Prom Night | Brianna "Bree" Tolliver

The back door hit the wall so hard that the dish rack rattled.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my GOD!"

Bree came flying into the kitchen with her backpack hanging off one shoulder and a pink satin dress clutched to her chest like a stolen baby. Her blue hair was a mess, her cheeks were flushed, and she was grinning so wide it looked like it hurt. She was nineteen years old, in her second try at senior year, and nobody in this house had seen her smile like that in years.

She spun in a circle, nearly knocked over a chair, and slammed the dress down on the counter next to a pile of unopened bills.

"Somebody asked me. Somebody actually asked me!"

It was a Thursday in April. The house smelled of burnt toast and stale coffee, the radio was playing something tinny from the windowsill, and the stepmother who had been left behind with the mortgage and the stepdaughter nobody else wanted was standing at the sink with her sleeves rolled up.

Bree didn't notice any of it. She was too busy flipping open her phone, a cracked silver thing with a pink rhinestone sticker on the back, and shoving the screen into the room as if it were evidence.

"Tyler Brandt. The Tyler Brandt. Do you know who that is? Varsity quarterback, homecoming court, his dad owns the car dealership off Route 9. He sent me a Facebook message. Me! He said he thought I'd look good in pink." She laughed breathlessly, pressing the phone to her chest. "Everybody's going to see. Everybody. Crystal Hollis is going to die."

She grabbed the dress again and held it up against herself, swaying in front of the dark kitchen window, watching her own reflection.

It was a thrifted prom gown, a little too big in the chest, with a ragged hem she had already hand-stitched twice. She had found it three weeks ago in a church donation bin, and she'd hidden it under her bed ever since, just in case. Just in case something like this ever happened.

Everyone's going to look at me, she thought. Finally. Everyone is finally going to look.

A shaky little breath escaped her, bright and a little frightened.

She turned and dumped her backpack on the table, spilling out a tiara, a tub of pink body glitter, a curling iron she'd stolen from a drugstore, and three different shades of eyeshadow. Her hands were trembling as she lined them up.

"I know I've been a total nightmare this year," she said quickly, not quite meeting anyone's eyes. "I know I broke the lamp, and the thing with the neighbor's cat, and the stuff I said at Christmas. I know. But I'll be good. I'll be so good. I just need help." She swallowed. "I don't know how to do my hair like the girls in magazines. I don't know how to put on eyeliner without looking like a raccoon. And nobody else is going to help me."

She stepped forward and wrapped both arms around the dress, pressing her chin into the satin, her voice dropping to something small and cracked and real.

"Please. Can you help me get ready? Just this once? It's all I've ever wanted."

The front door opened at ten minutes to midnight.

The house had been silent for hours. The oven clock glowed green in the dark kitchen. A plate of leftover pasta sat cold on the counter, covered in plastic wrap, and the porch light had been left on for no one in particular.

Bree stepped inside slowly, closing the door with great care behind her.

Her pink dress was crushed and damp at the hem. The little plastic corsage she had bought herself at the drugstore hung limp around her wrist. Her tiara sat crooked on her head, and her makeup, so carefully applied that afternoon, had melted into long black streaks down both cheeks. Her shoes were in one hand. Her feet were bare and gray with dirt.

She was smiling.

It wasn't her usual smile, the sharp, smug one she wore when she'd gotten away with something. This one was bright, wide, and perfectly still, a smile that looked as though it had been pinned in place.

"Hi," she chirped. "I'm home!"

She padded across the linoleum, set her shoes neatly by the door, and hung her little purse on the hook, aligned exactly with the others. Her movements were small and precise. She was being careful, the way you are with something that might break.

Somewhere deep in her purse, a flip phone buzzed once and went silent. Then buzzed again. And again. She did not look at it.

She had waited on the school steps for three hours. She had watched the limos arrive, one after another, and the couples in their rented tuxedos climb out laughing. She had watched the doors close, the music begin, the lights flare gold behind the gym windows. She had stood there, perfectly still, holding the box with the corsage in it, telling every person who passed that she was waiting for Tyler Brandt.

Nobody had laughed, at first.

Then a boy's voice had called her name from across the parking lot. And when she looked up, there he was, Tyler Brandt in a rented tux, surrounded by his friends, one of them holding a Flip camera up to his face.

Nobody was ever going to take me, she thought. Not for real.

It was a joke.

It was always a joke.

She had walked away before they could say it out loud. Nobody had followed her. Nobody had cared enough to follow.

Bree tilted her head at the empty kitchen, her eyes bright and shiny, her smile never wavering. She hummed a little tune under her breath, something off-key and cheerful, as she crossed to the refrigerator and opened it.

"Prom was amazing," she announced to the cold white light. "You wouldn't believe it. Everyone was so nice. We danced all night. Tyler was a total gentleman." Her voice caught for a second, and she laughed it away. "And I'm so hungry. I didn't eat a single thing. It's weird, right? I was just too excited."

She pulled out a carton of milk, put it back, then took out a block of cheese and set it on the counter. Her hands shook so badly that she nearly dropped it.

Her smile stayed. Her tears did too, running steadily down her face, carving lines through the glitter on her cheeks.

"So what's for dinner?" she asked brightly, wiping her nose on her wrist. "Anything? Or do I have to make it myself?"

The landline rang at ten past seven on Tuesday morning.

It was the school secretary, her voice thin and nasal over the crackling line, apologizing for the early hour. She was calling all the parents, she explained, because one of the students had been missing since Saturday night. Tyler Brandt. His parents were beside themselves. The police had been notified. If anyone knew anything, anything at all, they were asked to come forward.

From the living room came the sound of someone humming.

It was soft and tuneless and happy, a little melody Bree had been repeating for three days. The television was on. A bowl of cereal sat on the arm of the couch. Bree sat curled in the corner of it, wearing a faded oversized sweatshirt and the pink tiara, which she had refused to take off since Saturday, painting her toenails a violent shade of coral with her tongue between her teeth.

She had heard every word of the call.

She didn't look up. Her humming never stopped.

Bree capped the bottle, wiggled her toes, and admired her work. Then she unfolded herself from the couch, padded across the carpet in her socks, and slid into the kitchen doorway with a casual little tilt of her head.

"Wow," she said, sounding bored. "Tyler's gone? That's so dramatic."

She wandered closer, picking at a thread on her sleeve, and perched on the edge of a chair with her legs tucked up under her.

"He ran off, you know. Obviously." She rolled her eyes. "Everyone at school knows he's been hooking up with Madison Pierce since, like, Christmas. They probably went to her cousin's place in Indiana or something. He's such a coward. He didn't even have the guts to tell his own parents."

She said it breezily, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, and then she slid off the chair and edged closer, her socks whispering over the floor.

Her voice dropped.

"I wouldn't worry about it. Seriously. It's not like it has anything to do with us."

She was close now, so close her shoulder brushed the other woman's arm. She leaned her head sideways onto it, a heavy, warm little weight, and slipped one hand into the crook of an elbow as if she had every right. It was the way a clingy child might, or a girl who had never in her life been held and didn't quite know how to ask for it.

The tiara caught the morning light. A smudge of something dark and rust-colored showed under one of her fingernails, a spot she had missed in the bathroom.

She won't notice, Bree thought. She never does.

"You'd tell me if you were worried," she murmured, tilting her face up, her blue eyes wide and sweet and perfectly innocent. "You'd tell me if somebody was talking about me. Wouldn't you? You'd stay on my side."

Her fingers tightened around the arm she held, and her smile curved a little too wide.

"Because I'd be so, so sad if you didn't."

The padlock on the basement door was new.

It was a cheap brass one, still shiny, still stamped with the hardware store's logo. It hadn't been there on Sunday. It hadn't been there when the laundry was done on Monday. Now, on Wednesday night, it hung from a hasp screwed crookedly into the doorframe, and the stairs beyond it were dark.

Bree was leaning against the wall beside it, arms folded, grinning.

She had been waiting there for a while. Her hair was braided over one shoulder, still streaked with last week's pink glitter. She wore a tank top with a cartoon cupcake on the front and a pair of pajama pants with little skulls on them, and her feet were bare. The tiara was back on her head. It had not been off since Saturday.

"Don't be mad," she said. "It's a surprise."

She tilted her head and rocked on her heels, pleased with herself, a child who has hidden the Christmas presents and cannot wait for them to be found.

"I wanted it to be perfect. I've been working on it for days. I would've told you, but you'd have wrecked it. You always wreck things." There was no heat in it. She said it fondly, almost sweetly. "But you've been so sad since Dad left, and I thought... I thought I could make something nice for you. Something for us. A little family thing."

She fished a tiny key from the front pocket of her pajamas and held it up in the light, dangling it between two fingers.

"Okay. Close your eyes."

She didn't wait to see if anyone would. She just turned and slotted the key into the lock, and it opened with a small, smooth click.

The door swung inward on a breath of cold air. It smelled of damp concrete, bleach, and something faintly sweet underneath.

Bree reached out and caught the other woman's hand in both of hers, lacing their fingers together, warm and tight. She pulled gently, tugging her forward onto the first step, and then the second, her bare feet making no sound on the wood.

"Careful. Watch the third one. It's loose."

At the bottom of the stairs, a single bare bulb dangled from a wire, swinging slightly. Someone had strung pink streamers across the beams, and three half-deflated balloons bobbed in the corner. A card table sat in the center, spread with a paper tablecloth, a plastic punch bowl, and a stack of dessert plates.

Beside the table stood a wooden kitchen chair.

Tyler Brandt was tied to it.

Coils of clothesline wrapped his chest, his arms, his wrists, his ankles, around and around so many times they had cut grooves into his skin. His rented tuxedo shirt was filthy and torn. One eye was swollen shut. A pink silk scarf was knotted tight across his mouth, dark at the center, and above it his open eye fixed on the stairs and went huge.

He made a sound behind the scarf. It was thin, wet, and desperate.

Bree squeezed the hand she held, delighted, and drew it up against her chest so that her stepmother could feel her heart racing.

"Tada," she whispered. "Meet my prom date."

The iPod dock on the card table was old and scratched, and it had a pink sticker on one side that said BREE'S, written in glitter pen.

She pressed play, and the song came tinny and bright across the concrete floor. It was the one that had been on the radio all spring, with the big, bouncing chorus and the synths, the song she had played so many times in her bedroom that the walls knew it by heart.

"This is my favorite," Bree announced. "I picked it just for tonight."

The basement had been transformed. Pink streamers hung from the pipes and crinkled in the cold draft from the old furnace. A disco ball, made from CDs glued onto a foam ball, spun slowly from a hook in the ceiling, throwing scattered flecks of light around the walls. A cake sat on the table with one slice missing. And in the corner, still tied to his chair, still gagged, Tyler's head lolled against his chest, his breath coming slow and ragged.

Bree didn't look at him.

She had changed into the pink dress again. It was creased from being slept in, and the hem was stained dark, but she twirled in it anyway, arms flung wide, and let the skirt belly out around her like a bell. The tiara glittered. Her blue hair swung across her shoulders. For a moment she looked exactly like what she had always wanted to be: a girl at a dance, glowing, adored, with the whole room watching.

She stopped in front of her stepmother and held out both hands.

"Come on. Dance with me."

Her voice was bright and breathless. The song swelled around them.

"It's the one thing I never got to do. I stood on those steps for three hours. I watched everyone else do it. I watched them hold hands and sway and laugh and take pictures, and I just stood there like an idiot." She swallowed. "I want one dance. That's it. Just one. Then I'll let you go upstairs and we'll never talk about it again."

She took a step closer, then another, the CD ball sprinkling light across her face. Her blue eyes shone. Her smile wobbled, and her fingers trembled where they hung in the air.

"Please," she whispered. "I'll lead. I'm not that bad. I practiced in the mirror."

She caught the other woman's wrist, gently at first, and tried to guide it to her waist. She was already rocking on her toes, already swaying side to side, humming along with the chorus under her breath, the way a little girl hums to a doll.

Everyone dances at prom, she thought. Everyone gets a slow dance. Even me. Even me.

In the corner, Tyler made a small, hopeless sound.

Bree's smile never faltered. But her grip tightened, her nails pressing white crescents into skin, and a thin, brittle edge crept into her voice.

"Don't look at him. He's not part of this. This is just us." She pulled harder, her eyes glassy. "Dance with me. Please. You're the only one who ever stayed. If you say no, then I have nobody. Then it was all for nothing."

The cake was lemon, with pink frosting.

Bree had baked it from a box mix the previous night, and she had spent two hours decorating it with piped roses that were slightly lopsided. Now it sat on the kitchen table with a knife stuck in the middle, and she was perched on the counter beside it, swinging her legs, watching with shining eyes as her stepmother took the first bite.

She was holding her breath. She had been holding it the whole time.

"Is it good?" she asked. "Is it okay? I used the good vanilla. The kind from the cabinet you said not to touch."

She slid off the counter and hovered at the table, watching every movement of the fork, every swallow. The expression on her face was naked and hungry, a girl desperate for a verdict. When it came, whatever it was, her whole body relaxed, and she let out a soft breath and gave a small, pleased smile.

"Good," she said. "I'm glad. I wanted something to celebrate."

She cut a second slice, her hand steady, the blade clean. She set it on a paper plate, pressed a plastic fork into the frosting, and balanced it carefully on her palm. Her blue eyes drifted toward the basement door, and the pleasure in her face shifted into something else.

"I'm going to give some to Tyler," she said cheerfully. "He's been so quiet. I think he's hungry."

She went down the stairs humming.

The basement was dim and cold. Tyler hung against the ropes, his chin on his chest. When her shoes touched the floor, his head snapped up and his body convulsed, straining at the knots. A muffled whimper escaped the scarf.

Bree untied it herself, slowly, with a little frown.

"Shh. Shh. Don't be dramatic." She held the fork up to his mouth. "You've got to eat. It's rude to refuse a girl's cooking."

He turned his face away, shaking.

For a long moment, Bree stood very still. Then she set the plate down on the floor. She wiped her fingers carefully on her dress, one by one, and smiled a small, polite smile.

"Okay," she said softly. "Okay. Fine."

She went to the bottom of the stairs and tipped her head back, calling up into the light.

"Hey! Can you bring me the drill?"

Silence.

"The drill. The big one, from the garage. It's on the shelf above the paint cans. I want to break a few of his teeth." She said it in the same sweet, bright voice she used for everything. "Just a few. He keeps spitting at me."

Nothing moved at the top of the stairs.

Bree waited. The bulb swung and creaked. Tyler had gone completely still, his one open eye as wide as a coin.

Her smile cracked.

"Hello?" Her voice rose. "Are you listening to me? I asked you for one thing. One thing!" She stamped her foot on the concrete, and her face twisted and went red, tears springing up in both eyes. "God, you are so useless! All you ever do is stand there and look sad and let everything fall apart! Dad left because of you! Everybody leaves because of you!"

She grabbed a handful of her hair and screamed up the stairs, loud enough to rattle the pipes.

"Go get the fucking drill and be useful for once in your life!"

It was almost three in the morning when Bree crept into the bedroom.

She didn't knock. She hadn't knocked on that door in years. She pushed it open with her hip, wearing an oversized T-shirt that said PROM 2010 in sparkly letters, her feet bare and her hair damp from a shower she had taken for a very long time. She smelled of strawberry shampoo and bleach.

Downstairs, in the cold, behind the padlocked door, something lay very still.

Bree didn't look back at it. She had washed her hands six times. She had scrubbed under her nails. She had cried in the tub until the water went cold, quietly, so no one would hear, and now her eyes were puffy and her nose was red, and she looked about twelve years old.

She stood at the foot of the bed for a while, hugging her own elbows.

The room was dim, lit by a single streetlight leaking through the blinds. She could see the shape of the pillows, the crumpled edge of the quilt, the small framed photograph on the nightstand of a wedding that had ended long ago.

"Hey," she whispered. "Are you awake?"

She didn't wait for an answer. She crawled onto the mattress on her hands and knees, dragging the quilt behind her, and curled up against the pillows with her knees to her chest and her cheek on her fist, her blue hair spilling across the sheets like spilled ink.

For a minute she lay there, breathing.

"I did something bad," she said, so low it was barely a sound. "I know you know. I'm not stupid. I know you're not stupid." A thin, trembling laugh. "You're the smartest person I've ever met, even though you let everyone walk all over you."

Her fingers plucked at the edge of the pillow.

"I didn't mean for it to go this far. I just wanted him to say sorry. And then he laughed at me. He laughed. And I kept thinking about the steps, and the camera, and everyone's faces, and it all just..." She made a small sound in her throat. "It just got really quiet in my head."

She rolled over and looked up, and her eyes were enormous and wet, her lashes spiky with tears. The streetlight turned her face pale and young and terribly lost.

"Will you still love me? If I tell you everything? If I did that?" She swallowed. "Because Dad didn't. Mom didn't. Nobody ever has. You're the only person who ever came home."

She shuffled closer on the mattress, then closer still, until her head was in reach, until her tangled blue hair brushed the other woman's hand. She pressed her forehead against a shoulder like a cat.

"Just say you will. Even if you don't mean it. Just say it."

She waited, breathing unevenly, and when the quiet stretched, her voice went small and sharp.

"Rub my hair."

A pause. Her fingers dug into the quilt.

"Please. Rub my hair. I can't sleep unless somebody does. I never could. Mom used to, before she left." Her voice cracked. "Do it. Now. Please, please, just do it."

The suitcase was already in the trunk when Bree found out.

She had been in the garage, hunting for something sharp to cut the ribbon off a gift box, when she saw it, a battered green duffel sitting open on the passenger seat. A neat stack of clothes. A toiletry bag. The framed photo from the nightstand, wrapped in a sweater. A manila folder of important papers.

She stood very still in the doorway.

The sun was going down behind the garage door's grimy windows, painting everything the color of rust. A single moth fluttered against the dusty glass. The house was quiet above her, the quiet of a house that had been emptied out on purpose.

Bree put down the box cutter and walked around the front of the car.

She didn't say a word. She just reached into the open driver's window, plucked the keys out of the ignition, and closed her fist around them. They were warm from someone's hand.

When the garage side door opened, she was waiting beside the hood, her back to the wall, her fingers white around the key ring. She still wore the tiara. It was dented now, one prong bent sideways, and her hair hung in rough, dirty ropes around her face.

"No," she said.

Her voice was flat and strange.

"No. You're not doing this. You don't get to." She held the keys up and shook them, a bright, ugly jingle in the cramped space. "You can't just leave me here. Not after everything. Not after I stayed with you!"

She backed away step by step, putting the car between them, her whole body trembling. Her eyes were huge and glassy. Her mouth was twisted into something between a snarl and a sob.

"I did everything right. I baked the cake. I cleaned the house. I was so good. I didn't even touch anything of yours!" She flung out one arm and swept a paint can off the shelf behind her. It hit the concrete with a crash and rolled in a slow, dripping circle. "And you're just going to walk out like Dad did? Like everyone does?"

A wrench sailed across the garage and cracked against the far wall. A coffee can of screws exploded in a bright spray. A flowerpot, a lawn chair, a stack of old magazines. Bree snatched up whatever her hands could find and hurled it, shrieking, tears pouring down her face.

Then, abruptly, it stopped.

She stood in the wreckage, chest heaving, her hair stuck to her wet cheeks. The keys had cut deep into her palm. A thread of blood ran down between her fingers and dripped onto the floor.

She took one step forward. Then another. Then she dropped to her knees on the dirty concrete, right there in front of the car, and pressed her forehead against the cold bumper, the keys clutched to her chest.

"Please," she sobbed. "Please don't go. I'll do anything. I'll clean it all up. I'll tell the police whatever you want. I'll never touch anything again. I'll be the best daughter in the world." Her voice shattered. "Just don't leave me alone in this house. I can't be alone with what's in the basement. I can't be alone with me."