Prom Night, June 18, 10:25 pm

Cady

Cady Sanchez adjusted her red bra strap and took a deep breath.

Next to her, a serious-looking boy with biceps the size of bread loaves shot a look at a blond girl fixing the T-strap on her sandal.

“We just took this killer stuff,” the boy whispered.

“Want some?”

The girl twisted her head and glared. “I don’t take candy from strangers,” she said, shaking her taffeta hips confidently.

Cady watched as the girl headed toward a group of guys and girls singing off-key, a capella, in a corner. Biceps quickly shoved his hands into his pockets to avert the glare of a class chaperone. Orange-carpeted floors vibrated with the heavy boom of DJ Beat’s music and the loud pound of more than a hundred feet jumping up and down and up and down.

You know you want it. You know, you know, you know you want it.

The entire school year had been leading up to this?

Most girls had been shopping for their prom dresses since the start of senior year at Chesterfield High School.

Now they wandered in and out of the massive ballroom at the Chesterfield Suites like lacy, frosted mannequins, half-dazed with heat, emotion, and the wonder of it all. Cady felt different, looked different, form the rest. Her dress was scarlet; although she didn’t wear lipstick or shoes to match, she had painted each toenail the same shocking red.

It had taken Cady all of her seventeen years to get used to most parts of herself, like the downward curve of her nose and the pattern of pale freckles on her right shoulder that looked like a miniature constellation. Her skin was so light, too light, Cady thought, considering that her father was from South America. She wished she looked more like her brother, Diego, whose skin was more olive toned. Cady’s light skin came from her mother, Sara, whose own Irish skin was so pale it was almost translucent, like a china doll. Cady didn’t want to be anything like china. She didn’t want to break.