The Prom Goer's Interstellar Excursion Read online

  “Enough with the dead coyotes,” I said, or maybe yelled. My motor functions were scrambled. The emergency lights were on in my head, and there was no engineer coming to save the day.

  “There does seem to be a lot of roadkill around,” said Sophie. “You’re turning pale. Maybe we should pull over….”

  “Just feeling a little light-headed,” I said. “One question—if you had the academic credentials to get into Princeton, how come you’re not in any of my classes?”

  “If you study the AP review books hard enough, you don’t need the classes, so I only took the tests.”

  “You only took the tests?”

  “I got a bunch of fives. Look, I don’t want to talk about this. I know how it probably soun—”

  “What about the SAT?”

  “When I was fifteen, I scored high enough on it that I never had to take it again. We really don’t have to discuss—”

  My tongue tasted like antifreeze. My body was trying to poison me from the inside out.

  “What about extracurricular activities?”

  Sophie looked at me and sighed. I could tell that I was making her feel awkward, but I had no conscious control over my tongue, and the questions kept coming. It’s rare enough that Princeton accepts one student from a public school. But two—it almost never happens. I could see the letters of my name plummeting off the wait list onto the admission office floor, then being swept away by an Ivy League janitor, who in my mind was wearing tweed.

  “For the past year, I’ve been doing these long-distance mud runs two weekends a month with the guy I was seeing, which I guess the Princeton admission office thought was interesting,” she said. “I actually won a bunch of them. I don’t think there’s anything particularly unique about it. I just like to run. They said maybe I could be on the track team, but I’m not sure how much of a team kind of person I am. That’s why I liked the mud runs. I’m pretty good at dealing with obstacles one on one.”

  Sophie frowned.

  “But I guess the prom and the mud runs won’t be happening anymore,” she said. “I don’t want to have to see my ex every time I go to a race. I hadn’t even thought about that part of things.”

  Abruptly, the engine of my truck began rattling, which jolted me out of my thoughts. I was surprised the vehicle had made it as far as it had—we had almost reached our destination and the ride had actually been smooth, like the truck was holding out as long as it could to give me a chance to talk to Sophie. This was the first time my vehicle was transporting a living, breathing girl in its cabin. It must have been as excited as I was at the beginning of the journey, and as disappointed as I was now.

  “What’s that sound?” said Sophie.

  “Just the engine,” I said. “Hold on.”

  My truck stalled and rolled onto the shoulder. For as far as I could see in either direction, there were no cars on the road. A tumbleweed smacked into my door, rolled around my front grille, and blew away across the empty landscape.

  “Is this…bad?” said Sophie, staring at me. “Because it seems bad.”

  Her concern was understandable. To someone who didn’t understand my truck, I could see how the situation would seem bleak—smoldering temperatures outside, miles from civilization, dead coyotes all around us, their bones bleaching in the sun.

  “The truck stalls all the time,” I said. “We’ll be back on the road in ten seconds.”

  “So this isn’t a breakdown?”

  “Nah, this is just the truck taking a breather. Watch.”

  I rubbed the bottom of the steering wheel three times and whispered to my truck: “I love you.”

  I turned the key, and the engine started.

  “That’s how you get the truck to go? You stroke the wheel and whisper that you love it?”

  “Sometimes it gets insecure and needs to know that it’s appreciated.”

  “HA…hehhhhh…”

  Hearing her laugh again, I decided this was the moment to be a good sport, which is what I should have done from the beginning.

  “In all seriousness, that’s great about Princeton,” I said. “I’m jealous and I’m concerned it gives me less of a chance of getting in, but it’s a huge achievement, especially being from this area.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll get off the wait list.”

  We passed a sign: ROSWELL—7 MILES.

  “Though I have to say, if you’re smart enough to get into Princeton, I can’t believe you couldn’t find a mechanic in Gordo. You probably could get whatever you need done at Jiffy Lube. This is an insane journey.”

  “I have a confession,” she said.

  “Confess.”

  “I don’t have a mechanic in Roswell. I wanted to drive around to clear my head.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Is your bike even broken?”

  “Yes, it’s broken, so this isn’t such a huge lie. I’m sure we will find a mechanic in Roswell, at which point I’ll technically have a mechanic in Roswell. But I needed to check you out. Prom is in one week. I have no date, and I need one.”

  My body tensed.

  “Bennett, let’s try this again. Prom is in one week. I have no date. And I need one. I don’t have any other options here, except for you. For all intents and purposes—and, looking at the landscape where we are, maybe even for real—you are the last man on earth.”

  There was a difference between suddenly having an opportunity to ask Sophie to prom and actually doing it. I wanted to go to prom with Sophie—every guy in high school wanted to go to prom with her, to go anywhere with her—and I’ve loved her forever, but I had never considered the logistics of having to ask her. I had barely ever made eye contact with a girl before that day, let alone asked one out to a social engagement.

  Sophie was staring at me, annoyed. The few muscles I have in my underdeveloped body were involuntarily seizing up with fear.

  “Bennett,” she said. “You’re literally the last guy in school without a date. I’ve made calls to see if there was anybody else. I considered hiring a male escort, but all the good ones are in Santa Fe. You need to ask me if you want to go.”

  “What if you say no?”

  “I won’t say no.”

  “How do you know you won’t say no?”

  “It’s my brain, it’s my mouth. I would know if I was going to say no. Bennett. Road.”

  I was steering the truck into the oncoming lane. Never had I been so distracted.

  “Fine,” I said, steeling myself. “Sophie. Will you go to prrrrrrr…prooooooooo…with me?”

  “You said prrrr and you said prooo but you didn’t say prom.”

  “Prrrr…ooooooooo…mmmmmm.”

  Sophie puckered her mouth skeptically. I could feel her looking me over, up and down.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “How do you clean up?”

  “You told me you wouldn’t say no.”

  “I didn’t say no. I said, ‘How do you clean up?’ I want to make sure you look good in a suit. Those prom pictures are arguably more important than the dance.”

  I thought about this.

  “I’ve never had to clean up before,” I said. “I wore a suit to my grandfather’s funeral, but I was five, so I don’t remember making any definitive style choices. I think I wanted to wear a top hat at the time, but I wouldn’t do that for this particular occasion.”

  “I could help find you something to wear, but it has to be good. I spent four hundred dollars on my dress. If you’re going to rent a suit, it can’t look cheap.”

  “You spent four hundred dollars on a dress? What does it look like?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “I will?”

  “Yeah, you will.”

  “So that’s a yes, then.”

  “Bennett, yes, I’ll go to prom with you. You’re not great with subtext, are you?”

  And suddenly there were no more dead coyotes on the road. I was goi
ng to prom with Sophie Gilkey. I wasn’t sure whom the Gods of Dating were messing with more—me or Sophie. Someday she would without a doubt look back on going with me as a hastily made rebound decision, but right now—in my truck—she was smiling.

  I couldn’t tell if the grin was because she was happy to go with me or because she was simply relieved to be attending, but whatever it was, I’d take it.

  “You realize you’re going ninety-six miles per hour, right?” she said.

  I looked down at the speedometer—she was right. My car had never gone above fifty before. I took my foot off the gas and eased on the brake. I could smell burning metal. Prom. Sophie Gilkey. The impossible had happened.

  ROSWELL—3 MILES.

  —

  It took us thirty minutes of driving through the flat, repetitive neighborhoods of Roswell—a grid of one-story houses and straw-colored lawns—until we found a mechanic who said he could fix Sophie’s motorcycle in time for us to make the return trip to Gordo that evening.

  The mechanic was a dirty, scrawny man named Dusty who was drinking a Rolling Rock when we found him. He had greasy overalls on and a golf-ball-sized Adam’s apple that leaped around as he spoke.

  “If you give me two hours, I can fix the bike,” he said.

  “Is there any way you could get it done faster?” said Sophie.

  “You’re lucky I’m doing it for you at all,” said Dusty. “I was about to close up shop and hit the pipe. Yeah, the crack pipe, you don’t have to ask. We’ve all got our vices.”

  “Two hours will be fine,” I said.

  “Is there somewhere we can go in the meantime?” said Sophie.

  “Coffee shops and the like close down early,” said Dusty. “Lotsa people hang out in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven, but I’m not allowed to go there anymore, personally. Got a little rowdy too many times, and they got my picture on the wall behind the counter. Decent photograph, though, my hair looks good. If I was your age, I’d head out into the desert and suck down a few beers. Lotsa stars out there to look at.”

  “I’ve never drunk before,” I said under my breath to Sophie.

  “You’ve never drunk before?” said Sophie. “How did you avoid it at parties?”

  “I was never invited to parties, so pretty easily.”

  “Never drank?” said Dusty. “Man, I started boozin’ when I was six months old. Mama used to put Four Roses in my sippy cup to get me to go to sleep. Easiest way to drink, if you ask me, sippy cup.”

  My reason for abstaining from alcohol throughout high school had been logical. I had thought that even recreational drinking would screw up my academic career, and therefore my chances of getting out of Gordo.

  But now that high school was a couple of weeks from being truly over and I hadn’t gotten into the college I’d been working toward my entire life, I wondered, what had been the point of not partying? What had it earned me? If I didn’t find a way off the wait list, next year I’d probably be living in an abandoned building with vagrants and prostitutes and runaway convicts anyway. Might as well get a head start on it now.

  “Where could we get beer?” said Sophie.

  “You can buy it from me if you want,” said Dusty, opening up a small refrigerator that had shelves packed with bottles of Rolling Rock. “Ten dollars a bottle.”

  “Ten dollars a bottle?”

  “Where else are you going to get it, bein’ in high school and stranded out here like you are?”

  “I have five dollars,” said Sophie, pulling a crumpled bill from her pocket. “What do you have?”

  I checked my wallet. “Ten.”

  Dusty grabbed the money.

  “Fifteen dollars means one and a half beers coming right up,” he said, taking a bottle out of the fridge and handing it to Sophie.

  “Where’s the half?” I said.

  Dusty shoved the bottle he had been drinking from into my hand.

  “There’s your half,” he said. “But I suggest you wipe off the top. I’ve been battling a nasty case of tooth funk. My dentist doesn’t even know what it is—he looked at it under a microscope and the closest thing he could think of was the Ebola virus, but he said that normally kills you in a few days, and I’ve been living with this for years. So I figure I’m good. Now be careful out there in the desert. Lotsa biting snakes and angry animals and stuff that’s even weirder than that.”

  “Like what?”

  Dusty smiled, showing his fungus-colored gums. “Stuff that ain’t from here,” he said.

  —

  What happened over the next hour or so is a strange combination of that first, intoxicating half beer of my life and deep emotional trauma.

  Here’s what took place. Sophie and I walked into the desert, drinking our beers, making sure to keep sight of the lights of Roswell on the horizon so we didn’t get lost.

  We got involved in a heavy discussion about whether a rhinoceros or a small dinosaur would win in a cage fight. I picked small dinosaur. She said rhinoceros, which I thought was ridiculous because I figured the rhino would be at a natural disadvantage since it had to be on all fours, while the dinosaur could use its sharp claws to strike down on the rhino. Sophie pointed out that I hadn’t specified what kind of dino I was picturing, and that when I said small dinosaur, she pictured a single small raptor. Thinking about it that way, I agreed that a rhino would probably have the upper hand. Armored hide, heavy body mass. Made sense. Sophie won that argument.

  We finished our one and a half beers and placed the bottles at the base of a twisting cholla cactus. Initially I felt bad about littering, but then I saw a case of empties lying on the other side of the cactus, which made me feel better. This was clearly a party cactus, accustomed to alcoholic beverages.

  The combination of walking and drinking gave us headaches at about the same time. We felt dizzy, so we looked for somewhere to lie down. I wasn’t expecting Sophie to be as lightweight a drinker as I was, but she said she had never been much of a wild woman, despite her motorcycle and her appealing I-hate-high-school image. She’d had a few beers at random parties, and that was it. It was hard to run great distances through mud with a hangover, she explained.

  We walked until we found a flat rock that was big enough for us to rest on, and that was how we ended up on our backs, side by side, staring up at the stars, waiting for our mutual nausea to pass.

  “How do you feel?” said Sophie.

  “Spinny,” I said. “How many stars do you see?”

  “A billion.”

  “I’m seeing two billion. Guess that means I’m having double vision.”

  “HA…hehhhhhh…”

  “I like your laugh.”

  “People think it’s weird.”

  “It sounds a little like what would happen if you shot a blimp with a rifle—this loud bang followed by a long wheeeeeeze.”

  Sophie whacked me in the chest.

  “Gagh,” I rasped, trying to catch my breath in the wake of the blow.

  “Whoa,” she said. “Sorry. That was supposed to be more of a playful hit.”

  “It’s okay,” I exhaled, seeing spots of light. “I’m thin, so I think my lungs are close to the surface. How did you learn to hit like that?”

  “Kickboxing class. I was toning my arms for prom.”

  “It’s working,” I said. “I think you’d beat both the dinosaur and the rhino together in a cage match. In ancient times, you would have been the toast of the Colosseum. Y’know, if they had dinosaurs then.”

  “Sophius Maximus of Carthage.”

  “Sophius Aurelius of the Praetorian Guard.”

  “HA…hehhhhhhh…”

  I had almost finished catching my breath when Sophie rolled over on the rock and kissed me, and it was gone again.

  The gesture was inexplicable. One moment I was recovering from a blow that had left me dazed and emasculated, and the next moment was the best of my life. I had no idea what I was doing, so I just tried to copy her lip movements and maintain co
nsciousness—it wouldn’t have looked very dashing to faint from the profundity of the moment and fall off the rock. I closed my eyes so she wouldn’t see them rolling back into my head.

  The only thing that went through my mind was that Sophie smelled like a sugar apple, which is a fruit from South America my parents had recently been bringing home from the local organic food market. They’re strange-looking things, like hard artichokes. Maybe her family had been eating them too. Looking back, I wish that wasn’t what I was thinking about during my first kiss, but I guess the brain always does what it wants.

  Then the kiss was over, and she was staring at me from one inch away.

  “What was that for?” I said.

  “To apologize for punching you. And also to see if you’re a good kisser, which is important in a prom date.”

  “Am I?”

  “You’re a natural.”

  “You know my reputation.”

  “HA…hehhhhh. Yeah, it’s all the girls talk about. I guess I’m just another in your list of conquests.”

  “Not to interrupt the mood, but can I tell you something?”

  “What?”

  “I think I’m still seeing lights from when you hit me.”

  “That’s weird. I see lights too, if you’re talking about those ones near the Big Dipper.”

  Sophie pointed at a group of dots in the sky. There were six total, spaced in two parallel sets, all of them moving together.

  “Why would you be able to see lights if you were the one who hit me?” I said.

  “That is an excellent question.”

  “Maybe the beer had some kind of drug in it.”

  “Dusty did say he enjoyed crack cocaine.”

  “Are the lights getting closer?” I said. “It seems like they’re getting closer.”

  The lights grew larger.

  “That really doesn’t look right,” said Sophie.

  “We should head back.”

  “We should absolutely head back.”

  We climbed off the rock and began hustling toward Roswell, but the town was just a speck in the distance. I looked over my shoulder, and the glowing dots were not only closer but brighter, as if the object behind us had flicked on a set of stadium spotlights. The lights warmed the back of my neck, which confirmed my growing suspicion that this was bad.