Free The Anti-Prom by Abby McDonald

home, too close to everyone I wanted to leave behind.
    It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
    The dorms at Williams are gray stone, set back from the quad and surrounded by trees and leafy pathways, like something from another time. I loved it right away. Sure, we couldn’t afford the trip, but online I saw students strolling happily in the sun, broadening their minds with classes and debate, thousands of miles away from East Midlands and all the bullshit that happens in this town. It was a long shot, even the guidance counselor warned me, but I drilled SAT prep during the quiet shifts at work and polished my essays until they were clearly kick-ass, and even drove out to the city to meet alumni for coffee and talk about how college was a fresh start for me, and that my past mistakes had made me learn and grow as a person. I believed it, too, rereading that precious acceptance letter every night like it was my ticket out, to something better.
    And then my failure of a father decides to break the only promise he ever made to me and suddenly it’s good-bye Williams, farewell freedom. Now I’m looking at nothing but four more years commuting to this dump every day from home, working nights and weekends just to scrape tuition, like I was never worth anything more. Like I never will be.
    I shake off the flash of anger and disappointment. There’s no time for it now — all that will come soon enough.
    “Look.” Meg points to a scribbled sign taped by the elevator with a bunch of SAFE SEX stickers. PARTY — 3 RD FLOOR!!!! “Jason’s in room 318,” she adds, clutching the downloaded details.
    “See?” Bliss beams. A group of girls hustles past, gossiping about last night’s episode of
5 th Avenue,
but even though they hold the elevator for us, Bliss takes off in the other direction, toward the stairs.
    “More of your sorority girls?” I smirk. She doesn’t reply, pushing the door open and heading downstairs toward the basement.
    Stairs? As the late, great Kirsty MacColl would say: not in these shoes. I stand firm. “I get that you want to stay out of their way, but hiding out down there . . . That’s kind of extreme, don’t you think?” Watching her freak out in the library was fun, sure, but avoiding every shiny-haired rich girl in this college might take us a while.
    Bliss shakes her head. “Didn’t you notice what they were wearing?”
    I blink. “Uh, basic college party ho attire?”
    “It’s a pajama party.” Bliss looks at me. “Duh! And you were the one who said we needed to get out of these dresses. Ergo . . .” She points at the sign on the wall pointing down.
    LAUNDRY.
    Oh.
    “Ergo?” I follow her down the concrete stairwell. I don’t check to see if Meg is coming, too — she always does.
    “Therefore,” Bliss shoots back. “What, you think just because I have a manicure, I have to be brain-dead too?”
    “You’d be the only one of your clique who isn’t,” I reply sweetly, pushing past her into the laundry room.
    Bliss — showing her usual entitlement and lack of respect for other people’s property — rummages in the dryers for clean laundry, outfitting us in an array of shorty shorts and tank tops before we hit the party. It’s easy to find the right floor: music is pounding through the walls and an, ahem, amorous couple has spilled out into the stairwell, making out against the door in an enthusiastic tangle of hands and tongue.
    “Move it,” I bark. They shift out of our way, not missing a beat as they slam back against the wall instead, his hands gripping her ass tightly and both of them emitting a symphony of moans and grunts.
    Meg is wide-eyed as we pass, and her expression doesn’t change once we emerge into the main party. It’s the usual college scene, the hallways packed with kids clutching beers and plastic cups — dancing, chatting, hurling themselves around with inflatable pool toys — but from the look on her face, we could have wandered into the middle