Free Dancing with Molly by Lena Horowitz

writing already, and honestly, the dance wasn’t great. I mean, there were a bunch of teachers and parent chaperones roaming around. The music was loud and the DJ was just okay, but when he took a break there was a live cover band that some of the musical theater kids put together. They played a really great cover of “Raspberry Beret,” and the dance floor got crowded in a hurry.
    The really fun part was seeing people who didn’t recognizeme and asked Carson who his date was. Carson got a huge kick out of this too and kept doing stuff like egging them on right in front of me. He’d be like, I know, she’s totally hot, right? And then he’d introduce me like I was a girl from a different school, only when they heard my name there was always this moment of stunned recognition that was actually sort of delicious. Kelly and Jess were running around and dancing like crazy people. Reid and Ashley slow-danced to every single song—even if it wasn’t a slow song. Carson is an incredible dancer, and he was wearing suspenders under his tux jacket. He had this hot little move where he’d swivel his hips and then flap open the front of his jacket, and you could see a flash of his suspenders, then he’d spin around and grab me again. It was sort of like magic. He even spun me out and dipped me during one song, sort of like a big ballroom move, and a couple of girls stopped and clapped for us.
    When we all piled back into the limo to go to Derrick’s party, we were all starving, so Reid tipped the driver to take us through McDonald’s drive-through—yes, in the limo—and we gorged ourselves on cheeseburgers and french fries. Well, except for Ashley. Jess and Kelly kept cracking Reid up and I was glad for that because I felt like he and Jess had finally put the ugliness from last week behind them.
    By the time we got to Derrick’s party, his house wasalready packed. Derrick had hired a couple of the sophomore linebackers to stand guard at the front door. They were under strict orders not to let anybody out to wreak havoc in the front yard, and keep things from spilling into the driveway so that the neighbors wouldn’t call the cops. His parents were out of town, so he didn’t want any trouble.
    When we walked in the front door, it was wall-to-wall people. There was a bong in the dining room and a keg in the kitchen. You could hear the music out at the pool but it wasn’t too loud. Even though it was crowded, nobody had gotten wasted yet, so it was still a pretty chill scene for the time being. Reid made a beeline for the keg and came back with beer for him, Carson, and Ashley. Carson grinned at Jess as Reid held out a beer to him and said he’d rather roll than drink. Reid got a sly look on his face, and pulled us all over to the corner and said, Okay. Let’s do it.
    At this point, Hurricane Ashley struck. She set down her beer, crossed her arms, and said, Absolutely not. Reid saw that she was pretty pissed and said, Whoa, babe. What’s wrong? Ashley just went for it. She told Reid that her idea of a good time was not watching him roll with her sister’s friends. She said that the last thing she wanted to do on her first prom night was hang out with her sister while everybody else did drugs.
    It was the way Ashley spat out the words “my sister” that really got me. She said it like they tasted bad, and it was clear that Ash was pissed that I was at this party—this whole night—in the first place. At that point I was like, screw it. The way she was treating me really got under my skin. Ashley always treats me this way: sort of a practiced tolerance, a certainty that I’m going to ruin her perfect plans and her perfect night and her perfect life.
    I was about to let her have it when Jess came to the rescue. For all of her “who gives a crap” bluster, Jess is surprisingly good in a crisis. She totally calmed things down by