*This is based on true events, names and places have been changed.
There is a picture of my two best friends and me at our senior prom that all three of us have copies of somewhere in our homes. If you look very closely at the photo, you can see that the straps of my dress are torn. Lisa is in the middle, looking angelic as usual; her light blond hair pulled tightly back into some sort of elaborate knot. Carrie is on the right, slightly drunk, and grinning slyly. And there's me, smiling weakly, nervously, my head slightly tilted toward my friend's shoulder.
There we are: Three best friends. We'd been inseparable since the 3rd grade. I was the perfectionist, the brain, the athlete, while Carrie was the bad girl, the slut - the girl very literally from the wrong side of the tracks. Then there was Lisa. Sweet wonderful Lisa. The Homecoming Queen. The princess. Now ten years later, the three of us are different, but really just different versions of the old stereotypes.
That picture reminds me of my friends, of how far we have all come, but when my eyes zero in on the torn strap of my prom dress, I think of this:
The night started badly. I stood with my date in the lobby while he talked and laughed with our friends and their families. I wasn't being social though, I had been looking for my parents, craning my neck trying to locate them in the crowd of noisy parents photographing their beloved children. I kept praying that one of my parents would show up. Any of them, a mom a dad ... Hell I'd have been pleased to see either of my stepparents walking through the ballroom doors. Anything! Any evidence that someone had remembered or cared that it was my senior prom.
"Where's your mother Lola?" Lisa's mother asked, turning to me. She took a better look at my face and frowned.
"Ohhh honey," she said hugging me. "I'm sure she... well.."
I smiled weakly at my friend's kind mother. We both knew my mother had forgotten. She was likely off somewhere with her husband, somewhere fabulous that I'd get a nice post card from.
"She'll be very sorry she missed it honey, you look beautiful." Lisa's mother looked back at her husband who was standing close by. "Doesn't she look beautiful John?"
My heart sank when I saw him. Why was he here? He never comes to these things. Lisa's father looked at me, then back at his wife. She glared at him. He looked again at me. Our eyes met.
I remembered the way his tongue felt as it moved up my thigh... how his skin tasted ... I shivered.
"Yea, of course she does," he mumbled, looking away. I shivered again.
His voice echoed through my head. "You're so beautiful..."
He'd whispered that to me countless times. I could almost feel his breath against my ear as he fucked me. His eyes stared at me with hostility that I didn't really understand. We'd decided it was over between us a month before. My mind flashed back to that beach in Key West where we met again by chance. How we found each other on that black beach, I'm not sure, but we did. We fucked furiously in the sand, my legs on his shoulders, his body crushing my thighs against my chest. The moon was uncovered by the clouds and was suddenly blinding me with its white and I could only hear his grunting and the soft waves.
"You're so beautiful," he whispered after we'd climaxed together. "So incredibly beautiful."
Standing there at my senior prom, I could still feel the rough sand imbedded into my back.
I felt a hand on my back. It was my boyfriend. I had to get out of there.
"Hey wanna go up to the tower with me?" I whispered in my boyfriend's ear. I knew he would not go. He hated heights. He hated the tower.
"Its freezing up there" he replied.
I knew that. I didn't care though. I had to get out of there for a minute and collect my thoughts.
"Mind if I go?"
"You're crazy, you're going to freeze!"
"I just want to look!" I said, looking at him warmly. "It will just take a sec, do you mind?"
"You're going to freeze," he said again, shaking his head.
"Ok, I'll be back," I said, kissing his cheek.
He smiled at me. I walked up the narrow steps to the tower.
It was cold up there. I couldn't hear a thing except for the wind banging against the tower windows. I walked over to the huge windowpane and leaned forward against it, resting my forehead on the glass. The cold surface felt good on my skin. Over the howling wind, I heard a gleeful screech of some mother or girl from the lobby.
I closed my eyes.
They had missed it. My goddamn parents missed my prom. I wallowed in my self-pity. I'm the only senior whose parents didn't show up to take pictures. I wanted to scream. I wanted to kick and hit the glass. I wanted to throw the security guard chair through the glass, breaking it, and jump out plummeting to my own restful death! That would show them! Then I laughed, picturing my mother, crying at my funeral, secretly gleeful over what I had done. Now she was a grieving mother! Parent of a dead child! Oh the drama! The sublime romance of it all! I could see her, tearfully proclaiming her love for me and her horror over what I had done! Nope, I'd never jump. I'd never give her that opportunity.
I heard someone coming up the steps but I didn't turn around. I was still too deep in my self-pitying fantasy to be concerned. I could smell liquor, so I assumed it was Carrie. I stared out the window, focusing my vision on a blinking construction crane on the other side of the river.
A hand slipped around my mouth. My body was pushed against the glass.
It was him.
I was sick of this! I struggled violently, my verbal disapproval muted by the hand clamped viciously around my mouth. I wasn't afraid yet, but I was angry. My hands pulled at his arms. Suddenly his knee thrust hard against my legs forcing its way in-between them. I yelped in pain tears welled up in my eyes. He yanked my head back viciously.
"You let him fuck you!" He spat into my ear. He pushed my head forward against he glass. His hand left my mouth.
"You're hurting me!" I whispered against the window.
"Shut up!" He said. I could feel his cock hard against my thigh. He had my body crushed against the cold glass windowpane. "I heard my daughter talking about it!"
"Stop it!" I gasped. "I said this was over!"
His breathing was heavy. I realized knew the alcohol I smelled on his breath was Crown Royal. I'll never forget that smell.
"You're hurting me!" I shouted hoarsely. His hands slid up the sides of my body to my breasts. He began squeezing them roughly.
"She said you'd fucked him!" I struggled but he kept kneading them harder. "That little bastard," he mumbled. "You let him fuck you!"
