The Dust of 100 Dogs by A.S. King

Author:A.S. King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-10-07T16:00:00+00:00

. 17 .

My 20th-Century Boyfriend & Junior’s Discount Medical Supply

S usan picked Sam and me up from school on Skip Day, and we went to the mall. Susan turned to go into Tower Records while Sam and I dug through bargain books on the tables set up outside the bookstore.

“Have fun, you two,” she said, and I clenched my teeth. Ever since she started dating Jay, Susan had become one of those girls—an annoying, giddy, simple-minded baseball groupie. On several occasions, when she wouldn’t shut up, I’d hung her from the yard arm and used her for target practice.

I spent a while in the travel section, looking at books about Jamaica and the Caribbean. I decided on one and bought it, then found Sam slumped on a bench next to the fake mall greenery.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, but he said it all depressed-like.

“Come on.” God, I wanted to kick him.

He looked up at me and said, “You know, the prom is in three weeks, and if I’m going to go I have to buy tickets now, and my pop said he could buy them for me if I wanted to take you, but I told him you probably already had a date, and now I feel like an idiot because I don’t think you do, and I never asked. Do you?”

He was like a ship’s dog.

“Do you?”

“Are you asking me to the prom?”

“Uh huh.”

• • •

A week later, I found a great old beaded dress at the Goodwill in town and took it to Mrs. Lindt in the Home Ec wing, who helped me tailor it to make me look less flat chested. I tried to act excited, but really, the whole thing made me want to puke. To me, it seemed like just another opportunity for the rich kids to sit around and snigger at the rest of us.

And Sam was just complicating things.

He started acting all stupid around me, like we were a couple or something. He came to McDonald’s every night and dropped by the trailer unannounced, which really pissed me off because it was hard enough living with my new-levels-of-loserdom parents without having to show them off to the neighbors.

By prom night, he’d worked himself up into a nervous wreck and his mood fluctuated between morose insecurity and babbling excitement. I began to hate him for it, so much so that, as I slipped into the dress, I half considered calling the whole night off. Before I could, he arrived at the trailer door with a boxed corsage and his hair combed and slicked down with some sort of shiny stuff.

I’d put on makeup, and this shocked him as much as his hair shocked me.

“Wow. You look great.” The way he said it felt insulting—as if I’d never looked great before. Before I could answer, my mother was posing us next to the front window, inching Sam to the left or right to hide the peeling paper paneling.

“Hold that!” she said. “Saffron, smile, will you?”

I smiled.

“Sam, can you lean in toward Saffron a little? I can’t fit you both in the frame.

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