All I heard was music as I entered the room; a heavy base filled the room and made the floor jump. Girls dressed in long, lowcut satiny dresses and boys looked uncomfortable in their borrowed, oversized suits. Streamers danced in the wind from the open doors on the far wall, and fairy lights twinkled in the dim room. Cheap, metallic balloon bounced between the dancers on the floor. The dancers swarmed the DJ area and jumped over each other in some sort of teenage mating ritual.
I didn’t want to be there, but prom was right of passage. Or so I had been told. She had dragged me there. I didn’t understand why, it wasn’t my scene. I didn’t like loud noises, bright lights, or other people standing to close to me. Prom was all these things.
I didn’t mean to kill her. It just sort have happened. One minute she was standing there, head held high in her satin red dress and hair up in a tight ponytail; and the next she was on the ground. Her beautifully bright eyes wide open, mouth ajar and blood seeping from the long gash on her perfect forehead.
I hadn’t wanted to kill her. She was my angel. My perfect little rose in the world of thorns. But she made me do it. She pushed and pushed and pushed. There was no other alternative. It was her or me; and it wasn’t going to be me.
It took longer than I expected. It all happens so quickly in the movies. The people on screen don’t make sounds or sputter for breath like she did. I didn’t want it to be like that.
She made me go that night. She took me to get an outfit and picked me up at my house; forced me to pose for photos while our mothers smiled happily at us. I was uncomfortable in my clothes and picked at my hair all night. I didn’t like things in my hair, but she sat me down and put something sticky in it to make it sit ‘just right’.
She was in the bathroom when I found her. I could still hear the music through the thick walls. She was standing in front of the mirror reapplying her crimson lipstick. She was always beautiful; but tonight was different. She shone in the light of the dance. Sparkled while all other fizzled.
“What’re you doing here?” she asked me when I entered.
I stared at her as she looked at herself. I could look at her for hours. “I needed a break from the noise,” I told her.
“In here?” she questioned. Looking around at the high school bathroom. Writing scattered the walls and the smell of pot wafted in from the open vents high in the wall that lead to the dumpsters behind the school where the ‘cool guys’ hung out.
“Thought I would pee too,” I shrugged.
Scoffing, she turned back to the mirror and continued her skilled application of the smooth lipstick. “Danny wants to take me home tonight, I hope that’s cool if you find your own way home. I know we planned to spend the night but gosh he’s just so cute!”
She spun to me and that was when it happened.
Her body looks funny on the floor. Her dress spilling around her and her lipstick smeared down her face and over the vanity from where I shoved her face. I happened so quick and still I shake with anger. She was going to leave me. For a BOY no less. For years we had spent every moment together; we even went to prom together. Solidarity and all that. And she was going to throw it all away from HIM! I couldn’t let her do that to me.
Stepping over her body, treading lightly in the heels she forced me in, I exited the room. The music was louder in the hall. It pounded in my head. Not looking back into the girl’s bathroom, I left the school.
They never found out it was me. They never questioned my prints on her body or the missing lipstick I took from her floor as I left as a memory of her.