Free More Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern Page B

retard? My ex-boyfriend is in there with some other girl,” she said, starting to cry. “I need to sit down or I’m gonna puke,” she added.
    We wobbled across the dirty red carpet through the hotel lobby, decorated with tacky brass lamps, green polyester chairs, and a few women I assumed were prostitutes. As we walked past them, one raised her hand to her nostril, covered it with her thumb, and blew a snot rocket onto the ground by her feet.
    We pushed through two double doors at the far end of the lobby and entered a huge dark ballroom that contained three hundred or so of our classmates swaying to the chorus of “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men. Our class had voted for a Rastafarian prom theme, so the room was strewn with pictures of Bob Marley and stickers that said “One Love,” most of which had been defaced so that “one” was crossed out and “Butt” was written in its place.
    Vanessa and I sat on the opposite side of the room from the dance floor, near a spread of stale chips and crackers, curdled dips, and cheese cubes from Safeway. That was where we remained for the rest of the night, mostly in silence, watching our classmates laughing, dancing, and chatting it up while Puff Daddy’s “I’ll Be Missing You” and “Return of the Mack” played on continuous loop. The scowl on Vanessa’s face made sure none of my friends came near us, which, I’m pretty sure, was her goal. Nicole passed us a few times on the way to the bathroom, and though I wanted to say something to her, all I could muster was a smile. The dream of a dancing, boob-touching, bully-punching, virginity-losing prom was now dead, and there was no other way to spin it. I was disappointed and felt stupid for letting myself get so excited about one dumb night and for thinking it might be any different than the rest of high school. I slumped down in my chair and shoved a handful of nacho cheese Doritos into my mouth.
    By the time the DJ announced the next song would be the last, most people had been sweating through their tuxedos and dresses for hours, and the whole place smelled like a bathroom stall in a public library. As Dave Matthews’s “Crash” began to play, all my classmates grabbed their partners and made their way to the dance floor—but one look from Vanessa told me I should follow her to the nearest exit and take her home.
    “I’m drunk,” she hiccupped after a few minutes of driving in silence. “I’m sorry I called you a retard. I hope I didn’t ruin your night,” she added. When we arrived at her house, she got out of my mom’s car and walked up her steps without looking back.
    As I sat there in the car watching her front door close behind her, I took a deep breath. It was ten p.m. and my senior prom was the exact opposite of everything I’d hoped. Even in the worst-case scenarios I’d dreamt up, it had all gone wrong because I’d punched out somebody I hated and gotten dragged away by the cops. This was a total letdown.
    I couldn’t let the night end this way. I decided to turn my car around and head back toward the San Diego harbor, where the school-sanctioned, casino-themed after-party was being held at a restaurant called the Bali Hai.
    When I got there, my sophomore history teacher, Mr. Bartess, was standing at the door with a clipboard. He glanced at me, scanned the clipboard, and shook his head.
    “I have you marked as being here already. I’m sorry, no ins and outs. It says so on your ticket. We can’t have people leaving to go do cocaine or something and then coming back in here, on cocaine,” he said.
    “But I haven’t been here. And I don’t do cocaine.”
    “Listen, you might be right, but that also sounds like something someone who left the after-prom to do cocaine would say. That’s why we have no ins and outs, so I don’t have to be the judge.”
    I didn’t have the energy to keep arguing. The muffled sounds of music and laughter inside the Bali Hai drifted away as I walked along