Pin the corsage carefully, adjust your dress, blot your lipstick, and check your hair. Fiddle with that bow tie, wipe the sweat off your hands, tip the limo driver, and remember to smile. The music just started, the night is sparkling, and the whole world is in love. It's time to dance.
Welcome to PROM.
The prom is America's coming-of-age ritual, a complicated night when teenagers leap into a fantasy of adulthood. It can be a triumph or a disaster, an evening that creates romantic memories or traumatic flashbacks. It is a cultural touchstone, a crossroads, a test.
Ashley Hannigan has no intentions of going to her prom. She's a “normal” kid, trying to graduate on time, worried about her family, and barely coping with the demands of her boyfriend. Her Philadelphia working-class world is small, with no room for ball gowns or limos or dreams. But in true fairy tale fashion, she trips down an unexpected path. Ashley slowly uncovers her own resources and strength until - after a raucous, unpredictable prom night complete with scheming divas, butt-shaking hotties, condoms, shot glasses, and the police - she takes charge and discovers there is more to life than just getting by.
This book is for everyone who was afraid to dance, but really, really wanted to. It's a story about family strength, the power of friendship, and the saving grace of a good belly laugh. I hope you like it.
Wishing you a song in your heart and stars in your eyes.
The best way to describe the book is to give you a taste. Here's the beginning:
Text copyright © Laurie Halse Anderson, 2005
All rights reserved
1.
Once upon a time there was an eighteen-year-old girl who dragged her butt out of bed and hauled it all the way to school on a sunny day in May.
2.
That was me.
3.
Normal kids (like me) thought high school was cool for the first three days in ninth grade. Then it became a big yawn, the kind of yawn that showed the fillings in your teeth and the white stuff on your tongue you didn't scrape off with your toothbrush.
Sometimes I wondered why I bothered. Normal kids (me again), we weren't going to college, no matter what anybody said. I could read and write and add and do nails and fix hair and cook a chicken. I could defend myself and knew which streets were cool at night and which neighborhood a white girl like me should never, ever wander in.
So why keep showing up for class?
Blame my fifth grade teacher. Ms. Valencia knew she was teaching a group of normal kids. She knew our parents and our neighborhood. Couple times a week she'd go off on how we absolutely, positively had to graduate from high school, diploma and all (like the GED didn't count, which was cold) or else we were going straight to hell, with a short detour by Atlantic City to lose all our money in the slot machines. She made an impression, know what I mean?
Every kid who was in that fifth grade class with me was graduating, except for the three who were in jail, the two who kept having babies, the one who ran away, and the two crack whores.
The rest of us, we were getting by.
I was getting by.
4.
It had been a decent morning, for a Tuesday. No meltdowns at home. The perverts outside the shelter left me alone, and the Rottweiler on Seventh was chained up. A bus splashed through the puddle at the corner of Bonventura and Elk, but only my sneakers got soaked. It could have been worse. At least the sun was shining and some of my homework was done.
So I got to admit, I was in a half-decent mood that morning, dragging myself and my butt to school.
I had no clue what was coming.
5.
He was leaning against the telephone pole in front of the building, arms crossed over his chest. His black pants rode dangerous low on his hips. A dark blue hoodie was unzipped to show a faded beater stretched across tight, yummy abs. He had a silver chain around his neck. He needed to shave.
TJ Barnes smiled at me.
“Come here,” I said.
6.
Ever kiss someone so hard - no, not hard, but intense, you know, electric. Ever kiss someone so electric your skin peels off and floats away, and then his skin wraps itself around you to keep you warm and it feels like velvet, and then you look in his eyes and you can see every thought you ever had looking back at you?
TJ did not kiss that good.
But he almost did.
TJ and me met the summer before tenth grade. I was buying a cherry Slurpee. He was bleeding from a broken nose after a fight. I forget what it was about. Everybody told me he was trouble, but underneath the trouble he was sweet and fun and he knew how to make me laugh. Plus he was hot as hell.
His kiss tasted like cigarettes and toothpaste. I pulled him as close as I could with my clothes on. We hadn't touched each other in, like, four days, and that's a crime when you're eighteen and he's nineteen.
The kiss lasted a long time. When he locked his lips on mine, the whole freaking neighborhood vanished - poof! - in a cloud of bus exhaust. I heated up so fast I dried my sneakers from the inside out.
He was happy to see me, too.
When does it go on sale? Where can I buy it? What is that funky ISBNinny number?
The official release date is March 3, 2005. You should be able to find it in your local bookstore or buy it online some time in early March. Here are the publishing details: