigarette break? So what if the punch tasted terrible?
None of that mattered. It was still incredibly romantic. Magical even, like the girls had said. Especially when, after they had danced a few dances, Seth motioned for her to follow him with a gleam in his eye. They met up with a handful of other couples and slipped out to the back of the parking lot and smoked a bowl in Seth’s sneak pipe. After each of them got a few solid hits of rich, creamy smoke, just enough to get a good stony feeling going, everyone except Ashley and Seth headed back inside. They lingered awhile behind a biggish truck and made out under the stars with their blood pounding in their veins, before striding resolutely back into the dance with big grins on their faces.
Now, as they danced and joked with their friends—surrounded by whooping and laughing, happy hugs and celebratory high fives, last minute yearbook signings and camera phone picture-taking, all imbued with the giddy seriousness of knowing that this was it, that they were all graduating—Ashley couldn’t help but feel like a bit of a fool for having doubted the pure romantic magical craziness of prom. Laughing happily and shouting and jumping and exchanging cheek kisses, she clutched her friends and puckered her lips for flashing cameras, giggling and revelling in the finality of it all. Then, as a slow song started, Seth steered her out onto the dance-floor and they swayed in a slow embrace.
Ashley was wonderfully stoned. She was in the moment. Everything felt right.
Everything except for one... tiny... little... nagging... detail... that chafed against the back of her mind like a clinking belt buckle in the dryer.
The letter. The stupid letter.
She laid her head on Seth’s shoulder as they swayed to the meandering rhythm of the song. She tried to concentrate on the feel of his arms around her; tried very hard not to think about the letter that was in her purse, threatening to ruin her entire evening. But try as she might she couldn’t dislodge the knowledge of its existence.
If only she hadn’t seen it as she and Seth were walking out the door, she could be dancing in blissful ignorance, able to enjoy her high and have fun. But no, she had noticed the envelope addressed to her, sitting on the top of the pile of mail on the hall table, just as they were about to leave. She had seen the return address. And after considering whether to faint or not, she’d grabbed it and stuffed it in her purse while Seth was busy promising her mom that he would behave himself and have her home before midnight.
Swaying along with Seth, amid the sea of graduates, trying to figure out what she should do about the letter, Ashley was surprised (but not very) when she felt hands, Seth’s hands, sliding, as innocent as if he were smoothing a wrinkle out of her dress, down her hips to brush along the small of her back and then, not stopping, continuing down and out along the arching roundness of her butt. She smiled into his shoulder, but forced herself to keep thinking about the letter.
It was from the last of the colleges she had applied to. That was all. It could be an acceptance letter. Of course, it could also be a rejection letter, like the others. She had applied to six schools in all. Her GPA had been pretty good. She even had extra-curriculars. She had had a good chance at all of them. She knew she had. But, as her mom had said, you never could be sure about these things. And now this letter was her last shot.
She wished she could know right now what it said. But at the same time she almost wished she didn’t have to know. Why does this have to be so stressful?
“What is it?” Seth whispered in her ear, sending a shiver down her spine. Or maybe the shiver was caused by his hands: by this time they were gently cupping her ass, which felt good, even though she knew she should shoo him away from there. Everyone could see. She gripped his broad shoulders tightly but kept her head on his shoulder.
“Did I say something?” she asked, loudly enough to be heard over the wailing lead singer, but without lifting her head.
“You sighed.”
“Oh.” She wondered what to say to him. The whole college thing was a can of worms that she would rather not open up right now. He had already made it abundantly clear that he wasn’t going to college. He would be staying right here: continuing to work at his dad’s hardware store, partying on the weekends, being boring—at least that’s how Ashley saw it. They had already argued about this last week and since then there had been a slightly strained truce between them on the issue. They had both sort of agreed to disagree for the time being, but now...
Just then Mrs. Forrest’s shrill voice rang out. “Mr. Seth Fielding! Hands on her waist, please!” Mrs. Forrest was one of the chaperones. She was standing at the edge of the dance-floor, watching out for hanky-panky like a hawk watching for mice.
He complied with the order and reluctantly placed his hands on her hips.
She giggled.
“Way to go Fielding,” whispered Dan Countryman, dancing past.
“Seriously, babe, is something wrong?”
“Well, I... I was...” She pulled back slightly to gaze up at him.
For a moment she was unable to think past the heaviness of her eyelids. There was a little tingle all over her body and a thickness in her head, like her brain was wearing a mitten. That was good pot we smoked. Very good. It felt good, but she wished she could clear her head a little so she could get a grip on what to do. Obviously she had to open the letter and read it. There was no two ways about that. But as soon as she read it, she would have a decision to make.
“Pssst, dude!” came an insistent whisper.
The two of them looked over and found Jude Hogan dancing next to them. Jude was one of Seth’s skater friends. He was leaning over conspiratorially, motioning them closer. His dance-partner, a raven haired girl who Ashley recognized as Jill Burrows (she had sat across from Ashley in CWP class), wiggled her fingers in greeting. Ashley waved back.
“Dude, Jill and I are gonna slip out back and roll a blunt in a minute,” whispered Jude, “you guys wanna roll with us?”
Ashley glanced up at Seth. She trembled inside a little, half in excitement, half in trepidation. Her heavy eyelids, tingling body, and mitten-head all told her that without a shadow of a doubt if she smoked more pot now—a blunt no less!—then she would be faded. F-A-D-E-D. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. It would be fun, sure. But... they could get caught. And she was already pretty high: wasn’t that good enough?
Of course it is.
“What do you think, Ash?” Seth prompted her. “Shall we?”
“Yah, dude...” Jill said, her voice low and craggy, like she had been smoking all day. It was then that Ashley noticed how incredibly baked Jill was. She probably had been smoking all day. “...you shou’ to’lly... We have Peach Optimo.”
“A Peach Optimo,” Jude added, to clarify. “She means we have a Peach Optimo.”
Jill giggled stupidly, eyes squinting shut.
Ashley blinked slowly. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I’m already pretty stoned.”
“Oh, come on,” said Jude. “Be a trooper, dude.”
Seth shrugged. “We’ll get back to you, man.”
“Gawd, I can’t even talk, righ’ now. Gawd.” Ashley heard Jill giggle to Jude as the two of them danced off into the crowd. Jude’s reply was just audible over the music: “Wait ‘til we smoke that blunt, girl. You’ll be speaking in tongues.” Ashley watched them from under her low lids. Jill was giggling hard, head thrown back.
“Jesus, Jill Burrows is a complete space-cookie,” laughed Seth. “Did you hear her?”
“Yeah,” Ashley murmured distractedly. Raven-haired space-cookies were the least of her concerns. She had to read the letter. She had to get it over with. She would need some place private to do it in though, and that would be a tall order. Where could...? Then it struck her.
She let Seth dance her over to the edge of the dance-floor then she stepped out of his embrace.
“I need to go pee,” she said.
“I’ll wait with the other abandoned males,” Seth said with a small laugh, nodding toward the group of guys waiting patiently near the ladies’ room.
“Don’t let her go, dude,” a guy in a red cummerbund warned as they approached. “She’ll never come back. It’s like the Bermuda Triangle in there. I’ve been out here ten minutes, swear to God.”
The rest room was packed with girls adjusting straps, bemoaning runs, retouching blush, respraying hair.
“Please, Ashley, save me,” cried Mindy Burke, who had hardly spoke to Ashley all year, as she grabbed her by the shoulders. “Please tell me you have some deodorant in your purse.”
A little shocked, Ashley held up her tiny beaded black purse as evidence. “Does this look like it could hold anything?” she asked.
“Perfume?” Mindy pleaded. “I’ll take anything. I can’t believe I’ve been planning for this prom for, like, decades, and I forget to put on deodorant. I am such an idiot. Anyone have any perfume? Hair spray even?”
“Please Mindy, tell me you’re not going to use hair spray on your pits,” someone groaned.
The girls laughed.
Leaving Mindy looking like she was about to cry Ashley managed to slip into an empty stall. She sat on the toilet and sighed. She didn’t really have to pee. She had to know. She just had to. She pulled the letter out of her purse and looked at it. This was it.
She paused, thinking about the opportunities that would open up for her if she had been accepted. College! Where things really happened. You want to talk about magic? College is where the magic happens.
She sat there on the toilet, gripping the letter tightly, staring, slightly heavy-lidded, at the closed stall-door.
What would she do if it was another rejection? Hell, what would she do if she was accepted? Seth would be staying here.
Like the sun peeking over the edge of hill at dawn, it occurred to her slowly, and it had probably occurred to her before but only half-consciously, that in college, if she really wanted to, she could probably get any guy she wanted. Seth was nice, but... well... that had been what she needed to help her get through senior year: a sweetheart to hold her hand while she toiled in the trenches. And now... maybe it was time to move on. Nothing personal. It was just... The stories about college that those prophetic older girls had told: about crazy parties and skinny dipping and amazing moments shared with unbelievably cute boys on beaches and in dorm rooms; the fiery intensities of passion; the lackadaisical boredom that was crisp with possibilities and the thrill of freedom—stories that were better than the movies, better than Luguna Beach. None of those stories would come true for Ashley if she had a boyfriend in tow. A long-distance one at that. It would be a sad thing to break up with Seth, but sadness was a part of life, right?
Yep—she realized, unable to believe that she had put it off this long—Seth would definitely have to go if she was accepted to college. Again, it wasn’t personal it was just... Well, it was the principle of the thing.
Out with the old, in with the new.
“It’s symbolic. You’re all grown up now.”
Exactly. Now she understood what those older girls had meant about prom: the magic was in leaving behind all your childish silliness forever, not literally, but symbolically. And college was like that, only a hundred times bigger.
There were only two options, she decided: If the letter in her hand contained another rejection, she would do like her mother had suggested and get a job somewhere. Anywhere. For the ‘experience’. And she would stay with Seth, at least for the time being, and she would make the best of it. But, if she was accepted, she would dump Seth ASAP and start fresh.
College had to be a brand-new, magical, grown-up chapter of her life.
With a quick intake of breath she tore open the envelope and carefully unfolded the letter.
Dear Miss Ashley Marie MacPherson,
We are happy to inform you that...
Ashley blinked. Then she lept up and let loose a squeal of joy.
College, here I come!
To be continued...
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