Because you can’t lie to your stepmother over and over again, break into a hospital records storage room, drive all across the state with ill-gotten funds, skip town on a Greyhound without telling anyone, spend the night in a Boston train station, strike out for the coast all on your own, and face zero consequences, I am indeed grounded for quite a while. School is allowed, as are trips to a family therapist with Dad and Lindy, and, shockingly, visits with Jessa once her own punishment is lifted. But aside from seeing the ex–Sugarbrook Sandpipers as they filter in and out of the Prices’ home, my first brush with the public comes over three months later. Prom night.
The theme turns out to be “A Night Among the Stars.” Except the prom committee must’ve reached a stalemate when trying to decide which stars we’d be spending the night among. Exhibit A: when we pull up to Crystal Peak, a big glass banquet hall that’s the second-nicest in Sugarbrook, cardboard cutouts of paparazzi are propped outside the entrance, crowded around the faux-crystal columns, hunched behind cardboard cameras. Meanwhile, gold and silver stars dangle from the ceiling of the portico overhead.
“This”—Chad twists around in the driver’s seat of his mom’s Solstice—“is the classiest goddamn soiree I’ve ever seen. You think they’ll serve Grey Poupon?”
“I bet that joke would be funny if we were old and uncool.” Jessa stands in the backseat beside me, sliding gracefully over the side without using the door, floor-length dress and all. A block back, she asked Chad to pull over and put the convertible top down for our big entrance, than coast fifteen miles per hour the rest of the way so we’d arrive unruffled. I follow through the actual door and join her, my low heels clomping on the pavement.
Chad flips his sunglasses up onto his head to look at us. “You girls are heartbreakers,” he says, sweetly and sincerely.
I blush; old habit. Jessa is beautiful, right at home among the paper paparazzi. Her plum-purple dress has a deep neckline, with a drop waist that hugs her body all the way down till just above her knees, where it flares gently out and pools around her pale gold pumps. I don’t know how she can dance in it, but as Jessa demonstrated to the seizing beats of Nicki Minaj in her bedroom, dance she can. A knotted gold chain glitters below her collarbone. Her red-gold hair, parted deep to the side, floats in finger waves over her shoulders.
I’m wearing my Suzanne’s Dress for Less purchase, wine red, with its full knee-length skirt swinging. Fabulous Aunt Annette, enlisted as our stylist for the evening, gave me a coiled updo pinned into a side bun, a dark red lip, and a light smoky eye. And because we didn’t know the etiquette for corsages versus boutonnieres when your prom date is in fact your best friend, we’re both wearing matching corsages with white roses.
“Can you pick us up at midnight? At Mackenzie Winn’s?” Jessa asks her brother. Mackenzie’s throwing a post-prom bonfire, to which the elite of mock trial—and probably half the class—have been invited.
“Anything for you two.” Chad winks and flips his glasses down. They’re mostly unnecessary now that the sun is setting, but he’s still handsome and blond and almost as perfect as ever.
“Nerd!” Jessa shouts affectionately as he drives off through an obstacle course of sparkling and tuxedoed seniors. Chad’s our extra-generous chauffer tonight. Maybe because he’s grateful we never implicated him in our schemes. Maybe because he felt guilty/thankful/confused (or disappointed?) when I relieved him of his prom duties. Maybe because we are heartbreakers. I could spend hours unpacking Chadwick Price’s motives, but that’s another habit I’m trying to kick. It’s getting easier. Like, Omar Wolcott asked me to come out with him to the Friendly Toast once I was ungrounded and released back into the wild, and when I breezily informed Chad, I did not pause to dissect the arc of his eyebrow or analyze the downward curve of his full mouth, millimeter by millimeter. And when he and Pari split awkwardly apart after two months of winky faces, I didn’t even gloat.
Progress! Personal growth!
Beyond the big glass double doors of Crystal Peak, inside the big glass foyer, an actual photographer in a white tux starts to take our picture. “Wait!” Jessa says. Looking deeply bored, he lowers his camera while Jessa turns to me, patting her hair smooth with one palm. “How do I look?”
I give her the compliment I think will mean the most to her. “You look just like Taylor Swift.”
“Seriously?” She beams.
“What about me?”
“Perfect. You’re so elegant! Like a sexy Asian Kate Middleton!”