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October 26, 2004

Sisters begone

When Leigh Anne asked me to the junior prom, Shiva could have ridden down from the skies on his white bull Nandi and speared me on a shishkebab. I wouldn't have noticed. Two reasons: I'd decided months ago that I would love no one else, but more importantly, I was only a sophomore. And this was the junior prom. Huge deal.

Okay, she hadn't asked until a week before the prom, which meant she had been holding out for someone preferable to me. I know what you're thinking -- who could be preferable to the bemulleted, trenchcoat-wearing co-editor of the literary magazine? First choice had probably been Jeffers Englehardt, Oberlin-bound piano prodigy. Had he selected another girl? Was he just too important for junior proms? Who knew? But it was his loss. I may have been second choice, but I was going to enjoy this.

It gets harder to enjoy things when you have to stop rolling them around in your brain like cat-toys, and actually face them in reality. Junior proms included. See, my dad had been jibing me about Leigh Anne ever since I'd started moping around the house and blathering to anyone who'd listen. To get him off my back I ultimately had to deny my obsession, at one point falsely comparing Leigh Anne's features to those of a certain animal. High schoolers of America, heed well these words: if your Leigh Anne has a sister who's in the same fifth-grade class as your own sister, make sure that all sisters are well out of earshot when you call the girl of your dreams "rodent-like."

Because word gets around.

And a month later, in the limo ride to the junior prom, Leigh Anne'll drop the phrase "rodent-like" into the conversation. And you'll wish you'd never been born, or your sister'd never been born, or both, but preferably your sister.

Things didn't let up when we got to the prom, either. Some tsunami-loud music pummelled my eardrums into papier-mache, triggering a yearlong anxiety that I'd been nearly deafened. And even now I'm still plagued by recurring fears that one or more of my senses might just up and leave. Is that a blind spot in my vision? Do I have trouble understanding people at parties? No reassuring audiologist can fix your brain.

Leigh Anne spent the prom talking and laughing with her girlfriends, and I mainly sat alone at a table. That's the problem with going to the junior prom a year early. All your friends are home. We did get to do the requisite John Hughes slow-dance, which confirmed my eternal love and her everlasting indifference. When things wound down we took the limo back to her place, and she drove us in her mom's hatchback, barefoot, to someone's party, where I sulked and wondered what I'd done wrong.

Oh, and Jeffers Englehardt? He was at the prom. He'd come stag and drunk. "Oh, Jeffers!" said Leigh Anne, or at least I remember her saying it, and these days, that's the same thing.

Posted by tony at October 26, 2004 12:26 AM

Comments

Posted by: kristina at October 26, 2004 09:39 AM

Posted by: sarah at October 26, 2004 10:25 AM

Posted by: Dan at October 31, 2004 03:46 PM